Making Sense Of Fats For Cooking And Food Preparation

27/04/2011 (HealthNewsDigest.com) - By now, you know that you should be avoiding trans fats. As food manufacturers re-formulate their brands to replace trans fats with other alternatives, it’s easy to become confused when you read the new food labels. Saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated? Olive, canola, soy, Malaysian palm fruit oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil or animal fats (beef tallow, lard) – which are the healthier choices? The answers may surprise you.

Did you know that the fats you eat can raise your cholesterol? Or that nutritionally, Malaysian palm fruit oil may be as healthful as olive oil? “It is exciting to learn that there are options for oils on the market that provide a nice alternative to butter or even olive oil – which isn’t always appropriate for all types of cooking,” comments Registered Dietician, Nutritional Consultant and Author Felicia Stoler. “For example, red Malaysian palm fruit oil contains both beta-carotene and vitamin E. While that doesn’t mean you should eat large amounts of chicken wings fried with it, it is reassuring to know that when you cook or bake with it, it will taste great, it won’t raise your cholesterol and it delivered beneficial nutrients.”

Palm fruit oil vs. Palm Kernel Oil: Read the food labels carefully!

Don’t confuse palm fruit oil with the much maligned palm kernel oil that was once widely used in movie popcorn. Cultivated in Malaysia, natural Palm fruit oil comes from the plant’s fruit (the fleshy part) and contains numerous micronutrients. Numerous studies have confirmed the nutritional value of palm fruit oil make it as healthful as olive oil.

In contrast, palm kernel oil comes from the plant’s kernel (seed). It contains about 85 percent saturated fats which can raise your cholesterol levels. So it’s best to think carefully before consuming it as a major part of your dietary fat intake.

Almost 90 percent of the world’s palm fruit oil is used as food. In fact, palm fruit oil is the second largest edible oil consumed, accounting for almost one quarter of the world's fats and oil supply. Foods made with palm fruit oil, which is naturally trans fat-free (a claim also shared with olive oil), have a long shelf life and other desirable properties including great texture and flavor. Palm fruit oil also is very affordable.

What makes palm fruit oil so good? It contains almost equal amounts of unsaturated fats and saturated fats, (mainly palmitic and smaller amounts of stearic acids). As a result of its unique balanced composition, palm fruit oil has almost no impact on your cholesterol as long as your total dietary fat intake is in line with the levels recommended by health agencies such as the American Heart Association. Basically it behaves more like a healthier monounsaturated fat (the type of fat found in nuts, canola and olive oil) than a saturated fat. The virgin and red varieties of palm fruit oil are also rich in powerful antioxidants called tocotrienol and tocopherols (vitamin E), as well as carotenes (vitamin A).

Cooking with palm fruit oil

Olive oil is healthful and is ideal for sautéing and savory baking, but its flavor isn’t suited for many recipes and it is best used at lower temperatures. Butter also burns easily. “It’s very hard for a novice cook to know what the actual temperature is in a pan. Palm fruit oil is chef-friendly because it is very stable and is great for high heat cooking.

“Palm fruit oil can easily be substituted for solid fats such as butter, margarine or shortening, and is delicious when used for cooking and baking. Palm fruit oil or olive oil can also be blended with a small amount of butter if you want the buttery flavor when cooking at higher temperatures or baking.”

Natural palm fruit oil is better for the environment

Some food manufacturers and suppliers have begun using highly-processed, genetically-modified oils to replace trans fat in their products. “For those of us who prefer natural, unprocessed foods, Malaysian palm fruit oil is the obvious and smartest choice,” says Stoler. “The Malaysian oil palm growers are the leaders in environmentally-sensitive cultivation programs. Theirs is a premium product that is good for the environment and good for your health.

“As a dietician, I also understand that your family won’t eat something that doesn’t taste good. Malaysian palm fruit oil is the gold standard of palm oils. As with any oil, moderation is still important. Don’t make the mistake of thinking if a little is good, a lot is better. No one is recommending that you eat it in large quantities, and Malaysian palm fruit oil won’t make poor food choices better.

“But when you make the choice to eat products made with Malaysian palm fruit oil, or to cook with it in your own kitchen, you never have to worry about the flavor.”

Sidebar: Fat Facts

Malaysian palm fruit oil: All-natural and naturally trans-fat free. It contains almost equal amounts of unsaturated fats and saturated fats, (mainly palmitic and smaller amounts of stearic acids). In the body, it behaves more like a monounsaturated fat. It has virtually no adverse impact on your cholesterol levels. Comparable nutritionally to olive oil, it can be used for cooking at higher temperatures than olive oil and is ideal for those cooking applications when you don’t want the flavor of olive oil.

