Healthy Compounds in Pomace Oil Absorbed by Fried Foods, Study Finds

Frying food in olive pomace oil is health­ier than using more con­ven­tional cook­ing oils, accord­ing to a study con­ducted by the Higher Council for Scientific Research’s (CSIC) fat insti­tute in Spain.

“Among the advan­tages of fry­ing with olive pomace oil, it is worth high­light­ing the improve­ment in many cases of the fatty acid pro­file and the enrich­ment of the food in antiox­i­dant com­pounds,” said María Victoria Ruiz Méndez, the lead author of the study and researcher at the CSIC’s fat insti­tute.

Olive pomace oil, pro­duced from the sec­ond press­ing of ground olive fruits, con­tains spe­cific and ben­e­fi­cial com­pounds, includ­ing squa­lene, toco­pherols and sterols.

The oil also com­prises triter­penic acids and alco­hols and fatty aliphatic alco­hols, both of which are asso­ci­ated with low­er­ing LDL (bad) cho­les­terol lev­els while rais­ing HDL (good) cho­les­terol.

“Numerous in vitro and pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies sup­port the rela­tion­ship of these exclu­sive com­pounds with the pre­ven­tion of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases and risk fac­tors such as cho­les­terol and high bio­log­i­cal activ­ity asso­ci­ated with car­dio­vas­cu­lar func­tion,” Ruiz Méndez said.

In the study, researchers demon­strated that these healthy phe­no­lic com­pounds and fatty acids were not dena­tured or deformed when heated to the tem­per­a­tures habit­u­ally used to fry food both domes­ti­cally and in indus­trial kitchens.

The researchers also found that while the total fat con­tent of foods fried or deep-fried with olive pomace oil increased, the food absorbed some of the oil’s ben­e­fi­cial com­pounds.

These same ben­e­fits were not observed by foods fried with sun­flower oil or high-oleic sun­flower oil, both of which are com­monly used cook­ing oils in the coun­try.

“The main con­clu­sion [of the study] is that we eat com­pounds of nutri­tional inter­est when we fry food with olive pomace oil,” Ruiz Méndez said.

“Due to the dilu­tion effect, [the food’s] sat­u­rated fatty acid con­tents and the cho­les­terol level are reduced; and the con­tent of phy­tos­terols is increased,” she added.

José Luis Maestro Sánchez-Cano, the pres­i­dent of Spain’s inter­pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion of olive pomace oil (Oriva), which pro­vided fund­ing and sup­port for the study, said the find­ings con­firmed the oil’s culi­nary value.

“It reaf­firms the good behav­ior of olive pomace oil in fry­ing,” he said. ​“This study clears up ques­tions about the preser­va­tion of its com­po­nents and of course their nutri­tional value.”

• Oriva
• Higher Council for Scientific Research — Fat Institute
• Revista Agricultura