Dear Barbara,
There is quite a substantial amount of literature on the subject (try a Google search “deep frying fat uptake” or “deep frying fat absorption”), but I have not seen any simple way of modeling the fat absorption.
My best guess is that it is too difficult to make a simple model as the food matrix, batter/no batter, frying
fat/oil and its age have a great influence as well as the influence “environment’s” physical properties temperature, time and pressure may have.
In the 1994 NLG Report by Lena Bergström, deep fryng is explained as “Very schematically, deep-frying is a technique that replaces a fraction of the water content of a food by cooking fat. But deep-frying is a complex process involving many factors, which may be divided into three categories: the conditions of the process itself; the type of cooking fat and the characteristics of the foods to be fried (4). Consequently, it is a complicated task to establish a model that enables us to calculate the yield and final
composition of foods, which for instance will be quite different for lean and fat foods. Even more, fat in any of them suffers seasonal variations.
The final fatty acid composition may be also greatly affected by processing, as mentioned above (3).”
In addition to the wealth of literature on the subject to be found on the internet/in scientific literature it is worth mentioning some of Dr. Antal Bognár’s work
Antal Bognár - Tables of weight yield of food and retention factors of food constituents for the calculation of nutrition composition of cooked foods (dishes).
All the best,
Anders
Anders Møller
Danish Food Informatics
Borgediget 12
DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
From: Food Composition Discussion Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Barbara Selley
Sent: 18 July 2013 20:36
To:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Fat absorbed in deep frying
Greetings, Infoods friends:
I am looking for guidelines/formulas for calculating oil picked up in deep-frying. I know many factors are involved (composition of the food, water content, temperature of oil and food—and likely many more). Ideally such foods should be analyzed but…are there ways to make a plausible (not necessarily accurate) estimate?
Best regards,
Barbara Selley
Food Intelligence
Toronto