Adulterations in Some Edible Oils and Fats and Their Detection Methods

Vegetable oils and fats have a big contribution in our diet as cooking or frying oil, salad oil or in food products formulation. They are important from nutritional and economical point of views. Their authenticity is a serious issue since old time. Some edible oils and fats such as olive oil, cocoa butter and milk fat are so expensive which makes tempting to adulterate them with other lower price vegetable oils and fats to achieve more profit. The need for authentication is a necessity of the food industry. Today, adulterations are more sophisticated. Therefore, it is necessary to use advanced and suitable methods to detect adulteration. Adulteration can cause several problems in edible oils application and industry. To detect edible oils and fats adulteration, it is possible to use both major and minor components as detection tool. Since each oil and fat may have an especial component at a known level, their presence and amounts should be considered as a detection tool. This paper is a brief review on adulteration of edible oils and fats and their detection methods. Several methods have been used to check the purity of edible oils and fats. There is a necessity for food related organization to develop and utilize reliable methods to detect such adulterations, which can make consumers and markets more certain on authenticity and purity of edible oils and fats.