Table of contents
palm oil, Palm fat or palm fruit oil is obtained from the flesh of the palm fruit of the oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis). This oil consists of around 49% saturated fats and is therefore considered unhealthy, but coconut oil is even unhealthier at 82%. The cheap production encourages the far too frequent use of palm oil. It must be distinguished from palm kernel oil.
Use in the kitchen
In Asia and Africa, palm oil is used as margarine, salad oil or cooking oil. The fruit is also eaten as a vegetable or used to make palm wine. Palm fat is used for cooking, roasting and frying, primarily because of its high heat and oxidation stability.
Palm oil is contained in many industrially produced products, such as baked goods, chocolates, pralines, biscuits, chocolate spreads, ready meals, spreads and even baby food (including baby milk). Naturally occurring fat is often replaced with cheap palm fat (such as in chocolate, which contains cocoa butter). Palm oil seems to be irreplaceable in the industry for the shelf life of many sweets. The cooling effect that palm oil has when it melts on the tongue is also used (e.g. for ice cream confectionery, chocolate coatings, toffees, creams, etc.). 17
Are palm oil and coconut oil the same? Palm oil comes from the red fruits of the oil palm. Coconut oil, on the other hand, comes from the fruits (coconuts) of the coconut palm. What these tropical oils have in common is that they are solid at room temperature but have a very low melting point. In addition, unlike other vegetable oils, they contain a very high proportion of saturated fats, which have a serious impact on human health when consumed regularly.
We recommend reading all ingredient lists of products when purchasing and avoiding palm oil as well as coconut oil or coconut fat.
Vegan recipes with palm oil
Due to the high content of saturated fatty acids and the poor LA-ALA ratio (46:1), we advise against consumption and therefore do not suggest a recipe.
| Not only vegans or vegetarians should read this: Vegans often eat unhealthily. Avoidable nutritional errors. |
Purchasing - Storage
Supermarket chains such as Coop, Migros, Denner, Volg, Spar, Aldi, Lidl, Rewe, Edeka, Billa, Hofer sometimes sell refined palm oil.
In European countries, untreated, pure palm oil is usually found in Asian shops as "unrefined palm oil". Organic palm oil is also available online or in health food stores. This is not completely refined, but deodorized at low temperatures. For natural palm oil, the packaging explicitly states "unrefined, unhydrogenated and unbleached". You will also find it labeled as red (raw, cold-pressed) palm oil.
When buying, always look for organic and fair production, because quality seals without organic certification often use labels as so-called "greenwashing". Unfortunately, the environmental protection and social standards here are hardly any better than those of large, conventional plantations. 2
The food industry uses palm oil as a cheap fat ingredient in many ready-made products. Always read the ingredients list when shopping and try to avoid unnecessarily added palm oil.
The availability of palm oil varies depending on the size of the store, catchment area, etc. Our recorded food prices for the DA-CH countries can be found above under the ingredient image - and by clicking you can see their development at various suppliers.
Cold-pressed oils (laws, raw food)
In Switzerland, oil is referred to as cold-pressed oil if the oilseed was not heated, the pressing temperature did not exceed 50 °C and no problematic post-treatment took place.
According to the Federal Department of Home Affairs ( FDHA), an edible oil is considered cold-pressed (or may be described with synonyms such as (extra) virgin, unrefined, cold-pressed or natural) if it has been obtained by pressing or centrifuging from previously unheated raw materials, the temperature during pressing did not exceed 50 °C and it has not been subjected to refining, i.e. no neutralisation, no treatment with adsorbents, bleaching earth or steaming.
An oil may be described as “gently steamed” if the refining process was limited to steaming and the temperature did not exceed 130 °C. 23
In the EU and the USA, there does not appear to be a generally applicable temperature limit set by law for cold-pressed oils. For example, the guidelines for edible fats and oils of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (D) are similar to the EDI regulation, but they do not specify a permissible maximum temperature for general cold pressing - since they only apply to products whose labelling and composition are not conclusively set by law (i.e. not for olive oil, cocoa butter, milk fats, spreadable fats). 24
On the other hand, both the EU directives and the amendment to the EDI regulation on foods of plant origin, mushrooms and table salt (and its amendment) provide for a special rule for the labelling of olive oils. 25,26
These are selective marketing rules in which the term raw food is not defined. "Raw food" and "raw" are therefore not state-protected terms (as is the case with the term "organic"), which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Although it is agreed that with purely mechanical cold pressing, the pressing temperatures generally do not exceed 40 °C, one should not naively assume that cooking oils are raw food quality. There is a suspicion that the measuring method used does not indicate the temperature in the press cylinder (where the heat is highest), but only the outlet temperature in the oil hose. With water-cooled olive oil presses (so-called "water-cooled 37°" oil presses), one probably cannot even say with certainty what the exact temperature is inside the press cylinder, because the entire press cylinder is surrounded by cooling sleeves.
