Fruit seeds are usually thrown out as waste during processing or after human consumption. Over the years, researchers have dedicated their effort to assess the food and nutritional values of many different fruit seeds. In this review, the research findings releated to the food values of ten different fruit seeds namely, guava, pumpkin, papaya, honeydew, mangosteen, rambutan, watermelon, mango, and durian were discussed. For several fruit seeds, the macro nutrient components such as oil, protein, and carbohydrate of are found to vary due to either varietal defferences or geographical variations. Among the seeds discussed, the range of oil content was from 1.8 to 49.0% while the range of protein content was from 6 to 40.0%. While the high oil bearing fruit seeds are potential new sources of oil, those with high protein content can be used for recovery of protein. As some of fruit seeds are edible and found to possess a host of phytonutrients, they can be harnessed for medicinal purposes. This review concludes that utilization of fruit seeds could not only bring health and wealth but also help to minimize the waste disposal problem of agro-based industries.

A study was conducted to differentiate lard, chicken fat, beef fat and mutton fat using Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and Elemental Analyzer–Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (EA-IRMS). The comparison of overall fatty acid data showed that lard and chicken fat share common characteristics by having palmitic, oleic and linoleic acid as major fatty acids while beef and mutton fats shared common characteristics by possessing palmitic, stearic and oleic acid as major fatty acids. The direct comparisons among the fatty acid data, therefore, may not be suitable for discrimination of different animal fats. When the fatty acid distributional data was subjected to Principle Component Analysis (PCA), it was demonstrated that stearic, oleic and linoleic acids as the most discriminating parameters in the clustering of animal fats into four subclasses. The bulk carbon analysis of animal fats using EA-IRMS showed that determination of the carbon isotope ratios (δ13C) would be a good indicator for discriminating lard, chicken fat, beef fat and mutton fat. This would lead to a faster and more efficient method to ascertain the source of origin of fats used in food products.

The seeds (6.9±0.2% by weight of fruit) of the red-skin rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum L.) contain a considerable amount of crude fat (38.0±4.36%) and thus, the aim of the study was to determine the physico-chemical properties of this fat for potential applications. The iodine and saponification values, and unsaponifiable matter and free fatty acid contents of the seed fat were 50.27 g I2/100g fat, 182.1 mg KOH/g fat, 0.8% and 2.1%, respectively. The fat is pale yellow with a Lovibond color index of 3.1Y+1.1R. The fatty acid profile indicates an almost equal proportion of saturated (49.1%) and unsaturated (50.9%) fatty acids, where oleic (42.0%) and arachidic (34.3%) acids were the most dominant fatty acids. It also contained small amounts of stearic (8.0%), palmitic (4.6%), gadoleic (5.9%), linoleic (2.2%), behenic (2.1%) palmitoleic (0.7%) myristic (0.1%) and erucic (0.1%) acids. HPLC analysis showed that the fat comprised mainly unknown triacylglycerols (TAG) with high retention times indicating they have higher carbon numbers compared with many vegetable oils. The fat has melting and cooling points of 44.2°C and –42.5°C, respectively, making it a semi-solid at room temperature. The solid content at 0°C was 53.5% and the fat melted completely at 40°C. z-Nose analysis showed that the presence of high levels of volatile compounds in red-skin rambutan seed and seed fat.