Do you pay for "fat reduced" diester oil?

Longevity flower diglyceride edible oil came out, Jiusan launched soybean diester edible cooking oil.
.
.
In recent years, compared with ordinary edible oil, diglyceride edible oil (hereinafter referred to as diglyceride oil), which claims to be healthier, has become a new track
for major manufacturers to obtain future competitive advantages.
What exactly is diester oil? What is the price? Will consumers accept it? The reporter conducted an investigative interview
.

Companies have introduced diester oils

With the continuous upgrading of national health needs, oil and fat companies continue to explore innovative ways to bring consumers more healthy oil choices
.
Driven by the concept of low-fat diet, more and more companies are introducing diester oil
.

The reporter recently visited some supermarkets in Beijing and found that it is difficult to see diester oil
on the market.
However, there are many diester oil products and brands
on online sales platforms.
On Taobao, both brands of diester oil can be searched; In the Jingdong mall, the reporter of "China Consumer News" searched for "diglyceride edible oil" as the keyword, and could search for two pages of related products, involving many brands such as Shanbainian, Xiqiao Shan, Kangzhibao, Nanshan, etc.
, and their packaging specifications were mostly 500 ml bottles, priced at
100 yuan to 800 yuan per bottle.

The reporter browsed and found that in addition to peanut oil, corn oil, soybean oil, olive oil and other common oils, these brands of diester oil also have niche oils such as camellia oil and flaxseed oil, and most of them claim that the product is "a new generation of healthy edible oil, which can be metabolized quickly and fat is not easy to accumulate"
.
Rushan Hundred Years claims that "half the fat is as fragrant as stir-frying"; Xiqiao Mountain claims that "edible oil is more suitable for Chinese parents" and "a good helper for middle-aged and elderly people to lose fat"
.

There are many benefits to consuming diester oil

What exactly is diester oil? In fact, as early as 2009, the former Ministry of Health approved diglyceride oil as a new food raw material, marking that diglyceride oil can enter the public vision
as a health food.
According to an announcement issued by the National Health Commission on August 3, 2021, the production process of diester oil is made
of soybean oil, rapeseed oil, etc.
as raw materials, lipase preparations, water, glycerin, etc.
as the main auxiliary materials, catalyzed by lipase, distillation separation, decolorization, deodorization and other processes.
The content of diglycerides (DAGs) exceeds 40%, the amount used ≤ 30 grams / day, and the scope of use does not include infant food
.

Jiang Xinzheng, former senior engineer of Xi'an Oil and Fat Research and Design Institute of the State Grain Reserve Bureau, told the "China Consumer News" reporter that at present, the domestic use of biological enzymatic method to prepare diester oil, South China University of Technology has been researching diester oil for a long time, has many patents, and has achieved industrialization
.

Wang Yong, vice president of the Oil and Fat Branch of the Chinese Cereals and Oils Society, said that at present, China has successfully developed a biological enzymatic method to prepare diester oil, breaking the monopoly of foreign companies on diester oil and biological enzymes, and has a number of related patented technologies, which are milder and safer
than Japan's chemical methods.

It is understood that as early as 1999, Japan's Kao company took the lead in launching diester oil products
.
In 2009, due to concerns about the presence of trace glycidyl fatty acids in its products, Kao voluntarily discontinued production and delisted
these products.

In response to the efficacy of diglycerides, Professor Niu Wenyi of the School of Public Health of Peking University Health Science Center said at the 2022 China Edible Oil Health Summit Forum recently that diglycerides are burning fats, do not accumulate fat in the body, and can also burn excess fat in the body during the metabolism process, reducing body fat and fat in internal organs, so it is called a "fat bomb"
by the international nutrition community.

Professor Jin Qingzhe of Jiangnan University also said that the main components of edible oil are 98% triglycerides and 2% diglycerides
.
Dietary intake of triglycerides accumulates in the body to form fat
.
The diglycerides lack a fatty acid in the structure, and after the diglycerides are digested and absorbed by the cells of the small intestinal mucosa, they cannot form a triglyceride structure and enter the blood, and they cannot become blood lipids (blood lipids are the general term for triglycerides and lipids in plasma), but are metabolized by mitochondria for energy, will not accumulate fat in the body, and will burn excess fat
in the body.

Wang Yong said that it is difficult to change residents' oil habits, but it is more scientific and feasible to use diester oil instead of ordinary cooking oil to inhibit obesity and
prevent chronic diseases.

The market faces many challenges

While diester oil has many benefits, its development still faces many challenges
.

First of all, compared with ordinary cooking oil, the current price of diester oil is relatively high
.
The reporter found that the price of ordinary 500ml peanut oil is only 20 yuan, while the price of the same specification of diester oil is more than 100 yuan, and with the increase of diglyceride content, the price is also on the rise
.
The reporter found in the product introduction on the Internet that its diglyceride content is mostly between 40% and 80%, of which the price of 500ml products with a diglyceride content of 80% is close to 800 yuan
.

Secondly, diester oil is facing the problem of
changing consumption concepts.
The reporter interviewed more than a dozen consumers, most of whom did not know much
about diester oil.
Ms.
Li, who works for a Beijing media outlet, told reporters that she had not heard of diester oil and did not understand
the difference between it and ordinary vegetable oil.
On the e-commerce platform, the reporter saw that the overall sales of diester oil are also average, only several product reviews of Shanbainian and Xiqiao Mountain have reached 1000+ and 500+ respectively, and the number of reviews of many products is in the single digits, and some are even zero
.

Third, diester oil also faces policy constraints
.
At present, many diester oil products call themselves "functional edible oil" when advertising, but in fact, the sales and publicity of functional edible oil are strictly controlled
by many parties.
The reporter's investigation found that taking the products found on the e-commerce platform as an example, it is difficult to see the batch number of health care or special medical food on the label of diester oil products, which are ordinary foods, and more corporate standards
are implemented.
Huang Qirui, the chief lawyer of Beijing Quanrui Law Firm, told China Consumer News that the food category can be divided into two categories: ordinary food and special food, and there is no "functional food" category
.
According to the Food Safety Law, foods other than health foods must not be claimed to have health functions, so these so-called functional edible oils cannot be advertised as
ordinary foods.

For the prospect of functional oils such as diester oil, Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng said that domestic functional oils are still in the early stage of development, only a few enterprises master the core technology, with large-scale production capacity, most enterprises can only find foundries to do OEM processing, which will inevitably lead to product homogenization
.
In addition, facing many challenges such as policies, consumer cognition and prices, in this context, enterprises need to have more reserve layout in channel construction, functional verification, cognitive science popularization, etc.
, in order to achieve further development
.