Lipid composition of Brazilian chocolates and chocolate products with special emphasis on their fat origin and trans C18:1 Isomeric profile

The aim of this work was to provide recent fatty acid (FA) profiling of chocolates and chocolate products, principally C18:1 trans FAs (TFAs). Thirty-two samples were analyzed by gas chromatography and FAs were quantified. The total TFA content declared in chocolate labeling and the real TFA content were compared. The TFA content ranged from 0.04 to 2.51 g/100 g of sample, and it was noticed that several manufacturers were underestimating the total TFA content in their labeling. The main TFA isomers quantified were C18:1 trans-9 (0.006-0.244%), C18:1 trans-10 (0.009-0.392%), and C18:1 trans-11 (0.013-0.464%), expressed in g/100 g of sample. Principal component analysis was used to discriminate industrial fats from natural trans fats based on the isomeric TFA profile and dairy fat (DF) biomarkers allowing to group samples in four clusters: high TFA content and high DF content, high TFA content and low DF content, low TFA content and high DF content, and low TFA content and low DF content.

This work was conducted during a scholarship at the Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación (CIAL, CSIC-UAM) financed by CAPES—Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education within the Ministry of Education of Brazil (PDSE 88881187078/2018-01) and was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Project AGL2016-75159-C2-2-R). GQAQ group also acknowledges CAPES (PNPD 23071022702/2018-43), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e tecnológico—CNPq (303355/2017-4; 424032/2018-0), Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia de Bioanalítica—INCTBio (FAPESP 2014/50867-3 and CNPq 465389/2014-7), Rede Mineira de Química—RQ-MG (CEX. RED-00010-14), and Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais—FAPEMIG for fellowships and financial support.

Peer reviewed