Facts About Palm Oil – Imagine walking through the cooking oil section of the supermarket and wondering which is the best product to fulfill your family’s nutritional needs.
Is it sunflower oil? Canola oil? Peanut oil? Palm oil? Or some other product? How do you decide which cooking oil is suitable for you and your family?
Well, that depends on how much you know about the different types of cooking oils, beyond some of the commonly known ones.
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Let’s talk about palm oil as it seems that few people understand the basic facts about palm oil, let alone the versatility of the palm oil, which is utilized in everyday products.
Table of Contents
Facts About Palm Oil
1. Made From Oil Palm Trees that Grow in Tropics
Palm oil is produced from the fruit of the oil palm tree. Due to the special conditions required-lots of sunshine, hot temperatures, and high rainfall-palm oil can only be grows in the tropics.
Palm oil is extracted from the fresh fruit bunches (FFB) of harvested oil palms. While the pulp is used to make palm oil, the inner kernel is refined into palm kernel oil.
The main producers of palm oil are Indonesia and Malaysia, which together responsible for nearly 85% of global palm oil production.
2. Oil Palm is Resource-Efficient
Palm oil is the most resource-efficient vegetable oil. This is because palm oil trees require much less land to produce the same yield as other oils.
For example, each hectare of land that produces 0.7 tons of sunflower oil will be able to provide palm oil productivity of 3.8 tons.
The same land area can produce more than 5 (five) times the quantity of regular oil when used for oil palm cultivation.
In the case of palm oil, not only is the productivity higher, but the nutritional content is also much greater.
The oil is rich in antioxidants, such as vitamin E, which supports the immune system, prevents heart disease, and reduces the risk of cancer.
Its versatile and efficient nature makes palm oil the most widely used vegetable oil and is utilized as a key ingredient in baking and cosmetics.
Also Read: “The Benefits of Palm Oil“
3. Have a Lot Of Uses
Palm oil is the most versatile of all vegetable oils. It can be refined into a variety of products with different physical characteristics, melting points, and textures.
The list includes foods, cosmetics, biofuels, pharmaceutical products, and animal feed supplements.
One thing that many people may not know is that palm oil is also one of the basic ingredients for making cosmetics such as lipstick.
The antioxidant-rich content (which reduces signs of aging) makes palm oil a good choice for the cosmetics industry.
Not only that, glycerin from palm oil can be used to make pharmaceutical products, especially cough drops and oral care products. This versatile ingredient can also be used to produce animal feed supplements.
Crude palm oil (CPO) is often used as a biofuel, which can be used to generate electricity.
In short, it’s a material that delivers maximum output, with little to no unused parts left over. And that means minimal disposal.
Also Read: “The 5 Uses of Oil Palm Trees“
4. Can Be Produced Responsibly
Despite its advantages, palm oil production is notorious for its unsustainable practices as to clear land for oil palm plantations, forests need to be cut down, thus impacting some local communities and wildlife.
Unfortunately, many of these forested areas are often cleared using unsustainable methods, such as slash and burn, which increases air pollution and soil erosion.
However, palm oil can actually be produced in an environmentally friendly way. Oil palm cultivation can be done sustainably if applied with the right methods and in accordance with applicable rules and regulations.
So there you have it! The facts of palm oil in one go!
Aside from the controversies surrounding the manufacture of this oil, we can safely say that palm oil is being the most commonly used type of cooking oil for a reason.
To get the full benefit of palm oil, it is recommended that you choose the best palm oil that is in the market.
To spot the best one, you could simply spot the SNI logo on the packaging of the palm oil of your choice.
The meaning of the SNI logo on the packaging of palm oil is that that product has already been tested for its quality.
As the SNI is the type of certification that applies to most if not all of the products that are sold and distributed in Indonesia.
With palm oil, the regulations and standards are clearly stated in SNI 2901:2021.
