Comparing the thermo-physical characteristics of lard and selected plant fats

Adulteration detection technologies used for halal/kosher food products: an overview

In the Islamic and Jewish religions, there are various restrictions that should be followed in order for food products to be acceptable. Some food items like pork or dog meat are banned to be consumed by the followers of the mentioned religions. However, illegally, some food producers in various countries use either the meat or the fat of the banned animals during food production without being mentioned in the label on the final products, and this considers as food adulteration. Nowadays, halal or kosher labeled food products have a high economic value, therefore deceiving the consumers by producing adulterated food is an illegal business that could make large gains. On the other hand, there is an insistent need from the consumers for getting reliable products that comply with their conditions. One of the main challenges is that the detection of food adulteration and the presence of any of the banned ingredients is usually unnoticeable and cannot be determined by the naked eye. As a result, scientists strove to develop very sensitive and precise analytical techniques. The most widely utilized techniques for the detection and determination of halal/kosher food adulterations can be listed as High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Capillary Electrophoresis (CE), Gas Chromatography (GC), Electronic Nose (EN), Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Enzyme-linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ELISA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Near-infrared (NIR) Spectroscopy, Laser-induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Fluorescent Light Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy and Raman Spectroscopy (RS). All of the above-mentioned techniques were evaluated in terms of their detection capabilities, equipment and analysis costs, accuracy, mobility, and needed sample volume. As a result, the main purposes of the present review are to identify the most often used detection approaches and to get a better knowledge of the existing halal/kosher detection methods from a literature perspective.

Recent advances in plant-based fat formulation as substitute for lard

Lard is one of the main animal fats used as shortening and frying medium. Religious prohibitions and negative health perceptions regarding animal fats have caused concerns about the consumption of lard among communities living around the world. Various research efforts have been made in the past to formulate plant-based fats and shortenings as substitutes for the exclusion of lard from food. This would eventually help countries to regularize food formulations according to their religious compliance. As the existence of a single plant fat as substitute for lard has not been discovered from nature, researchers attempted to study the possibility of mixing native fats and oils such as enkabang fat, canola oil, guava oil, palm oil, palm stearin, soybean oil and cocoa butter as raw materials. The compatibility of the formulated plant-based fat substitute for lard was assessed in terms of chemical composition and thermo-physical properties. The formulated plant-based shortenings and lard shortening were simply plastic fats based on their consistency value and existence of β’ and β-form polymorphs of which the β’ -form was dominant. The functional properties of formulated plant-based shortenings and lard were also compared in the formulation of cookies. Although a substantial amount of work has been done over the past decade, there was hardly any discussion on the pros and cons of the approaches used for raw material selection and the criteria adopted in the assessment of the formulated products. Hence, this review intended to bring an update of the progress of studies with regard to these two aspects.