Determination of triacylglycerol oxidation mechanisms in canola oil using liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

Food chemistry: new method probes how oils go rancid Edible oils become rancid when reacting with oxygen under light or heat, degrading into different products depending on the pathway. Kiyotaka Nakagawa at Tohoku University, Japan, and co-workers used instruments that can separate and identify by weight components in mixtures to study light- and heat-induced oxidation of canola oil. Using authentic samples of possible oxidation products as references, the team found that each process generated two unique species from triacylglycerol, the main ingredient in edible oils. These signature compounds allowed the researchers to reveal that heat-oxidation sped up as temperature increased and that light-oxidized products gradually accumulated in off-the-shelf canola oil after production. This method is more sensitive than conventional protocols and can tell exactly how oils are oxidized, useful for developing techniques for food preservation