Validation of a Qualitative and Quantitative Method to Determine Non-Cocoa Butter Vegetable Fats in Chocolate
Abstract:
Four procedures for the extraction and determination of the total fat content of chocolate were compared. These were (1) acid digestion followed by Soxhlet extraction, (2) a simple solvent extraction, (3) accelerated solvent extraction, and (4) a destructive automated method based on a fatty acid analyser. The results showed all methods to be variable with the acid digestion/Soxhlet extraction method having the best performance. Each of the non-destructive methods produced equivalent data when the triglyceride profiles were compared. In-house validation of a method for the detection and quantification of non-cocoa fats in milk chocolate showed that with limited practice non-cocoa fats could be detected with certainty at the 5% limit but could not be quantified with certainty.
