JAKARTA – Does palm oil consumption cause diabetes? To answer this question, please read the following facts and description.<\/p>\n
During the last few years there has been an accusation that diabetes is related to palm oil consumption. So far, only few researches on relation between palm oil consumption and diabetes conducted by nutrition and health experts because such cases are rarely found. \u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The evidence related to the effect of palm oil consumption on glucose metabolism biomarker is still limited (Zulkiply et al., 2019). The study also shows that there is no additional benefit from replacement of palm oil with other vegetable oils that are rich in monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids to the glucose metabolism change.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, several researches (Odia et al., 2015; Marangoni et al., 2017; Genova et al., 2018) show that like other chronic diseases attributed to palm oil, such as cardiovascular and cancer, the consumption of palm oil in a balanced diet seems to have no impact on raising risk of diabetes among adults or pediatric population.<\/p>\n
Diabetes cases are related to insulin secretion that are very important in blood sugar metabolism. A number of researches show that palm oil consumption does not affect insulin secretion, so that it does not cause diabetes and even tends to reduce cases of diabetes. A research conducted by Sundram et al. (2007), Peairs et al. (2011), and Filippou et al. (2014) found that palm oil consumption does not influence the rate of insulin activity\/function (secretion) or content of blood glucose. Even the study of Bovet et al. (2009) shows that the reduction of palm oil consumption increases cases of diabetes.<\/p>\n
What is interesting here is the fact that consumption of fully hydrogenated soybean oil or partially hydrogenated soybean oil hinders the production of insulin gland, increases content of blood glucose, and reduces HDL cholesterol (Sundram et al., 2007).<\/p>\n
It is very clear, therefore, that consumption of palm oil does not influence the insulin secretion and diabetes. Conversely, the consumption of hydrogenated soybean hinders the production of insulin, and is potential to increase cases of diabetes.<\/p>\n
The above description shows that there is no strong evidence to support that the consumption of palm oil causes diabetes. Despite limited, various studies show that palm oil does not influence insulin secretions, so that it could not cause diabetes. Besides, the content of tocotrienols in palm oil also has health benefits, which include its function as anti-diabetic substance (Budin et al., 2009; Muharis et al., 2010; Longganathan et al., 2010). (*)<\/p>\n