Trans fats? Done that ...

Jo Bruce likes to get things done. Whether she's helping a baker reduce saturated fat in a sponge or explaining enzymatic interesterification to a journalist who doesn't know his fatty acids from his elbow, Pura Foods' research project manager gets her kicks out of delivering tangible results.

If your new fat doesn't work on the factory floor as well as the lab, observes Bruce, the letters after your name aren't much use to customers.

While a sparkling career in the pharmaceutical industry beckoned after graduating from Oxford with a Master's degree in chemistry in 1996, Bruce emerged from academia intent on working in the food industry. "I'd spent my final year doing straight research, which gives you a great idea as to whether research is something you want to do. And for me, the answer was no. So I joined Unilever's management training scheme."

It wasn't long before she was given the opportunity to 'get stuff done'. Less than six months into her first role in production management at Unilever subsidiary Crosfield Chemicals, the business was sold to ICI, and Bruce landed a role at a factory in Trafford, UK, working on one of Unilever's biggest ever product launches - pyramid teabags. Six months later, she moved on again, this time into a marketing role. "Absolutely not my forte."

Six months later she was working on the launch of cholesterol-busting margarine Flora pro-activ at Unilever's site at Purfleet in the UK, before becoming a shift manager on Super Noodles. "That was great training: you're in charge of 20 people, and if you're a woman, they will find every way to make you feel uncomfortable. But it was a fantastic learning experience."

Before long, however, she was invited back to Purfleet as product development manager for Flora pro.activ. Within weeks, she was creating formulations, putting together the scientific programme and trying to bridge the gap between research and development (R&D) and marketing. "It's something I love, explaining science to people with a wide range of abilities and understanding"

However, her growing interest in pro.activ was tempered with frustration because she couldn't read the base science behind it, she says. While most people would have indulged in a spot of reading to fill in the gaps, Bruce signed up for a Master's degree (number two) in nutrition at Kings College London.

Once back on the job market with a few more letters after her name, Bruce landed a position in Erith, UK, as technical development manager at edible oils and fats specialist Pura. Now part ADM's speciality oils and fats business, Pura handles rapeseed, sunflower, palm, palm kernel and coconut oils, plus specialist palm oil fractions.

Within three months, she was promoted to product and process development manager, and by the following year, she was in charge of the R&D operation. To her surprise, the job of visiting customers, which she had dreaded, turned out to be the best thing about it.

"You turn up and they say 'We're making caramel, and it's not setting, why?' So I get them to take me through their process and I say 'Maybe we need a bit of this to make the crystallisation work better'. The challenge is trying to explain what you want to do and convince them it's worth using your solutions without actually telling them exactly what you are going to do."

Trans fats acids occur naturally in milk and meat produced by ruminant animals. However, they are also produced during partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils (that are liquid at room temperature) in order to create semi-solid fats.

While trans fats are back in the media spotlight in the UK with a vengeance following a recent government report into obesity, manufacturers have largely replaced partially hydrogenated oils with alternatives such as palm (which is already semi solid at room temperature), or with oils that are hardened through the use of acids or enzymes (interesterification) instead of hydrogenation, says Bruce.

"It sounds glib, but we've 'done' trans fats. In the UK, we don't even talk about them anymore. In continental Europe, however, many customers are waiting to switch to low trans products until consumer pressure forces them to change."

Whether the rest of Europe will go down the same route as the UK isn't clear, she says. "They will definitely change, but whether they will eliminate hydrogenation altogether is another matter."

Fully hydrogenated fats are saturated, but not trans fats. "If you fully hydrogenate rapeseed it forms stearic acid, which is actually neutral in terms of cardiovascular risk. The UK Food Standards Agency is perfectly happy with full hydrogenation, and it may be that this is accepted in some countries as a solution to trans."

However, the subtlety of the distinction between partial and full hydrogenation is lost on the marketing departments of most UK supermarkets, says Bruce, so manufacturers are under pressure to avoid hydrogenation altogether.

The big challenge is reducing saturated fat, which raises 'bad' cholesterol, especially in cakes and pastries, which don't work without a reasonably solid fat. Because straight palm oil is packed with saturated fat and partially hydrogenated rapeseed is out of favour because of concerns over trans fats, ADM has spent years developing blended products with the same functionality but a better nutritional profile, says Bruce.

"You can split palm oil into palm olein (liquid) and palm stearine (solid), which can then be further fractionated, and then play around with blends to create a product with plasticity but also less saturated fat."

ADM's Novalipid range of zero and low trans fats shortenings and margarines are solidified through enzyme inter-esterification rather than hydrogenation. However, even this is not without controversy, with some researchers (Sundram K, et al, Nutrition and Metabolism, 2007), raising concerns about the adverse effects of inter-esterified oils on blood glucose and glucose metabolism.

Further research into this phenomenon cannot be a bad thing, says Bruce, but she is confident in the technique and says that the Sundram study is "not representative of other work carried out in the area"

Ideally of course, such meddling with fats and oils could be avoided if we could breed designer crops producing oils with precisely the functional and nutritional qualities we wanted in the first place, says Bruce. Many examples are already on the market, notably high oleic sunflower oil, now in Walkers crisps, and low-linolenic soy bean oil.

However, plant breeding, whether using traditional or GM techniques, it's not the complete answer, claims Bruce. "You'd probably still have to fractionate these new oils once you'd got them. There are always bits that you want for one thing or another. There is so much you can do."