A new standardized lipolysis approach is presented where the focus is on the initial rate of lipolysis. An advantage is that data obtained in this way reflect degradation before growing amounts of lipolysis products retard the process. The method can be used to rank different lipase substrates. In particular, the method can be used to obtain information about the susceptibility to degradation of various emulsions and dispersions that are used in technical applications. We present how the method is standardized to facilitate comparison of various substrates. This involves (i) lipase substrate in excess, i.e., the amount of lipase is rate limiting, and (ii) expressing rate of degradation relative to that of a reference substrate, tributyrin. Under such conditions, with the amount of lipase substrate held constant, an increase in enzymatic activity will generate a proportional increase in the lipolysis rate. This enables comparison of results obtained from different enzyme batches and corrects for day-to-day variability. Examples illustrating the potential of the method to discriminate and rank different lipase substrates with regard to enzymatic degradation are presented. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.