Monosaturated fats: Lower total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol while increasing the HDL (good) cholesterol. Found abundantly in avocados, nuts, olive oil and liquid palm fruit oil (called palm olein).

Polyunsaturated fats: Lower total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol while increasing the HDL (good) cholesterol. Found in all vegetable oils, abundant in corn oil and sunflower oil. Omega 3 fatty acids in fish oil are an example.

Saturated fats: Raise total cholesterol as well as LDL (bad) cholesterol. Found abundantly in animal products such as beef and pork as well as palm kernel oil and coconut oil.

Trans fats: Raise LDL (bad) cholesterol and lower HDL (good) cholesterol. Also adversely raise a number of disease-related risk factors. Still found in many processed foods such as French fries and baked goods. 

Red Malaysian palm fruit oil

RSPO: Labeling Palm Oil As An Ingredient Is Fine, Provided Other Oils Are Labeled Too

22/04/2011 (Mongabay.com) - The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a body that sets criteria for social and environmental certification of palm oil, weighed in on the debate over Australia's proposal to require listing of palm oil as an ingredient on package labels. At the same time, the RSPO announced its own labeling initiative to distinguish products that use RSPO-certified palm oil from those that do not.

Darrel Webber, Secretary General of the RSPO, said that if the purpose of the bill is to encourage the adoption of "greener" palm oil, rather than discourage use of all palm oil, the RSPO supports the bill. But he added truth-in-labeling should apply to all vegetable oils.

"Distinguishing palm oil as the only edible oil that requires labeling implies that other edible oils do not face similar challenges," Webber said in a statement. "RSPO takes a strong view against this supposition as issues surrounding environmental destruction, social concerns and wildlife conservation are prevalent across the board with cultivation of any type of monoculture crops."

"Further to this, such a labeling exercise that singles out palm oil may only serve to ostracize agricultural farmers in developing countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, South America, West Africa, etc. whose key source of income comes from palm oil. These smallholders need to be educated, guided, encouraged and inspired to adopt sustainable standards and solutions, rather than have their livelihoods affected. RSPO certification program aims to support smallholders in this light."

Webber added that if the bill causes a shift away from palm oil, the vegetable oils that replace it would also need to be evaluated on their social and environmental performance. As the world's highest yielding oilseed, palm oil produces more oil per unit of area than any other crop. As such the palm oil industry argues its crop requires less land to produce the same amount of oil as canola/rapeseed, soy, coconut, and corn.

"The long term repercussion of this proposed Bill may decrease the demand for palm oil but will not eliminate the key reasons this proposal is aimed at addressing in the first place," he said. "This is because edible oil is a key ingredient in most consumer products. Demand would merely shift to other vegetable oils, increasing the sustainability problems connected to these other particular crops."

Webber took the opportunity to announce the RSPO trademark, which will be used on product packaging and labels which contain RSPO Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO). The label will be available later this year.

"The trademark will enable consumers to confirm very quickly that the products they buy contribute to sustainable production of palm oil," said the RSPO statement. "The trademark logo could end up on the packaging of thousands of consumer products worldwide."

Up to half of packaged products in some markets contain palm oil.

RSPO also announced record production of certified palm oil, which reached 4.7 million metric tons in the year to date, up from 2.8 million tons for all of 2010.

The RSPO

RSPO was formed in 2004 as a response to concern from environmentalists who maintain that oil palm production has driven large-scale destruction of rainforests across southeast Asia over the past two decades, triggering the release of billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions and imperiling rare species, including the Sumatran tiger and the orangutan. RSPO has created a set of criteria to make palm oil production less damaging to the environment and local communities. These include using natural pests and composting in place of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers whenever possible, implementing no burn policies, sparing high conservation value forests from development, taking measures to reduce air pollution, and creating catchment ponds to prevent palm oil mill effluent from entering waterways where it would damage aquatic habitats. The hope is that CSPO can be sold at a premium to recoup the increased costs that certification entails.

RSPO has at times been criticized for being slow to act when members are found to be operating in violation of productions standards, but the body has recently rebuked IOI Group, a Malaysian producer, and Golden Agri Resources (GAR), a Singapore-based firm, for social and environmental transgressions. GAR has since taken steps to come back into compliance, including establishing a new forest policy.

The RSPO