Foods fried in vegetable oil are popular worldwide, but research about the health effects of this cooking technique has been largely inconclusive and focused on healthy people. For the first time, UMass Amherst food scientists set out to examine the impact of frying oil consumption on inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer, using animal models.
Guodong Zhang, whose food science lab focuses on the discovery of new cellular targets in the treatment of colon cancer and how to reduce the risks of IBD, stresses “it’s not our message that frying oil can cause cancer.” Decker, an expert in lipid chemistry performed the analysis of the oil, which undergoes an array of chemical reactions during the frying process. He characterized the fatty acid profiles, the level of free fatty acids and the status of oxidation.