Sunflower oil used for frying: Combination of column, gas and high‐performance size‐exclusion chromatography for its evaluation

The alterations of a sunflower oil were evaluated by column, gas and high‐performance size‐exclusion chromatography after being used for deep‐fat frying fifteen repeated and discontinuous times. Polar compounds increased significantly (6.2 ± 0.3% to 18.7 ± 0.8% in oil). Linoleic acid decreased (53.8 ± 0.2 to 48.1 ± 0.8 mg/100 mg oil) while oleic acid remained unaltered after 15 fryings. Saturated fatty acids such as palmitic and stearic, also remained unaltered. Triglyceride polymers (0.1 ± 0.0 to 2.4 ± 0.2 mg/100 mg oil), triglyceride dimers (1.0 ± 0.2 to 6.7 ± 0.3 mg/100 mg oil) and oxidized triglycerides (3.4 ± 0.2 to 7.6 ± 0.3 mg/100 mg oil) increased significantly in the oil used 15 times to fry potatoes. These thermoxidative compounds correlated well with the number of fryings (r=0.9864, r=0.9535 and r=0.9758, respectively). Diglyceride compounds remained unaltered, while free fatty acids increased from 0.4 ± 0.0 to 0.6 ± 0.0 mg/100 mg oil. Both of these, which are characteristic of hydrolytic alteration, did not correlate significantly (r=0.5985 and r=0.4261, respectively) with the number of fryings. These data suggest that a thermoxidative process, rather than a hydrolytic one, took place in this study.