Evaluation of gas chromatographic methods for the determination of trans fat

Consumption of trans fat has been associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease. For nutrition labeling purposes, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines trans fat as the sum of all the fatty acids with at least one nonconjugated double bond in the trans configuration. The FDA regulation states that label declarations of trans fat are not required for products that contain less than 0.5 g of trans fat per serving if no claims are made about fat, fatty acids or cholesterol. While attenuated total reflection Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FT-IR) provides reproducible measurements for samples containing more than 5% trans fat, methods based on gas chromatography (GC) are needed to measure lower trans fat levels. Trans fat quantitation by GC has recently been updated by considering more fatty acids, focusing more attention on fatty acids present in low amounts, and by using 100-m high-polarity capillary columns for optimal separation. The consistently high interlaboratory relative standard deviations (RSD, e.g., 21% at 1% trans fatty acids (TFA), 60% at 0.17% TFA), and intralaboratory RSD values (e.g., 10% at 1% TFA, 16% at 0.17% TFA) for trans fat at 1% or less of total fat reported in the collaborative study data for American Oil Chemists Society Official Method Ce 1h-05 suggest the need to carefully define the parameters associated with GC analysis of fatty acids.