The present work was carried out to elucidate the nutritive quality of some fried
foods served in Egyptian hotels in terms of their fatty acid composition and
cholesterol content. Four samples of fried foods namely, potato, fish, meat and
chicken were investigated in this respect. The aforementioned samples were
collected from six hotels in Alexandria, Egypt to represent different hotel categories
(5, 4 and 3 stars). The fatty acid composition revealed that the contents of
unsaturated fatty acids were much higher than their counterpart saturated ones. This
was true for all raw and fried samples under study. The ratios of saturated :
monounsaturated : polyunsaturated fatty acids were as follows: potatoes (1.7 : 0.9 :
1), fish (0.6 : 1.02 : 1.0), meat (1.05 : 1.2 : 1.0) and chicken (0.9 : 1.09 : 1.0) after
frying. Cholesterol content (mg/1 ~Og sample) of the fried foods investigated in the
present work could be descendingly arranged as follows: chicken (173), meat (123),
fish (158) and potato has no cholesterol respectively. Also sunflower oil consider the
best as frying oil comparing with soya and cotton seed oil because it has low content
from saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids and high content from
monounsaturated fatty acids. In attempt to increase sunflower oil stability and
improvement the quality of some fried foods during frying, an aliquots from the
concentrated ether extract of turmeric powder which containing curcumin as active
natural antioxidant compound represent 500, 1000, 1500ppm as crude ether extract
(polyp he no Is) were added to sunflower oil. Samples of sunflower oil mixed with
curcumin were intermittent heated at 180 ± SoC for 6 h/day and the heating process
was repeated for 8 consecutive days. A control experiment was performed where
butylated hydroxyl toluene (BHT) at 200ppm was added. Some chemical constants
(acid, peroxide, iodine and thiobarbituric acid values) for the unheated and heated
sunflower oil, vegetable and animal fried foods before and after deep-fat frying
processes were determined and indicated that potato was more affected with frying
than other samples and it has the highest acid, peroxide and TBA values. Also, the
data indicated that the addition of curcumin to heated sunflower oil induced
remarkable antoxidant activity and at 1500 ppm level was superior to that BHT in
increasing sunflower oil stability. In most cases, statistical analysis explored a
significant correlation between hotel category and the composition of fat absorbed by
the food items investigation in the present study.