A rapid chromatographic method for simultaneous determination of β-sitosterol and tocopherol homologues in vegetable oils

Tocopherols and phytosterols are important components of the unsaponifiable fraction in vegetable fatty foods. Their multiple beneficial effects in nutrition are to some extent well established; nevertheless they continue to be an object of intense research. In this work a simple method for simultaneous determination of both phytochemicals by reversed phase HPLC is proposed. The advantage of this method is a considerable reduction in time with simultaneous information on two types of analytes, whose health effects seem to be complementary. The optimized method is applied to a set of olive and nut oils. The results fill gaps in the literature, and highlight the possible capacity of these phytochemicals to discriminate very similar oils. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.