Recent advances in plant-based fat formulation as substitute for lard

Lard is one of the main animal fats used as shortening and frying medium. Religious prohibitions and negative health perceptions regarding animal fats have caused concerns about the consumption of lard among communities living around the world. Various research efforts have been made in the past to formulate plant-based fats and shortenings as substitutes for the exclusion of lard from food. This would eventually help countries to regularize food formulations according to their religious compliance. As the existence of a single plant fat as substitute for lard has not been discovered from nature, researchers attempted to study the possibility of mixing native fats and oils such as enkabang fat, canola oil, guava oil, palm oil, palm stearin, soybean oil and cocoa butter as raw materials. The compatibility of the formulated plant-based fat substitute for lard was assessed in terms of chemical composition and thermo-physical properties. The formulated plant-based shortenings and lard shortening were simply plastic fats based on their consistency value and existence of β’ and β-form polymorphs of which the β’ -form was dominant. The functional properties of formulated plant-based shortenings and lard were also compared in the formulation of cookies. Although a substantial amount of work has been done over the past decade, there was hardly any discussion on the pros and cons of the approaches used for raw material selection and the criteria adopted in the assessment of the formulated products. Hence, this review intended to bring an update of the progress of studies with regard to these two aspects.