In addition, the pressing pressure and speed as well as the moisture content of the oilseed affect the pressing temperature. If, for example, the moisture content is too low, the temperature rises during pressing and it is difficult to stay even below the maximum limit of 50 °C. 27
Storage tips
Palm oil should be stored in a cool, dark place like other cooking oils and coconut oil. If it is tightly sealed or stored in the refrigerator, it will last for up to a year.
Ingredients - Nutritional values - Calories
100 g of palm fat has an energy content of 884 kcal. It consists of 100% fat, of which 49% are saturated fatty acids. 3
Worth mentioning is vitamin E, which is contained in palm oil at 16 mg/100g. However, many vegetable cooking oils contain vitamin E, for example the much healthier cold-pressed rapeseed oil has a similarly high content. 3
The complete ingredients of palm oil, the coverage of the daily requirement and comparison values with other ingredients can be found in our nutrient tables. In the article Nutrients explained you will get a detailed insight into the topic.
Effects on health
Palm oil not only has a bad reputation because of its negative impact on the environment, but also has harmful effects on health due to its high content of saturated fatty acids.
However, there are also studies that cannot confirm the negative effects of palm oil. For example, a study from 2016 compared the effect of olive oil and palm oil on LDL cholesterol levels after consuming 25 ml (2 teaspoons) daily for three months. Both found a reduction in LDL cholesterol levels. However, the palm oil used was specially produced for the study. 4
It is questionable whether the food industry and the palm oil industry participate in or support such studies. Critical studies show how closely the palm oil and food industries are connected and how they engage in similar lobbying activities as the tobacco and alcohol industries. There is a need for independent studies on the health effects of palm oil consumption. 5
In contrast to refined palm oil , red palm oil (unrefined) contains more nutrients. There are scientific studies showing that the antioxidants contained in red palm oil reduce oxidative stress and may be useful in preventing vitamin A deficiency (in low- and middle-income countries). 18,19,20,21 A 2017 meta-analysis confirms this, but points out that in vitamin A deficiency, the improvement curve stops increasing above a certain intake and that red palm oil intake does not have a significant overall effect on serum α-carotene levels, body weight or hemoglobin levels. 22
Secondary plant substances
Secondary plant substances are not relevant for palm oil. Find out more about the importance and classification of these bioactive substances in food in the article on secondary plant substances.
Dangers - Intolerances - Side effects
Is palm oil harmful to humans? In addition to the high percentage of saturated fatty acids, the LA-ALA ratio is also unfavorable: it is 46:1 for palm oil. You can find out more about this problem in the ingredient olive oil.
Refined palm oil contains undesirable substances that arise during industrial processing. The intense heating of vegetable oils can produce harmful substances such as glycidyl fatty acid esters (GE), 3-MCPD fatty acid esters and 2-MCPD fatty acid esters. In vitro, 3-MCPD fatty acid esters have a genotoxic effect. No data is currently available for 2-MCPD fatty acid esters. 6 In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer ( IARC) therefore classified 3-MCPD as a possible human carcinogen, i.e. potentially carcinogenic. 7 Palm oil has a higher content of these substances than other vegetable oils. 6
Ecological footprint - animal welfare
The CO 2 footprint is primarily used to assess the climate friendliness of a food. This depends on various aspects such as cultivation method (conventional/organic), seasonality, country of origin, processing, transport and, if applicable, packaging. Carbon Cloud states a CO 2 footprint for Malaysian palm oil of 6.66 kg CO 2 eq/kg and for Brazilian palm oil 3.62 kg CO 2 eq/kg. 1 The water footprint of palm oil is 4971 l/kg and for palm kernel oil 5401 l/kg. This is comparable to the water footprint of coconut oil (4490 l/kg). 9
The ecological and social problems that palm oil cultivation brings with it should not be underestimated. The increasing demand for palm oil as a raw product is partly responsible for the increased deforestation of the rainforests. Certification systems are being used to encourage sustainable palm oil cultivation methods. However, the cosmetics and food industries are exempt from this. Incorrect deforestation methods place unnecessary strain on the climate: there are frequent reports of deliberate arson attacks in an attempt to speed up deforestation. This results in over 3,000 tons of methane being released each year. 10,11 Another social problem of palm oil cultivation is forced labor and child labor. 13
Organic palm oil is also not really more sustainable in terms of cultivation and production. Very little organic palm oil is cultivated in African cooperatives, the vast majority comes from large plantations. The organic share of the world market is less than 1%. 2
For detailed explanations of various sustainability indicators (such as ecological footprint, CO2 footprint, water footprint), see our article: What does the ecological footprint mean?
