Determination of effects of reusing fat in deep-frying sweet potato chips.

Abstract

The repeatedly heating of fat in preparation of deep fried food sweet potato chips has become a main dietary habit among Nagongerians and citizens of Uganda which can cause health impacts on humans. In this study, mass of the extracted fat was obtained in grams using electro-analytical balance and the percentage by weight of the extracted fat sample was generated depending on total mass of ground chips used and mass of fat extracted. The high values of AV and PV indicated the bad quality of fat during third cycle of repeated heating of fat. Therefore, according to generated data with high values of PV and AV legally witnesses how bad and harmful repeated heating of fat is to our life. The obtained data concerning methods of characterizing fat in this study were analyzed using Microsoft excel version 2013 and in this process, correlation method of analysis was rather used to examine the comparisons between the sessions of deep-fat frying i.e. the correlation value obtained for the first session of deep frying gave a significant high positive correlation indicating good fat quality for usage rather than the third cycle of deep frying which gave a high negative correlation hence recommended bad fat quality for usage. A basis was made to abolish this practice of reusing heated fat during cooking/frying in our communities.

Keywords: Repeatedly heated fat, health impacts, correlation method and deep-frying.