Camel Hump Fat

SOURCE: Alshaikhsaleh, Saleh & Al-Otaibi, Front. Nutr. 12:1587579 (2025). A camel hump bought at a meat market in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, melted by heating and filtered (the paper does not name the species or the animal's age; it is one rendered sample, not a population). Table 2 fatty acids (%, GC by AOAC 996.01; no SD printed): C10:0 0.01, C12:0 0.42, C13:0 0.07, C14:0 5.47, C14:1 0.11 (printed as 'C14:0 (myristoleic)'; the formula C14H26O2 shows it is C14:1), C15:0 1.58, C16:0 36.24, C16:1 3.97, C17:0 1.42, C17:1 0.76, C18:0 15.11, C18:1n9t (elaidic) 2.64, C18:1n9c (oleic) 28.46, C18:2n6t 0.02, C18:2n6c 1.54, C20:0 0.30, C18:3n6 0.04, C20:1n9 (cis-11-eicosenoic) 0.47, C18:3n3 0.23, C21:0 0.93, C20:2 0.02, C22:0 0.04, C20:3n6 0.03, C22:1n9 (erucic) 0.04, C20:3n3 0.02, C23:0 0.04, C24:1n9 0.02; C4:0, C6:0, C8:0, C11:0, C15:1, C20:4n6, C22:2, C24:0 and C20:5n3 not detected; SFA 61.58, UFA 38.34, MUFA 33.80, PUFA 1.88, trans 2.66. Table 3 (mean +/- SD of n = 3 replicate analyses): saponification value 197.75 +/- 0.42 mg KOH/g, acid value 0.41 +/- 0.00 mg KOH/g, peroxide value 0.25 +/- 0.00 mEq/kg, iodine value 70.23 +/- 6.00 g I/100 g. MAPPED: capric, lauric, myristic, palmitic, palmitoleic, stearic, oleic (C18:1n9c only), linoleic (C18:2n6c only), alpha-linolenic (C18:3n3), gamma-linolenic (C18:3n6), arachidic, behenic, erucic (C22:1n9) - 91.87 % in all. NOT MAPPED, 8.13 %: C13:0 0.07, C14:1 0.11, C15:0 1.58, C17:0 1.42, C17:1 0.76, elaidic acid 2.64 (trans C18:1, deliberately not folded into oleic: same molar mass, so it makes no difference to lye, but a different acid), trans C18:2 0.02, gondoic acid 0.47 (the paper labels its only C20:1 peak 'C20:1n9 (cis-11-eicosenoic)'; the gadoleic key is the cis-9, n-11 isomer), C21:0 0.93, C20:2 0.02, C20:3n6 0.03, C20:3n3 0.02, C23:0 0.04, C24:1 0.02. The published saponification value agrees with the profile: 197.75 against 199.5-200.0 estimated from it (3*56106/(3*M+38.05), M the mass-weighted mean fatty-acid molar mass; -1 %). IODINE VALUE NOT RECORDED: the 70.23 printed is about twice what this composition allows (about 35 - 28.46 % oleic, 3.97 % palmitoleic, 2.64 % elaidic and under 2 % polyunsaturates cannot take up 70 g of iodine per 100 g), and in the same table the lab's palm olein reads 76.93 against about 56 implied by its own Table 2 profile, so the method runs high; rejected as arithmetically impossible, as COVERAGE.md did with a watermelon-seed iodine value. CROSS-CHECKS, NOT MERGED: Chang et al., Animals 16(15):2412 (2026), Table 2, hump adipose tissue (HAT) of 13 adult (5-6 years) male Junggar Bactrian camels (Camelus bactrianus; Junggar Basin, Xinjiang; grazing plus a corn-soybean concentrate and alfalfa hay), GC-MS on DB-23: C14:0 8.30, C15:0 1.03, C16:0 23.23, C17:0 1.38, C18:0 20.24, C16:1n-7 4.22, elaidic 0.55, C18:1n-9 28.49, C18:2n-6 2.87, C18:3n-3 1.54; SFA 55.10, MUFA 34.60, PUFA 5.15. These are relative MOLAR percentages (the paper says so), not the weight percentages this schema holds, and only 10 of the 40 acids measured are printed, so they are not merged; they do show a two-humped camel's hump fat running lower in palmitic and higher in stearic acid than the Saudi sample. Mashaly, Abdallah, Emara & Elmossalami, Int. J. Vet. Sci. 9(2):279-284 (2020), Table 4, hump fat of 5-year-old male dromedaries slaughtered in Cairo: C10:0 0.10, C12:0 0.44, C14:0 6.30, C14:1 1.13, C15:0 0.27, C16:0 33.87, C16:1 0.31, C18:0 10.0, C18:1 41.88, C18:2 0.10, C18:3 0.03, C20:0 4.90, C22:0 0.01, unknown 0.66 (SFA 55.89, MUFA 43.32, PUFA 0.13) - set aside as an outlier: 4.90 % arachidic acid in hump fat, and in the same table renal fat with 1.94 % stearic acid and mesenteric fat with no stearic acid at all, are not credible for these fats (packed-column GC; read from the -raw pdftotext output, the -layout output scrambles the columns). NOT REACHED OR NOT PRIMARY: the Front. Nutr. 2026 review by Yasen et al. quotes density 0.9105 g/mL, melting point 48.19 C, iodine value 37.83 and saponification value 201.14 from a 2017 master's thesis (Inner Mongolia Agricultural University) - a thesis is not an allowed primary document and it was not opened, so none of those figures is used; Sbihi et al., Food Chem. 139:649-654 (2013, 'Hachi' dromedary hump fat) and Belfar et al., Eur. J. Lipid Sci. Technol. (2026, Algerian dromedary hump fat) are paywalled; Jassim et al., Ann. Res. Rev. Biol. (2018) was Cloudflare-gated; El-Anany & Ali, Riv. Ital. Sostanze Grasse 95:183-193 (2018) was not found in an open copy. meltingPointC and unsaponifiablePercent are therefore null. CosIng has no entry for camel fat, so inci is null.

This record is part of the open ingredient database (ODbL). Found an error or a better primary source? The dataset is on GitHub; corrections with a document link are welcome.