Palm Oil

For more than 5000 years, the oil palm has been important food crop, and from its origin in Africa, has crossed the seas and continents to places like Malayasia and Indonesia. Malayasia, especially, has emerged as the world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil. And the oil palm has emerged as the most prolific oil bearing crop in the world.

Palm Oil has a balanced composition of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. The saturated fatty acids are made up of 44% palmatic acid and 5% stearic acid. The unsaturated fatty acids consists of 39% oleic acid (monosaturates) and 10% linoleic acid (polyunsaturates). Palm oil is the only vegetable oil possessing pro vitamin-A active and pro vitamin-E active. With advances in technology, it is now possible to retain and increase the cartenoids in palm oil. These cartenoids confer on palm oil special nutritional and health attributes.

Because of palm oil’s physical and chemical properties arising from its composition, it does no? have to be hydrogenated. In fact, palm oil can be used directly in foods like margarines, shortenings and Vanaspati’ and it therefore, does not contain any unnatural trap fatty acids.

The primary biological action of Vitamin E is to act as antioxidant. Palm oil, both in its processed and unprocessed forms, contains rich amounts of vitamin E, both as tocopherols and tocotrienols. The antioxidants in palm oil give it stability against oxidation and formation of harmful peroxy radicals in addition to playing important roles within the body.

Cholesterol is a product of animal metabolism and in general, animal fats contains high levels of cholesterol. Palm oil, just like any other oil is cholesterol-free. In the past, palm oil was misinterpreted as a saturated-fat and all saturated fatty acids were considered to raise blood cholesterol levels. This is not true from the scientific evidence available today. Human studies have demonstrated the palm oil consumption does not increase blood cholesterol levels when compared to traditional oils. Epidemiological observations in West Africa, where palm oil is an important edible oil suggests the rarity of heart dieases in Africans.

Apart from its use as a cooking oil, palm oil is also used in manufacture of margarine, confectionery  fats, ice creams and even soaps. These products have a long shelf life as the oil is extremely stable and does not deteriorate or become rancid easily