Formation of cholesterol oxidation products (COPs) and loss of cholesterol in fresh egg pasta as a function of thermal treatment processing

- Heat treatments decreased cholesterol content and increased COPs.
- COPs concentration increased with increasing F100/10 value.
- COPs in the fresh egg pasta was very low compared to dried pasta product.

The aim of this paper was the quantification of cholesterol loss and of its oxidation products in fresh egg pasta submitted to different thermal treatments. COPs were analysed by LC-MS/MS. The results showed that the COP concentration increased with increasing heating severity (expressed as F 100/10 value) from 66.44 μg/g in the raw pasta up to 117.9 μg/g after 120 min at the reference temperature of 100 °C; under the same processing conditions, the cholesterol loss reached 75%. This study revealed that 7-ketocholesterol (7-keto) is the main COP found and showed a linear correlation between its concentration and (i) total COP amount (r2 = 0.981; p < 0.05), (ii) TBARS value (r2 = 0.969; p < 0.05) and (iii) heating time expressed as a logarithm of F 100/10 value (r2 = 0.999 e p < 0.01). The total amount of COPs found in the product was very low when compared to literature values reported for dried egg pasta and did not exceed 0.32 mg/kg.