What is Palm Oil?

Palm oil is also known as palm fruit oil. Palm oil is said to be nature's gift to the world. Consumed for more than 5,000 years, its nutritional value, health benefits and value as a natural resource continue to be discovered even today.

Palm oil is produced from the fruit of the oil palm tree Elaeis guineensis. Oil palm is the only fruit that can give two types of oil. Since it is a vegetable oil; not an animal or dairy product, and therefore does not contain cholesterol. Virgin palm oilis rich in carotenoids (pro Vitamin A), tocotrienols and tocopherols (Vitamin E) and it contains no trans fatty acids.

History of Palm Oil

Palm oil (from the African palm oil, Elaeis guineensis) can be traced back to more than 5000 years ago. Palm oil was long recognized in West African countries. It is used widely among West African peoples as cooking oil.

In the seventeenth century European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use in Europe, but as the oil was bulky and cheap, and due to the much higher profits available from slave-trading, palm oil remained rare outside West Africa.

Palm Oil Chemical composition

The oil palm produces two types of oils; crude palm oil (CPO) from the fibrous mesocarp and crude palm kernel oil (CPKO) from the kernels. Although both oils originate from the same fruit, palm oil is chemically and nutritionally different from palm kernel oil. It is one of the only two mesocarp oils available commercially, the other being olive oil.

In conventional milling process, the FFB’s are sterilized and the fruitlets stripped off. The loose fruitlets are then digested and pressed to extract the CPO. The kernels are separated from the fibrous mesocarp in the press cake and later cracked to obtained CPKO.