A Brief History of Lipid Oxidation

The history of our understanding of fat oxidation is reviewed from the early observations that oxygen was involved to the discovery of the role of singlet oxygen. It includes the debate about relative importance of triglyceride hydrolysis and oxidation; the search for tests that correlated with oxidized flavor; the evidence that oxidation involved the formation of hydroperoxides; the development of tests for hydroperoxides; and the work on the chemistry, mechanism, and kinetics of oxidation by the British Rubber Producers Research Association. The review ends with the effort to isolate and determine the structure of the oxidation products of the common unsaturated fatty acids, their relative rate of oxidation, and the role of singlet oxygen and metals in initiation.