With obesity becoming a growing concern throughout the United States, doctors and researchers have tried to determine which foods have the most negative impact on human health. Fats are a major contributor to the problem, and there are many debates as to which oils are the healthiest for cooking. Over the last several years, coconut oil has become increasingly more popular, and many advocates claim it is the healthiest oil. They even debate which production process makes the most wholesome form of the oil. This study examines the fatty acid compositions of several types of coconut oil using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) in order to determine if the extraction process influences the oil’s components. Each oil sample is heated with reflux in an acidic methanol solution to hydrolyze the fatty acids and extracted with dichloromethane before GC-MS analysis. The major fatty acids present are saturated, medium-length hydrocarbons including octanoic acid, decanoic acid, dodecanoic acid, tetradecanoic acid, and hexadecanoic acid.

Coconut oil: Comparison of fatty acid content

254th National Meeting (2017)

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