Animal welfare - species protection
Palm oil production not only results in the loss of natural forests and peat bogs, but also in an enormous loss of biodiversity: animals such as orangutans lose their habitat, which significantly reduces their species population. 12
Worldwide occurrence - cultivation
The origin of the oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis) lies in the Gulf of Guinea, where the wild relative Elaeis ubanghensis, which has spiny leaves, still grows today. The African oil palm has been known in Europe since 1466. 8
Today, the economically most important palm species is also cultivated in tropical America and especially in Southeast Asia, for which huge areas of rainforest are cleared. Palm oil was the most commonly produced vegetable oil worldwide in 2020 (76 million tonnes). This was followed by soybean oil (59 million tonnes), rapeseed oil (25.18 million tonnes) and sunflower oil (20.5 million tonnes). The main producers in 2020 were Indonesia (44.75 million tonnes), Malaysia (19.14 million tonnes) and Thailand (2.69 million tonnes). 16
Cultivation - Harvesting
Palm kernels are mostly harvested by hand, with workers cutting the bunches of ripe palm fruits from the palm tree with a sickle or large knife. Individual fallen fruits are also collected, as they have a particularly high oil content. The bunches are collected and transported as quickly as possible to the oil mill for further processing. 28
Industrial processing
Oil mills for processing palm fruits are located near the plantations. Sterilization (steaming) of the palm fruits stops the formation of undesirable fatty acids. The heat also helps the fruit to be separated from the trunk. The palm kernels are mechanically separated from the bundle in large threshing drums. The empty fruit bundles are used as mulch material or to produce fertilizer. 13
The palm kernels are placed in a large cooker where they are heated with fresh steam while constantly stirring. This causes the mesocarp (shell) to separate from the kernels and the oil cells to break open. The oil is then pressed in a screw press to extract the oil. The crude oil is mixed with hot water before it is cleaned of fibers and solids using sieves. The crude oil is separated from water and smaller solids in a clarification tank. The clarified oil is further cleaned in high-speed cleaners and then refined, i.e. it is cleaned using several "refining processes". This extends the shelf life of the oil, but at the expense of valuable ingredients. Refined palm oil is degummed, deacidified, bleached and steamed (deodorized). 13
The overall efficiency of palm oil milling in terms of oil extraction is typically 90-93%. 13
Further information
The oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis) originally comes from Africa and belongs to the palm family (Arecaceae).
Are palm oil and palm kernel oil the same? Palm oil is made from the pulp of the oil fruits and palm kernel oil (palm kernel fat) from the kernels. Palm kernel oil is usually produced from the species Elaeis oleifera, the American oil palm. This oil palm is found mainly in South and Central America, from Honduras to northern Brazil. The oil is pressed from its dried, ground kernels. This tropical oil also has a very high proportion (up to 55%) of saturated fatty acids (lauric acid). 15
Alternative names
In English, palm oil is called palm oil and palm kernel oil is found as palm kernel oil.
Other applications
Biodiesel is produced from palm oil. Local alternatives would be biofuels made from rapeseed and sunflower oil, for example. 12,14
In addition to its use as food and biofuel, palm oil is used to produce lauric acid, which is a basic ingredient for various surfactants. These are detergents used in cleaning products. 14 However, this does not have to be declared on detergents and cleaning products. Palm kernel oil is now almost indispensable in cleaning products, as European oils are not technically suitable for surfactant production. There are only a few cleaning products and washing products based on European oils.
