Fat, often seen as a "potential threat" to a healthy diet.

However, there is a natural fat that not only has the taste and aroma of oil, but also shows unique characteristics during metabolism. It is easier to digest and utilize, so it is not easily converted into storage fat in the body, which is diglyceride ( DAG ).

With these characteristics, diglycerides stand out in the field of healthy food, attracting more and more brands' attention, and starting to lay out the diglyceride product track.

In October this year , the Nova Coffee Supermodel Cheese Latte Tasting Conference displayed an innovative drink on site. Using the "black technology" of diglycerides to ensure the taste and fragrance in freshly made coffee drinks, while reducing 100kcal of calories per cup; at the CIIE in November , the Wilhai Kerry Golden Dragon Fish booth also saw edible oils with diglycerides as the core highlights, as well as the innovative application of diglycerides in many food fields; in the 7th iSEE Global Awards, we also found that Haitian's Yi Health Technology Co., Ltd. is also laying out the diglyceride track and launching flaxseed diglyceride oil.

So, what exactly is diglyceride? Why has it attracted brand layout in recent years? Can the emergence of diglycerides set off a new trend in the health food market? What challenges, opportunities and development prospects are they facing?

1. How can diglycerides subvert traditional oils and fats for oils that do not grow meat?

Diglycerides are a natural fatty acid ingredient that is less than one fatty acid molecule than triglycerides ( TAG ), the main ingredient in traditional edible oils, but their metabolic pathways are completely different.

Triglycerides are more likely to be converted into storage fat, while diglycerides are directly metabolized or excreted from the body after entering the human body, making it difficult to re-synthesize triglycerides, so they are not easy to accumulate into fat in the body.

1. Eating oil but not being easy to stock up on fat, opening a new era of oil

The core advantage of diglycerides lies in their health effects.

Studies have found that oils rich in diglycerides can reduce postprandial fatty acid levels, reduce body fat accumulation, and may prevent obesity-related diseases [1] . With the increasing demand for health functions and fat loss markets in recent years, the characteristics of diglycerides have gradually become the focus of fat loss and health management.

In addition, studies have mentioned that diglyceride oil can reduce total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein concentrations, which helps maintain blood lipid levels.

Not only that, diglyceride oil, as a food and food ingredient, has been widely recognized internationally.

In the United States, diglyceride oil is identified by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) as "universally considered safe" ( GRAS ). As early as the 1970s , the Joint FAO / WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives and the Federation of American Society of Experimental Biology reviewed the safety data for some mono- and diacylglycerols and concluded that at the expected level of use, there was no safety concern among these ingredients.

In addition, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare approved diglyceride oil as a food for specific health purposes in 1998 , mainly used to control postprandial serum triglycerides, thereby reducing the accumulation of body fat.

In China, the National Health Commission issued Announcement No. 18 in 2009. Diglycerides were listed as national new resource food and approved the relevant standards for diglyceride oil, which stipulate that when the diglyceride content in edible oil exceeds 40% , it can be defined as diglyceride oil, and the consumption amount does not exceed 30 grams per day.

2. Can the technical barriers behind diglycerides be broken through the cost and process difficulties?

Although the metabolic properties of diglycerides have attracted much attention, their low yield and high production costs have brought challenges to industrialization.

In natural oils and fats, the content of diglycerides is relatively small, and the content of natural diglycerides in different vegetable oils varies greatly. For example, the content in rapeseed oil is about 0.8% , and cottonseed oil can reach 9.5% .

A variety of methods for producing diglyceride oils are reported in the patent literature. The main production processes include the decomposition of triglycerides and glycerols, the esterification of fatty acids and glycerols, and the hydrolysis of triglycerides. These processes usually rely on chemical or enzyme catalysts [1] .

According to the above methods, the mainstream diglyceride oil production technologies on the market can be divided into chemical catalytic methods and biological enzyme methods.

According to Shiyi Health, the chemical catalytic process is relatively simple, the reaction rate is fast, and it is suitable for large-scale production. However, its disadvantages are also very obvious, including a large number of by-products, catalyst residues, and nutrients that may damage the oil.

