Another noticeable aspect was the high level of cholesterol,
being present in about half of the total amount of FA
(Tables 2, 3). Cholesterol was detected as two components
with longer retention times than that of 24:1n9. They have
been identiWed by GC–MS as two isomeric degradation
products of cholesterol, m/z = 368, cholesta-3,5-diene and
cholesta-2,5-diene (Meier et al. 2006). It was shown that
the decomposition of cholesterol is reproducible, and these
two peaks were used to determine the level of cholesterol in
the sample.