Many of Roman Przybylski’s students don’t eat at fast food restaurants anymore.
Nor does he.
They all know too much about the age and quality of oil used to make french fries and other deep fried products.
But Przybylski, a University of Lethbridge research professor on lipids and food chemistry, won a 2011 premier’s award for other cooking oil related work.
He helped develop omega 9 canola oil that is a healthier frying oil than others.
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The oil has no trans fat or saturated fat and can help prevent or limit heart disease, obesity and diabetes. It does not affect LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, but can increase good cholesterol.
It is also suitable for the same uses as traditional oil.
“It was mainly designed for its application in institutional frying,” said Przybylski about the omega 9 oil.
A secondary goal was to develop a healthy oil for industrial processors.
“For industrial frying, quality of oil is important but it’s not critical. But for institutional frying, it’s critical, because in institutional frying, we usually have a tendency to abuse oils.”
He said farmers receive a premium for growing canola containing omega 9, which is present in the Nexera variety, and it has become the most popular frying oil in the United States.
All canola contains omega 9 fatty acids, Przybylski said, but it’s a matter of percentage. The variety he helped develop contains 65 to 70 percent omega 9, compared to 55 to 60 percent in other varieties.
It is not genetically modified, which is another advantage in some markets.
His research on canola oil led him to study frying methods in fast food restaurants as well as industrial and institutional food processing and preparation. He found that many restaurants use oil far longer than they should, and that frying temperatures are highly variable.
“When you go into these (fast food) operations, peek into the fryer,” he said. “It should be a little bit brownish, but should not look like asphalt. In most cases, it looks like asphalt. It’s just black.”
Przybylski chuckles when recalling how he has spoiled the fast-food inclinations of his student food tasters. They’ve tasted the food he’s prepared in the lab using fresh oil and carefully controlled conditions, and apparently there’s no going back.
The premier’s award comes with a $10,000 cash award, which Przbylski plans to use for computer and laborator y equipment to further his research.
His current projects include studying buckwheat as a way to control blood glucose levels for diabetics, searching prairie plants and fruit for sources of anti-oxidants and developing a type of flax that can be used as a replacement for fish oil as a food ingredient.