Bioenzyme method is a more gentle and environmentally friendly technology and is also a method that domestic companies currently use more frequently.

This method not only has few by-products, but also retains the natural nutrients in the oil and fat, but also produces a stable diglyceride oil. However, at the same time, this method has strict production conditions, high requirements for the production environment and process precision, and high R&D and production costs.

In addition, according to Nova Coffee, when developing diglyceride coffee beverages, the raw material screening is relatively complicated. Different raw materials will affect the flavor and texture of diglyceride products, and ultimately affect their performance in the product.

Therefore, brands may need to repeatedly debug formulas with suppliers of diglyceride raw materials during the R&D stage, which puts higher requirements on the supply chain and is a challenge for the application of diglycerides to different food categories.

2. Replacement of edible oils, coffee drinks, roasted fats… N possibilities of diglycerides

Specifically, in which product categories can diglycerides be used to achieve healthy and "lightweight" upgrades by replacing traditional oil and fat ingredients?

1. Start the layout, the domestic diglyceride edible oil market has begun to sprout

At present, the application of diglycerides is mainly concentrated in the field of edible oils.

According to data from the National Grain and Oil Center, China's edible oil consumption reached 39.08 million tons in 2023 , an increase of 4% year-on-year . As consumers' health awareness increases, high-quality, green and healthy oil products are becoming more and more popular, and the unique metabolic advantages and health characteristics of diglycerides are catering to this trend.

It was learned from a healthy exchange that compared with the emerging new products in the fields of protein and carbohydrates on the market, the development of the oil and fats field seems to be relatively lagging. As consumers' attention to healthy diet continues to heat up, the market's demand for functional oils is growing, but structured functional oils that can meet healthy needs are still scarce.

In the daily diet of Chinese people, the proportion of edible oil is very high. Therefore, it is very promising to replace traditional edible oil with diglycerides and achieve the healthy upgrading of edible oil categories, which has also attracted some companies to start a forward-looking layout.

At present, the diglyceride industry is still in its infancy, with a small number of domestic related enterprises. The enterprises that have been laid out from upstream production and have independent R&D and production capabilities are mainly the following two categories. One is brands that cooperate with the scientific research teams of colleges and universities, such as Yonghua Special Medical and Heshan Centennials, and the other is traditional grain and oil enterprises and enterprises that have been deeply involved in the upstream crop processing technology for many years. For example, Yihai Kerry Golden Dragon Fish, Haitian Group Yi Health Co., Ltd., Changshouhua Food Co., Ltd., etc. have launched diglyceride oil products.

In addition, searching for "diglycerides" on e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and Douyin can also find that many brands are selling related products. Among them, there are companies produced by their own factories, and many brands that adopt the OEM OEM model.

Taking Shi Yi Health as an example, it relies on the direct production of edible oil raw materials from Haitian Supply Chain, and has developed a number of diglyceride raw materials and carrier oil powders produced with different raw materials. It has also launched two light ester oil products, flaxseed diglyceride oil and camellia diglyceride oil, containing 50% diglyceride.

It is reported that it is a healthy health-based nutrients and original flavor of oils and fats are retained to the greatest extent through low-temperature instantaneous separation technology and nitrogen-filling and preservation technology. Diglyceride oil is lighter in color and lighter in touch than traditional cooking oils. Moreover, consumers generally report that when cooking with diglyceride oil, the finished product has less oil and a refreshing taste.

There is also Shanbainian that has 50% content and 80% content of diglycerides, which contains 89% unsaturated fatty acids, and adds oils such as flaxseed oil, sea buckthorn seed oil and other fats. Its products feature a high smoke point of 212 ℃ and have less oil smoke, which is suitable for a variety of cooking methods.

Changshouhua Food has launched a variety of diglyceride oils with diglyceride content between 40% and 80% , including rich-flavored peanuts, corn, grape seeds and other raw materials. We can find products that suit you in different consumer groups, from middle-aged and elderly people, teenagers who pursue healthy growth, to busy white-collar workers and body managers.

