Health Benefits, Enzymatic Production, and Application of Medium‐ and Long‐Chain Triacylglycerol (MLCT) in Food Industries: A Review

Abstract

Medium-and long-chain triacylglycerol (MLCT) is a modified lipid containing medium-chain (C6-C12) and long-chain fatty acids (C14-C24) in the same triacylglycerol (TAG) molecule. It can be produced either through enzymatic (with 1,3 specific or nonspecific enzyme) or chemical methods. The specialty of this structured lipid is that it is metabolized differently compared to conventional fats and oils, which can lead to a reduction of fat accumulation in the body. Therefore, it can be used for obesity management. It also contains nutritional properties that can be used to treat metabolic problems. This review will discuss on the health benefits of MLCT, its production methods especially via enzymatic processes and its applications in food industries.

Incorporation of capric acid in pumpkin seed oil by sn-1,3 regioselective lipase-catalyzed acidolysis

“…However, large-scale esterification is more expensive than acidolysis due to the high cost of fatty acids and glycerol substrates. On the other hand, interesterification produces a randomly structured medium-long-chain tricylglycerols with low content of MLM compared to acidolysis reaction (Lee et al, 2012).…”

Enzymatic interesterification on the physicochemical properties of <em>Moringa oleifera</em> seed oil blended with palm olein and virgin coconut oil

“…The first commercially available MLCT sold in the market by Nisshin Ollio Ltd. Group, Ltd, uses the enzymatic IE process for its production involving coconut or palm kernel oil and an edible vegetable oil (rapeseed, cottonseed and soybean oil) (Lee et al, 2012). Khatoon et al (2005) reported on interesterified palm stearin with coconut oil, where LaLaLa decreased tremendously while that of LaLaO and LaOO experienced major increases.…”

“…Unexpectedly, S3 enhancement resulted in interesterified MoO/PO, which is also desirable in this study, as MMP (myristic myristic palmitic) would be the representative of this type of TAG group (Figure 1a). MMP, which is a medium-mediumlong chain (MML) TAG, is generally called MLCT (medium long chain TAG) and when considered as a structured lipid (SL), would be a beneficial and nutritional fat (Lee et al, 2012) which was generated due to the rearrangements of the TAG occurring after IE .…”

“…However, as MCT contain solely medium chain fatty acids (MCFA), it lacks essential fatty acids such as oleic acid. MCT is also unsuitable for cooking purposes such as frying as it has a lower smoke point and high foaming tendency (Lee et al, 2012;Matsuo et al, 2001). Hence, long chain fatty acids (LCFA) should be incorporated into the MCT molecules to overcome these weaknesses.…”

“…This will lead to the development of a new type of structured lipids, called medium-and long-chain triacylglycerol (MLCT). This can either be produced via a lipase-catalyzed reaction of acidolysis, esterification, or interesterification (Koh et al, 2010;Lee et al, 2012). MLCT-based oil blends can be used as healthy functional oils for daily consumption such as in salad dressing and for frying (Koh et al, 2010).…”