Early shelf-life prediction of soybean oil using computational modeling of tocopherol depletion kinetics during lipid oxidation

Rancidity occurs when the kinetics of lipid oxidation exits the lag phase which is followed by an exponential increase in oxidation products. Current models for estimating shelf-life rely on the slope of this exponential curve, which still necessitates the observation of entire oxidation kinetics. We argue that antioxidant depletion kinetics, such as tocopherols, occur during the lag phase and could serve as an early shelf-life indicator. To explore this, we investigated the generation of lipid oxidation products in stripped soybean oil with varying quantities of α-tocopherol. The lag phases of lipid hydroperoxides and headspace hexanal were shown to have a substantial association with the time required for α-tocopherol depletion. Surprisingly, the depletion of the other tocopherol homologs did not correlate with the end of the lag phase. According to our findings, α-tocopherol degradation followed Weibull kinetics, and we recommended using this kinetic pathway to forecast the shelf-life of soybean oil. This was supported by in-silico studies using Monte Carlo simulations, which revealed that the shelf-life of soybean oil could be confidently predicted as early as 20% of the overall shelf-life. This model has also been expanded to a multi-antioxidant system incorporating α-tocopherol and myricetin, which are known to have a synergistic interaction in bulk oils and emulsions.