Method for producing symmetric triglycerides

A method for producing symmetric triglycerides, which comprises the steps of reacting a medium chain fatty acid triglyceride with an alcohol monoester of a long chain fatty acid in the presence of an enzyme or a chemical catalyst which is capable of catalyzing a random transesterification reaction to conduct a random transesterification reaction and thereby to obtain a reaction product containing a triglyceride composed of a medium chain fatty acid and a long chain fatty acid as the constituting fatty acids in the first reaction;

• obtaining a triglyceride-containing product by removing the alcohol monoester of the medium chain fatty acid, the alcohol monoester of the long chain fatty acid and the medium chain-fatty acid triglyceride from the reaction product;
• transesterifying the triglyceride-containing product with the alcohol monoester of the medium chain fatty acid in the presence of an sn-1,3-position specific enzyme and then taking the alcohol monoester of the medium chain fatty acid and the alcohol monoester of the long chain fatty acid out of the reaction product obtained by the second reaction to obtain the symmetric triglyceride composed of the medium chain fatty acids at the sn-1, 3 positions and the long chain fatty acid at the sn-2 position.

A method for producing a symmetric triglyceride, which comprises the steps of reacting (a) a medium chain fatty acid triglyceride with (b) at least one member selected from the group consisting of a long chain fatty acid triglyceride, an alcohol monoester of a long chain fatty acid and a long chain fatty acid in the presence of an enzyme or a chemical catalyst which is capable of catalyzing a random transesterification reaction to conduct a random transesterification reaction and thereby to obtain the first reaction product containing a triglyceride composed of a medium chain fatty acid and a long chain fatty acid as the constituting fatty acids in the step of the first reaction;

• transesterifying the first triglyceride in the reaction product with (c) at least one member selected from the group consisting of alcohol monoester of the medium chain fatty acid and the medium chain fatty acid in the presence of an Sn-1,3-position specific enzyme to obtain the symmetric triglyceride composed of the medium chain fatty acid at the sn-1, 3 positions and the long chain fatty acid at the sn-2 position.