Designing Healthy Vegetable Oils

Designing Healthy Vegetable Oils

Saturated fat and particularly trans fat in the US diet are serious health risks, responsible for more than 50,000 excess deaths each year.  Dr. John Browse, Regents’ Professor, has been awarded a three-year research grant from USDA-NIFA to alter metabolism in oilseed crops to reduce the levels of saturated and trans fats. Describing the goal of the project, Dr. Browse says, “Our discoveries in the model plant, Arabidopsis, have provided the knowledge needed to improve the composition of processed food oils. Now, we will be able to find out just how far we can go towards eliminating these undesirable saturated and trans fats”.