Comparative studies on phenolic, anti-oxidative, biochemical and GC–MS analysis of crude and refined edible oils

Abstract

Fats and oils play a very important role in everyday life. Many oils are available in the market with potential health benefits. Some of these oils if taken in excess are harmful too. Oils can be saturated or unsaturated depending on the nature of fatty acid present in them. The current study was carried out to compare the biological activity of refined and crude oils to understand and analyze their physiochemical analysis and quantitative properties of oils. Three types of oils were selected in this project which are sunflower oil, almond oil and sesame oil. The seeds of the oils were obtained from the local market and the oil were extracted using the Soxhlet extraction method. Three refined oils of the same variety were obtained from the market. Different analytical procedures like measuring the moisture content of oils, total phenolic activity of oils, anti-oxidative properties of oils, iodine number, saponification number of oils, Reichert meisel number, total sterol content, Gas chromatography mass spectroscopy(GC–MS) analysis was performed on all categories of oils. The main purpose of this analysis is to suggest which of the oils crude or refined are good for health and metabolism. From the studies carried out and the results obtained, it was found that the crude oils of all the three varieties have more health benefits than the refined oils.