Fat has a high importance to human health, as it affects the texture and taste of food. In recent times, food trends have followed a dangerous course. For example, unbalanced eating, also the habits of excessive calories, the sustained increase in processed foods, and the fast food widespread changes in food behavior. Those changes of habits have developed a large concern to the community, especially the allegedly increase on some health problems, that is the mere consequence of obesity. An increased attention of the public opinion on the quality of meals is a social trend these days. Some terminology applied to similar substances are fats, fatty acids, and lipids, and many times these terms are cited or confused as equivalents. For that …show more content…
These methods correlate quite well and are based on similar principles of extraction for the determination of total fat content in food samples. This method is based on a digestion using hydrochloric acid and water. The filtered residue is extracted with a proper solvent in a Soxhlet extractor for several hours. After the extraction, the solvent is evaporated and dried. The quantitation of Total Fat is determined by weighing the residue. For cheese samples, there is as well a method commonly referred, "Cheese and processed cheese products - Determination of fat content - Gravimetric method (Reference method) (ISO 1735:2004)", which is very similar in the analysis strategy and commonly known as Schmid-Bondzynski-Ratzlaff principle. (Reference method) (ISO …show more content…
In succinct terms, this method utilizes also an acid digestion and posterior extraction using a nonpolar solvent (like diethyl ether and/or petroleum ether) in a Mojonnier flask. Both ISO and AOAC methods are based on Soxhlet extraction and can be used as an arbitration or a reference method to determine the Total fat parameter in food samples in order to create the nutritional label. Actually, many countries have their reference and arbitration methods based on any of both methodologies cited. Nevertheless, in academia, the Folch method (Folch and others 1957) is commonly used in research and studies, especially in the field of nutrition, biochemistry and agriculture research. (Taha and others