Steryl Sinapate as a New Antioxidant to Improve Rapeseed Oil Quality during Accelerated Shelf Life

In recent years, steryl esters have become an attractive for the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and food industries. Hence, the effect of exogenous antioxidant, β-sitosteryl sinapate on oxidative stability and antioxidant activity (AA) of refined rapeseed oil was evaluated by the accelerated shelf-life test. Oxidative parameters of refined rapeseed oil—peroxide value (PV), anisidine value (p-AnV), acid value (AV), and spectrophotometric indices (K232, K268)—increased during storage. However, the addition of β-sitosteryl sinapate caused a decrease of the primary and secondary oxidation products in the supplemented oils in comparison with the control sample. Moreover, oils with steryl ester had higher AA than oil without the synthetic antioxidant. The accelerated storage negatively affected the antioxidant potential of refined and enriched oils causing the AA decrease by 25–54% and 7–15%, respectively. Studies have consistently demonstrated beneficial associations between the presence of β-sitosteryl sinapate in oil samples and the inhibition of their oxidative degradation under the accelerated conditions. Additionally, the possibility of using the synchronous fluorescence (SF) spectroscopy and excitation–emission matrix (EEM) fluorescence spectroscopy for identification and observing changes in main fluorescent components present in non-supplemented and supplemented rapeseed oils during the accelerated storage was attempted.