In recent years people pay more an-d more attention to their health. So there has been an increased focus on the amount of saturated fats present in food products. It has become a trend that ice cream products using healthier ingredients.

A saturated fat is a fat that consists of triglycerides containing only saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have no double bonds between the individual carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain. That is, the chain of carbon atoms is fully "saturated" with hydrogen atoms. Various fats contain different proportions of saturated an-d unsaturated fat. Examples of foods containing a high proportion of saturated fat include animal fat products such as cream, cheese, butter, ghee, suet, tallow, lard, an-d fatty meats. Certain vegetable products have high saturated fat content, such as coconut oil an-d palm kernel oil. Many prepared foods are high in saturated fat content, such as pizza, dairy desserts, an-d sausage.

For ice cream this has put a deman-d on the ice cream producers to develop ice cream with a healthier profile by using more healthy ingredients or by reducing the content of the less healthy ones. A study by Claus Prior Hansen (Application Scientist, ice cream & dairy, Palsgaard A/S) concluded that an adjustment of the mono- an-d diglyceride s-ystems used in production of ice cream will have to be considered when switching to fats with a lower amount of saturated fats.