3.3. Solid fat content (SFC)
Solid fat content (SFC) is a measure of the crystalline fat in a sample. Figure 1 shows the solid fat contents of murumuru fat, tucuma kernel oil and bacuri fat analyzed by NMR. The others oils were not evaluated because they are liquid at room temperature.
Increasing temperature caused large reductions in SFC of all samples. However, the slope of the SFC curves suggested that are differences in TAGs solubilities. At 10 °C, SFC of murumuru fat and tucuma kernel oil were quite close (80 % SFC, approximately), and SFC of bacuri fat was slightly lower (70% SFC, approximately). However, when the temperature was raised from 10 °C to 30 °C bacuri fat exhibited the smoothest decay in solid content through temperature increase. In fact, at 35 °C, murumuru fat and tucuma kernel oil were completely liquid, while bacuri fat still presented 22.19 % SFC. Considering this fat, the high SFC value at 35 °C means incomplete melting at body temperature. On the other hand, this low plasticity could be useful for room temperature storage. SFC content at 35 °C of bacuri fat is comparable to those required for dairy analog shortenings, for example, used for industrial cakes or cookies (O’Brien, 2009). This suggests that bacuri fat might substitute partially hydrogenated oils, known for their high trans fat content, in shortening formulations.
Tucuma kernel oil and murumuru fat presented SFC between 2.0 % and 4.0 % at 33.3 °C, comparable to SFC values required for margarine oils formulation (O’Brien, 2009). Murumuru fat, particularly, presented SFC curve rather similar to those of cocoa butter (Torbica, Jovanovic, & Pajin, 2006), indicating that this product might be also applied as a cocoa butter equivalent.