Tocopherols (Vitamin E)
What it does
Antioxidant; vitamin.
How it's made
Extracted from vegetable oils or synthesised.
Tocopherols are the family of compounds that make up vitamin E, used in food as natural antioxidants that protect fats and oils from going rancid. Because they dissolve in fat, they are especially good at guarding vegetable oils, nuts, and fat-containing foods from the oxygen-driven spoilage that causes off-flavours.
Food-grade tocopherols are largely recovered from vegetable oils, particularly soybean, sunflower and other seed oils. During the refining and deodorising of these oils, a by-product stream is produced that is rich in natural tocopherols; this is collected and the tocopherols are concentrated from it by distillation under vacuum, which separates them without heat damage.
The concentrated tocopherol mixture is purified to the required strength and supplied as an oily liquid or in carrier oils. Because they are extracted from oils rather than synthesised, these are described as natural (mixed) tocopherols, and they conveniently return to food the same antioxidant vitamin E that refining had removed from the oil.
Possible reactions
Generally safe.