International dietary guidelines advocate replacement of saturated and trans fat in food with unsaturated oils. Also, there is growing interest in incorporating highly unsaturated omega-3 oils in to food products due to beneficial health effects. A major obstacle to incorporating highly unsaturated oils in to food products is the extreme susceptibility to oxidative deterioration. Oil bodies were prepared from tuna oil, oleosin, and phospholipid mimicking natural oil bodies within oilseed. Oleosin was extracted from canola (Brassica napus) meal by solubilization in aqueous sodium hydroxide (pH 12) and subsequent precipitation at its isoelectric point of pH 6.5. The tuna oil artificial oil bodies (AOBs) readily dispersed in water to produce oil-in-water (o/w) emulsions, which did not coalesce on storage and were amenable to pasteurization using standard conditions. Accelerated oxidation studies showed that these AOB emulsions were substantially more resistant to lipid oxidation than o/w emulsions prepared from tuna oil using Tween40, sodium caseinate, and commercial canola protein isolate, respectively. There is potential to use commercial canola meal, which is cheap and abundant, as a natural source of oleosin for the preparation of physically and oxidatively stable food emulsions containing highly unsaturated oils.

Enhancement of oxidative stability of canola oil extracted from seed subjected to prior heat-treatment has been attributed to heat-induced generation of antioxidants from phenolic precursors occurring in canola seed. Dispersion of aqueous extracts of intact seed oil bodies (OBs) in water is a novel and interesting way of producing natural and oxidatively stable food emulsions with minimal use of synthetic antioxidants and emulsifiers. As there is growing interest in natural food emulsions containing unsaturated oils, we investigated whether the oxidative stability of canola OB emulsions could be further improved by subjecting canola seed to heat-treatment prior to oil body extraction. Oil-in-water (5%, w/w) emulsions of OBs extracted from canola seed before and after heat-treatment were considerably more resistant to oxidation than emulsions prepared from refined canola oil and Tween® 40 emulsifier. However, only small amounts (0.9% - 4.5% by weight) of the phenolic compounds present in canola seed were transferred to the OBs after aqueous extraction, and consequently there was no discernible effect on oxidative stability as a result of prior heat-treatment of the seed. Thus, in contrast to oil, there is no oxidative stability benefit to be gained by subjecting canola seed to heat-treatment prior to extraction of OBs