Fatty acid profile of 16 cold-pressed sunflower oils from the region of North Macedonia

Virgin oils are very popular foodstuff as 100% natural oils produced only with cold pressing without any step of rafination. Edible oils produced in this way usually had higher concentrations of antioxidant compounds such tocopherols, carotenoids and chlorophylls and stronger impact on human health in comparison to refined oils. Traditional Balkan cuisine, as well as the other cuisines of South-East European countries, includes sunflower oil as the most used cold-pressed and refined oil for cooking and frying. Abundance of oleic and linoleic acids divide the sunflower oils into two types: high oleic sunflower oils with percentage of oleic acid around 50%. and high linoleic sunflower oils with abundance of linoleic acid higher than 80%. Hence, the main object of this study is fatty acid composition of 16 cold-pressed sunflower oils produced from the region of North Macedonia. Sunflower oils 1 and 10 had the lowest percentage of palmitic acid (3.90%) and the highest percentage had the sunflower oil 3 (7.10 %). Also, sunflower oil 1 and 10 are high- oleic oils with abundance of 83.35% and 81.82% respectively. The abundance of stearic acid in all 16 samples of sunflower oils was in the range between 4.38% and 6.30%. Behenic acid was present in percentages less than 1% in all 16 samples of sunflower oils. All other samples belong to the high linolenic type of oils with percentage of linolenic acid between 52.32 and 65.61%.