Palm oil, health benefits and harms, than dangerous

No, you can’t say that. Unrefined palm oil is quite useful: it is rich in carotenoids, vitamin E (and here it is much more than in sunflower), vitamins A, K, B4. It contains saturated and unsaturated acids that have a beneficial effect on metabolism. Moreover, it is tasty, slightly sweetish – from it in the Arab countries they make “Dessert of Bedouin”, something like a viscous ice cream. But quite expensive, like any Extra Virgin.

Refined oil is another matter. Anything, not just palm. But even here you just need to know when to stop. By the way, palm is used in the production of infant formula, which speaks volumes about its usefulness and harmfulness.

But what is used in the food industry is the third question. Palm oil got a bad reputation 20 years ago, when hydrogenated oils – trans fats were used in pursuit of cheapness. They can also be different, but for the most part they are recognized as hazardous to health and even provoking cancer. As, however, and any food fried in oil.

One of the most valuable vegetable oils is olive oil; nutritionists adore it for the large amount of healthy unsaturated fats. Palm, on the other hand, contains a lot of harmful saturated fats, which are not loved by doctors. And deservedly so, because it is these fats that accumulate in the vessels in the form of plaques, change the lipid composition of the body.

But palm oil, like coconut oil, does not burn, does not give soot and foam when frying, because there is absolutely no liquid in it – only vegetable fat. And this is one of the good properties of the palm tree, because food cooked in smoking oil becomes carcinogenic and hazardous to health.

An ambiguous conclusion. Palm oil gained such fame about 15 years ago, when food manufacturers bought the cheapest hydrogenated oil with a melting point of 40-42 degrees. Such a product is really not a fact that it will leave the body without leaving unpleasant traces. However, most of the animal fat substitutes that are currently used melt at temperatures between 20 and 35 degrees. And our body can provide a temperature of about 37 degrees, here we are not talking about any “plasticine”.

By the way, both meat and butter contain refractory substances, but we have been eating them for centuries. Another thing is that a person has his own internal program for the usual food: meat is easily digested here, while the Malaysians have palm oil. Therefore, it is often advised to eat regional products.

This product is so demonized that manufacturers hide its use. “Polyunsaturated margarine”, “partially hydrogenated”, “hardened vegetable fat”, “elaidic acid” – all this masks the presence of palm oil in the product.

By the way, trans fats are most often found in products that are harmful by definition – soups, porridge and instant noodles, yoghurts with a long shelf life, chips, crackers, crackers, cheap condensed milk and cottage cheese, cheap cheese, dairy and curd products, mayonnaise, sauces … We know that eating them is unhealthy, but we buy – sometimes there is no time to cook, sometimes “the money ran out”, and sometimes we just want some frank rubbish.

Very soon it will be completely true. Already, the countries of the European Union are seriously concerned about the ubiquitous presence of palm oil in products. In the near future, they want to toughen the law against the “palm tree” and remove products containing it from store shelves.

In Russia, in the summer of last year, a new regulation “On the safety of milk and dairy products” came into force. Now the producers of “milk” are obliged to label cheese, cottage cheese, butter, etc. accordingly, where milk fat is replaced with vegetable (palm oil). Violators who do not write “milk-containing product with milk fat substitute” face fines of up to a million rubles. But in practice, this prohibition is often ignored to this day.

“We all know that the less any product has been processed, the more useful it is for us. Minimize your exposure to unnatural products. Your body will not suffer if you occasionally pamper it with one cookie or candy, even with palm oil. It’s another matter if you gorge on cakes, waffles and sweets: then trans fats will really kill your body. Everyone knows that instead of candy it is better to eat honey, have a snack with nuts rather than muffins, fish is healthier than meat, and salad should be seasoned with olive oil, not mayonnaise. Do you know too? Then do it – and you will be healthy!