Abstract
It is looking forward to making an appropriate dietary fat instead of trans monounsaturated fats from the aspects of physical and physiological points. Animal and human experiments support the view that stearic acid is different from other saturated fatty acids such as 12 : 0, 14 : 0 and 16 : 0, in term of cholesterol metabolism. Such a difference is affected by an amount of ingested energy from linoleic acid, so that it is critical to evaluate the effect of controlled dietary environment on serum cholesterol and atherosclerosis. A beneficial effect of stearic acid was confirmed by the meta analyses from 60 studies in which a ratio of cholesterol to HDL cholesterol was estimated by regression analyses. Although triacylglycerols containing saturated fatty acid at sn-2 position have been considered to be unfavorable to the risk factor for heart diseases, interesterification of shear butter or cocoa butter which is enriched in saturated fatty acid at sn-1 (3) shows rather beneficial properties against postprandial hyperlipidemia and a coagulation factor level. These studies will contribute to develop better structured triacylglycerols instead of trans monounsaturated fats.
