The possibilities of assessment of free fatty acids in food matrix

This bachelor´s thesis has a research character and deals with the possibilities of determination of fatty acids in foodstuffs, mainly focused on dairy products. It starts by overview of general characteristics of lipids and fatty acids. The crucial part of thesis represents summary of the methods, which can be used for determination of fatty acids. A special chapter is devoted to determination of free fatty acids. The isolation of lipids/fatty acids from sample matrix is necessary before the determination itself, classic solvent extraction in various applications or several new extraction techniques, e.g. solid phase extraction or supercritical fluid extraction, can be used for this purpose. After the separation of individual lipid fractions, for which the solid phase extraction and/or thin layer chromatography are usually used in practice, the transformation of fatty acids to derivatives, which are suitable for following analytical determination, is often necessary. Gas chromatography with the flame-ionization or mass selective detection is most often used for determination and therefore fatty acids are converted to substantially more volatile methyl esters. In some special cases high performance liquid chromatography and/or thin layer chromatography can be used