You can cook with any number of oils on the market, but which one is the best? Editor Chad Merchant looks at the facts in a quest to determine which edible oil offers today's consumers the best overall choice.

I still remember my first visit to Malaysia in early 2008. As the plane lined up for the final approach to KL International Airport, I looked out the window and saw vast tracts of trees, all lined up neatly. As we dipped lower and lower, I could make out more details and remember thinking that these trees were attractive; certainly very palm-like and tropical-looking. That was four years ago, and what I didn’t know then was that I was looking at but a small parcel of Malaysia’s burgeoning palm oil industry. The trees, of course, were oil palms (Elaeis guineensis), and as I made the transition from tourist to resident, I learned more and more about the importance of this tree to the country and her people.

I sat down with Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Yusof Basiron, CEO of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, to get some facts about palm oil manufacturing, the industry in Malaysia, and the health attributes of this oil.

Dr. Basiron, a modest but thoroughly engaging man, speaks passionately of the industry his group represents and is a wealth of knowledge, handling every question I threw at him with aplomb. I have discovered it’s easy to be confident when your knowledge is grounded in facts, and that was indeed Dr. Basiron’s unwavering approach.

To be certain, palm oil has been somewhat victimized by its much more well-known competitors in many parts of the world, such as soybean and canola (rapeseed) oils. These industries, in their bid to maintain market share, have seized on consumers’ relative ignorance of what palm oil really is, and painted a negative portrait of palm oil (or allowed it to take hold) as a profoundly unhealthy, tropical oil, overrun with saturated fat and a sure ticket to heart problems and high cholesterol.

As I learned from my conversation with Dr. Basiron, this characterization is both unfounded and inaccurate.

An oil by any other name

The mistaken notion that palm oil is a so-called “tropical oil,” like coconut oil, is easy to understand. Indeed, both of these oils come from palm trees, but that’s really where the similarity ends. The oil palm tree, apart from being a different species from the coconut palm, actually yields two very different oils itself. Palm oil comes only from the fruit of the tree, specifically from the soft flesh called the mesocarp. Much like olives, the oil palm fruits are pressed to extract their precious oils. This is the palm oil Dr. Basiron was discussing with me, and this is the oil that is used in a wide range of food products. The other oil the tree produces is from the seed of the fruit and is called palm kernel oil. Though the names are quite similar, allowing for easy confusion, the two oils are markedly different in composition.

Palm oil is, at its broadest definition, is a vegetable oil, and more specifically a fruit oil. As such, like all vegetable oils, it has no cholesterol. (This is present only in oils from animal origin.) Moreover, palm oil has a rather unique chemical profile in that it possesses a near-equal balance of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Unlike other tropical oils, whose saturated fatty acids can comprise over 90% of the oil, palm oil has only 50% saturated fatty acids, and this level is balanced with 50% unsaturated fatty acids. Owing to this composition, clinical studies have shown that palm oil tends to be “net neutral” in terms of the effect on a person’s cholesterol levels, while coconut oil is distinctly cholesterol-raising.

Palm oil is naturally very high in carotenoids, organic pigments that occur naturally in fruits and vegetables. It has been well-documented that people with diets naturally rich in carotenoids are healthier and more resistant to chronic illnesses. Unrefined palm oil (which is orange-red in colour) is a powerful source of carotenoids – 15 times more than carrots, and 30 times more than tomatoes!

Additionally, the unique process by which crude palm oil is refined ensures that its naturally high levels of vitamins A and E are retained. In particular, palm oil is among nature’s richest sources of tocotrienols, which are members of the vitamin E family, and tocotrienols are a powerful antioxidant. Tests conducted in the United States show that these antioxidants have a number of beneficial health attributes, including lower blood cholesterol levels, prevention of plaque formation inside arterial walls, and the inhibition of the growth and spread of breast cancer cells. Most other popular vegetable oils, such as corn, soybean, canola, or sunflower, do not contain tocotrienols.

Finally – and this is of particular interest to Westerners who are increasingly aware of the dangers of trans-fatty acids (TFAs) – palm oil is TFA-free. With palm oil’s unique natural semi-solid composition, fractionation during processing results in a liquid component (palm olein) and a more solid component (palm stearin).

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Source: Senses of Malaysia Jan-Feb 2013

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