Super high oleic safflower oil benchmarking in frying

This pilot study benchmarked the new super-high oleic acid safflower oil (SuHi-Saff) against common frying oils in a frying exercise: standard canola (St-Can), high oleic acid sunflower (Hi-Sun), high oleic peanut (Hi-Pea), and rice bran (R-Bran). High oleic and low linolenic acid contents increase the frying stability of seed oils such as canola and sunflower (Przybylski et al., 2013).
The results showed that SuHi-Saff had comparable frying performance to Hi-Sun and Hi-Pea. Despite the super-high oleic acid content, SuHi-Saff demonstrated a shorter frying life (~22 hours) compared to St-Can (~27.5 hours) and R-Bran (~38 hours) oils – mainly due to the low concentration of important minor bioactive compounds, especially gamma-tocopherol (~9 mg/kg). It was observed that all the tocopherols (mainly alpha, ~311 mg/kg – Table 1) were depleted after 6 hours of frying. Compared ST-Can and R-Bran, the frying life of SuHi-Saff (including Hi-Sun and Hi-Pea) was largely determined by the higher oleic acid content. Thus, when the effects of tocopherols and other bioactive compounds (e.g. tocotrienols and oryzanols in R-Bran) are removed, SuHi-Saff oil might demonstrate either comparable or superior heat stability and frying life compared to all the oils.
Oil stability and frying life were an interplay between the fatty acid composition and, the presence, type, and amount of different minor bioactive compounds present in the oils.