In overseas markets, the commercialization of diglycerides can be traced back to 1999 , when Kao, Japan, took the lead in launching the diglyceride oil product " Enova Oil ". Although it is expensive, the product is still very popular, with sales reaching 10.4 billion yen ( US$ 83.9 million) by 2001 .

Later, Kao also expanded diglyceride oil to other categories, such as mayonnaise and salad dressing. In 2004 , Kao cooperated with the American company ADM to promote the edible oil to the United States for sale.

However, due to immature early production processes, Kao removed the Japanese and American version of Enova oil from the shelves in 2009 because of tests that these oils contain trace edible oil ingredients that may be carcinogenic. Despite this, Kao's exploration has accumulated valuable experience in the marketization of diglycerides.

In addition, South Korea's first sugar-making sugar launched the healthy cooking oil "Beksul Oil Lightra" with diglycerides as the main ingredient in 2008. The sales exceeded 1 billion won within three months of its launch , making it very popular. It is understood that after five years of research on CJ's first sugar production, it has mastered the technology of safely removing fatty acids by enzymatic methods, and has opened up the Korean healthy functional edible oil market by launching this product.

2. "Painless" replacement of healthy oils? Diglyceride helps more categories to upgrade healthily

The potential of diglycerides is not limited to edible oils, but also demonstrates the possibility of diversified applications in multiple categories of food.

Diglyceride oils are similar to ordinary vegetable oils such as rapeseed oil, soybean oil and safflower oil in flavor, appearance and fatty acid composition, which means that in addition to the ideal alternative to traditional edible oils, it can also be integrated into a variety of foods that use a lot of oil and fat raw materials.

Shiyi Health introduced to us that some food processing companies have begun to apply their diglycerides to the production of high-greasing products such as mooncakes and cookies. Consumer feedback shows that mooncakes using diglyceride oil have a lighter taste than traditional mooncakes, reducing greasiness.

In addition, at the 2024 CIIE, Wilmar Kerry Golden Dragon Fish demonstrated the application potential of diglycerides in multiple fields, such as diglyceride cakes, chocolates, functional beverages, etc., which provided more possibilities for the future development of this ingredient.

We also learned from Golden Dragon Fish that diglycerides can also be used in various food fields such as baked goods, spicy strips, candy chocolate, condiments, protein bars and protein powders, and special medical foods.

Nova Coffee’s innovation in freshly made coffee drinks also demonstrates the great potential of diglyceride applications.

In October this year , the "Supermodel Cheese Latte" launched by Nova Coffee became the first domestic product to incorporate diglycerides into freshly made coffee.

According to Nova Coffee, completely removing fat from freshly made coffee products will affect the taste. In order to take into account both deliciousness and health, while maintaining a certain amount of fat, it will not allow fat to be absorbed. Nova Coffee uses diglycerides, which reduces calories while keeping the flavor unaffected.

This product set a record of sales of single products for the whole year in two days after it was launched. This reflects the strong demand for healthy and delicious beverages, and the acceptance of the novel ingredient diglyceride is also relatively high.

In addition, Foodaily also observed online that some brands have launched products such as diglyceride chocolate, diglyceride coffee powder.

Although the consumer awareness of diglycerides is still very low, the emergence of these application products is jointly promoting the increase in the public awareness of diglycerides.

3. Summary

Although diglycerides have broad prospects in the healthy food field, they also face many challenges. Its high production costs, low market awareness and high promotion difficulty are problems that need to be solved urgently.

However, with the continuous advancement of technology and the popularization of market education, the potential of diglycerides is expected to be further released. The industry needs more brands to participate to jointly promote the development of this healthy ingredient.

The emergence of diglycerides has injected new vitality into the healthy food market. As an innovative ingredient that combines health and flavor, it not only meets consumers' demand for both weight management and deliciousness, but also opens up new growth points for the food industry.

In the future, with technological progress and more brands entering the market, diglycerides are expected to become an important bridge in the field of healthy diet. We hope that it can become an important link connecting "delicious" and "health", bringing more possibilities to the food industry.