This article is based on the author’s assignment for her DC 43: Development Writing course where they were asked to write a science article from one of the theses or special projects in any of the agriculture programs in the college.

Think of a person who doesn’t eat friend chicken. Done?
The most common and in demand food product of our generation are food which are deep fried and ready to eat. From street food to fast food chains, there is not a menu without a fried chicken option—whether it’s your favorite KFC fried chicken or budget meal proven. Fried chicken consumers really represent a good part of the population, but constantly indulging to everyone’s favorite food presents diverse effects on one’s health.

The increasing demand of fried chicken has commanded the food industry to make more of it. As a business, generating the best possible profit is priority; and unfortunately, there are instances when this comes at the expense of quality ingredients. In a study by Hannah Guangco, she found that to decrease their expenses, local businessowners reuse cooking oil up to four times for deep frying. Is this bad? Research would suggest so.
Cooking in oil provides advantages in taste, texture and aroma. However, cooking in used oil is a different story. Oil, when used unproperly can affect the shelf life of food, make it less palatable and affect its nutritional content. In her study, Guangco performed a series of experiments to learn the science behind deep frying chicken in two different kinds of oil: palm and vegetable.

Shelf life is important for food. It’s a habit for some households to keep leftovers for later or save some food for a snack. In an experiment to identify the moisture content of fried chicken, Guangco was able to find that fried chicken cooked with palm oil had a higher moisture content. The implication of the amount of moisture is the decrease in shelf life since microorganisms are more susceptible to food with high moisture content. Thus, fried chicken cooked with palm oil will spoil faster than the other.

A smoke point determination experiment was also done for vegetable and palm oils. Smoke point is the period when the flame turns blue and your oil starts to shimmer. Why does it matter? Past smoke point, oil releases chemicals like acrolein, a chemical that gives food its burnt flavor. Since palm oil contains more saturated fats, it has a higher smoke point indicating that its fatty acid chains are harder to breakdown. Re-usage of cooking oil produces trans-fatty acids from the chains which have been found to cause cardiac diseases and arthritis.

While palm oil has more saturated fats that make it harder to breakdown, vegetable oil has a higher content of free fatty acids since it has more unsaturated fats which are easier to breakdown. Similar to trans-fatty acids, free fatty acids can also negative impact human health. Data from Guangco’s experiment show that reusing oils produce more of it.

Most importantly, it is important to remember that reusing oils for frying lead to the deterioration of important nutrients of the human body such as proteins. In the crude protein determination experiment, it was found that there was a significant difference in protein for fried chicken cooked in fresh and reused cooking oil.

This generation greatly relies on fried food. Workers flock a Prito Paborito branch in Divisoria where chicken is cheap and plenty. Students gather around a street food joint in the corner of Pabayo to grab a quick meal before class. Parents bring home a bucket of chickenjoy to their children. This is how involved fried chicken is in all of our lives, but how much is too much? The quality of our health depends greatly on the food that we put into our mouths.