The cosmetics industry uses palm oil in skin creams, soaps, body lotions and shampoos. 14,17
Bibliography - 28 Sources
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| 3. | USDA United States Department of Agriculture. |
| 4. | Lucci P, Borrero M et al. Palm oil and cardiovascular disease: a randomized trial of the effects of hybrid palm oil supplementation on human plasma lipid patterns. Food Funct. 2016 Jan;7(1):347-354. |
| 5. | Kadandale S, Marten R, Smith R. The palm oil industry and noncommunicable diseases. Bull World Health Organ. 2019;97(2):118-128. |
| 6. | EFSA European Food Safety Authority. Risks for human health related to the presence of 3- and 2- monochloropropanediol (MCPD), and their fatty acid esters, and glycidyl fatty acid esters in food. EFSA Journal. 2016;14(5):e04426. |
| 7. | Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung. 3-MCPD-Fettsäureester in Lebensmitteln. 2012. |
| 8. | Brücher H. Tropische Nutzpflanzen. Ursprung, Evolution und Domestikation. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. 1977. |
| 9. | Mekonnen MM, Hoekstra AY. The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci. 2011;15(5):1577-1600. |
| 10. | Fuchs H. Sumatras Wälder brennen. DW. 2014. |
| 11. | Taylor PG, Bilinsky TM et al. Palm oil wastewater methane emissions and bioenergy potential. Nature Climate Change. 2014;4:151-152. |
| 12. | Schlatzer M, Lindenthal T. Österreichische und europäische Alternativen zu Palmöl und Soja aus Tropenregionen. Möglichkeiten und Auswirkungen. FIBL Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau. 2019. |
| 13. | Hashim K, Tahiruddin S, Asis AJ. 8 - Palm and Palm Kernel Oil Production and Processing in Malaysia and Indonesia. In: Lai OM, Tan CP, Akoh CC (Ed.) Palm Oil. Academic Press and AOCS Press: 2012; 235-250. |
| 14. | Noleppa S, Cartsburg M. Auf der Ölspur: Berechnungen zu einer palmölfreien Welt. WWF Deutschland. Berlin 2016. |
| 15. | Von Bruchhausen F (Hrsg.). Hagers Handbuch der Pharmazeutischen Praxis. Drogen A-K. Springer-Verlag: Berlin, Heidelberg, New York. 1998. |
| 16. | FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Crops and livestock products. Production Quantity 2020. |
| 17. | Krist S. Palmkernöl/Palmöl. In: Krist S, Buchbauer G, Klausberger C. Lexikon der pflanzlichen Fette und Öle. Springer Verlag: Wien. 2008. |
| 18. | Rice AM, Burns JB. Moving from efficacy to effectiveness: red palm oil's role in preventing vitamin A deficiency. J Am Coll Nutr. 2010 Jun; 29(3 Suppl):302S-313S. |
| 19. | Sougadinis E, Laillou A et al. A Comparison of Retinyl Palmitate and Red Palm Oil β-Carotene as Strategies to Address Vitamin A Deficiency. Nutrients. 2013;5(8):3257–3271. |
| 20. | Oguntibeju OO, Esterhuyse A et al. Red palm oil: nutritional, physiological and therapeutic roles in improving human wellbeing and quality of life. Br J Biomed Sci. 2009;66(4):216-222. |
| 21. | Loganathan R, Subramaniam KM et al. Health-promoting effects of red palm oil: evidence from animal and human studies. Nutr Rev. 2017 Feb 1;75(2):98-113. |
| 22. | Dong S, Xia H et al. The Effect of Red Palm Oil on Vitamin A Deficiency: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. Nutrients. 2017;9(12):1281. |
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| 24. | Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft. Leitsätze für Speisefette und Speiseöle. Neufassung vom 02.07.2020 (BAnz AT 18.08.2020 B3, GMBl 2020 S. 530). |
| 25. | Amtsblatt der Europäischen Union. Durchführungsverordnung (EU) Nr. 29/2012 der Kommission vom 13. Januar 2012 mit Vermarktungsvorschriften für Olivenöl. Artikel 5 a) und b). 14.1.2012. |
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