Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) for Edible Oil Authentication

Abstract

Edible oils greatly contributed to the large profits in many food industries because of their household usage for cooking and food preparations. However, the source of oil products raised the concerns of authorities and consumers.  The authentication of oil is anticipated to be a crucial and essential undertaking for identifying foreign substances in edible oils. This is vital for safeguarding consumers' rights to confidently use any food product without concerns about its ingredients. For this issue, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is employed as the analytical tool to analyze the oils. DSC provides specific thermal profiles including cooling and heating curves for each oil sample. Several methods have been devised to adulterate oils with various substances, underscoring the need to distinguish between authentic edible oils and those that may have been adulterated. Adulterants are possibly derived from various types of constituents including replacing similar with cheaper or with low quality. Each oil composition demonstrates distinct thermal profiles that can be identified through DSC. Thus, this paper aims to review the use of DSC as an analytical method for edible oil authentication.