BLOG: Watch out for palm fruit oil

Read more from Jeffrey Anshel, OD, FAAO.

The use of palm oil has skyrocketed in recent years and it is the most heavily utilized vegetable oil. It is used in about half of all packaged foods and personal care and cleaning products in developed markets.

Palm oil of any kind, whether it comes from the fruit or kernel, is not beneficial to human health. Palm fruit oil or palm kernel oils are not healthy, and most of the health risks are associated with the processing, of which very few have been informed.

According to Natasha Longo at PreventDisease.com, palm oil is one of the more efficient crops, with one hectare of land yielding 3.7 tons of it vs. only 0.38 tons of soybean oil, 0.48 tons of sunflower oil and 0.67 tons of rapeseed oil. Palm oil is inexpensive and versatile, being used in cooking, soaps and biofuel, without the need for hydrogenation as with most other vegetable oils.

Palm fruit oil and palm kernel oil are completely different oils with vastly different nutritional profiles. Palm fruit oil is often claimed to be highly nutritious and contains about equal amounts of saturated and unsaturated oils. Palm kernel oil is made from the kernel, or seed of the palm fruit, and contains much higher amounts of saturated fat. Both are problematic for our health, primarily due to processing.

According to the World Health Organization’s recommendations for preventing cardiovascular diseases, while all saturated fatty acids raise total and LDL cholesterol, palmitic acids have the greatest effect.

Benoit and colleagues, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, reported their study where rats were infused with either palmitic or oleic acid or vehicle for 3 days. The researchers concluded that “many of the deleterious effects of high-fat diets, specifically those enriched with palmitic acid … result in reduced insulin activity.”

Some compare the use of palm oil with that of coconut oil.

Both have saturated fat content, but “coconut oil does not suppress the body’s natural appetite-suppressing signals from leptin and insulin,” Longo wrote.

The triglyceride structure of coconut oil promotes health, she said, and its saturated fat profile is much more balanced than that of palm oil.

So, watch out for those hidden oils in many “natural” foods – a label that has no meaning!

References:

Benoit SC, et al. J Clin Invest. 2009;119(9):2577–2589. doi:10.1172/JCI36714.

Longo N. June 26, 2013. http://preventdisease.com/news/13/062613_Palm-Oil-Now-More-Widely-Produced-Than-Soybean-Oil-Heres-Why-We-Need-To-Get-This-Oil-Out-of-Your-Diet.shtml.

World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/trs916/en/gsfao_cvds.pdf Accessed January 27, 2014.