ABSTRACT
Traditionally, oils and fats have been used to cook and fry foods and to prepare baked products. These are still the major uses for the present day. Rural populations in developing countries still use oils with minimum refining or largely unrefined processes. Since Napoleon’s time, margarine has gained acceptance in the Western diet as a butter substitute. For decades, its produc tion relied on the hydrogenation and blending of vegetable oils to achieve a melting characteristic similar to that of butter. Similar processing steps were used to produce deep-frying and baking shortenings. Rapid growing fast-food services and food processors demand large volumes of vegetable oil-based shortenings to imitate the frying stability of beef tallow and the performance characteristics of pastry fat like tallow and butter. This pattern of oil and fat utilization plus the applications of fats and oils in dressings and mayonnaise are considered mature in developed nations. Developing countries apparently closely follow the footsteps of industrial nations.
