Fully Hydrogenated Fats and Oils Among Proposals for New Food Chemicals Codex

01 Jul 2015 --- The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) is proposing new monographs to be included in its Food Chemicals Codex (FCC), Tenth Edition. Among them are three key new monographs: fully hydrogenated oils and fats, trans-resveratrol and paprika oleoresin.

“We are proposing ingredient monographs and methods that we believe reflect the needs of our stakeholders and provide them with valuable resources,” said Jaap Venema, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief science officer at USP.

Manufacturers and other interested parties are encouraged to comment on the proposed monographs through USP’s FCC Forum, a free, online tool, available for the public to review food ingredients quality standards for a 90-day comment period, from June 30 to September 31, 2015.

• Fully Hydrogenated Oils and Fats (FHOs) — This new monograph is specifically intended to define fully hydrogenated oils and fats and differentiate them from partially hydrogenated oils and fats (PHOs), which contain fatty acids with trans double bonds – such fatty acids are undesirable in food products and are commonly linked to negative health effects. “This monograph is particularly useful to manufacturers, regulators and other parties when formulating and reformulating their products because it is the first public standard to define exactly what FHOs are and to provide a test and specification designed to differentiate them from PHOs”, said Kristie Laurvick, Ph.D., senior scientific liaison for food ingredients at USP. “With the FDA’s recently finalized determination that PHOs are not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), it is important to provide manufacturers and food processors with tools to differentiate FHOs from PHOs, allowing manufacturers to test their materials to rule out food fraud and to ensure the safety of their products.”

• trans-Resveratrol – Resveratrol is most known for its purported health benefits (e.g. heart health-related claims from resveratrol present in red wine). Sources of resveratrol include Japanese knotweed, red grape varieties and other berries, but it can also be produced by fermentation and synthetically. The proposed trans-resveratrol monograph is specifically for resveratrol produced by yeast fermentation. “This represents the first proposed authoritative standard for resveratrol as a food ingredient. We are asking stakeholders to let us know how we should accommodate other potential sources of resveratrol in future FCC monographs,” said Jeffrey Moore, Ph.D., senior scientific liaison at USP.

• Paprika Oleoresin – This new proposed monograph will provide specific, industry-relevant methods of analysis that are designed to provide tools to detect and avert possible adulteration with undesirable, illegal and potentially carcinogenic dyes. Sudan dyes have been notoriously reported as one of such potential classes of adulterants in paprika oleoresin. Paprika samples containing Sudan dyes at levels consistent with economic adulteration (above ~200 parts per million) would be expected to fail the tests included in this quality standard. More specific tests to detect Sudan dyes and other synthetic colorant adulterants are expected to be developed and proposed in future editions of the FCC Forum.

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