Jakarta – The palm oil is a kind of vegetable oil which has a high content of nutrition. Compared to other vegetable oils, it is the healthiest raw material to produce cooking oil, a researcher reported recently.

Puspo Edi Giriwono, a researcher of the Southeast Asian Food & Agricultural Science and Technology (SEAFAST) Center of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) said that it is because the palm oil has a balanced content of saturated fatty acid and unsaturated fatty acid.

Data from the Palm Oil Agribusiness Strategic Policy Institute (PASPI) shows that the composition of palm oil’s fatty acid consists of saturated fatty acid (44 percent palmitic fatty acid, 5 percent stearic fatty acid; 40 percent mono-unsaturated fatty acid; 10 percent polyunsaturated fatty acid; and 0.4 percent alpha linolenic fatty acid.

Other vegetable oils, such as coconut oil, soybean oil, corn oil and sunflower, have the composition of unsaturated fatty acid (85-90 percent) and saturated fatty acid (10-15 percent), which are not in balance.

“Despite its composition of saturated fatty acid and unsaturated fatty acid is in balance, experts have concluded that the palm oil has the characteristic of unsaturated fatty acid,” the researcher stated in the website of Palm Oil Indonesia.

He said that such palm oil characteristic has been also scientifically proven by other researchers in their researches. “The consumption of palm oil does not increase body cholesterol and is not harmless to human health,” he added.

Conversely, he said, the palm oil consumption will improve the body cholesterol, raising the good cholesterol (High Density Lipoprotein/HDL), and  reducing the bad cholesterol (Low Density Lipoprotein/LDL) and triglycerides and also reducing the body fat deposition.

“Therefore, the consumption of palm oil can reduce or prevent various kinds of diseases related to the content and quality of cholesterol in blood, such as cardiovascular and atherosclerosis,” he concluded. (*)

Source: wartaekonomi.co.id