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> Anything fried, obviously, but also instant noodles, chips, crackers, tortillas, cereal, energy bars, canned tuna, processed meats, plant-based meat, coffee creamer, broths, frozen dinners, salad dressing, and sauces. Also: Baby food, infant formula, and sometimes even ice cream or bread. People eat a lot more vegetable oil.

The root of all evil is pretty out in front. When I was growing up outside of US, everything we cooked was in peanut oil, coconut oil, rice bran oil and cotton seed oil. Obesity was a rare occurrence and so were heart conditions for adults. But all of our food was entirely home made with the exception of the rare cola, chocolates and ice cream for celebrations. Fast forward 30 years, there isn’t a single item in stores that doesn’t have palm oil. Palm oil is the choice of cooking oil in restaurants. And cooking at home has significantly gone down. Obesity and heart diseases are now common. My parents have a much worse health in their 60s than my grandparents did in their 60s. I have a worse health than my parents did at my age despite being more conscious about health and actively working towards it.

Seed oils are not a problem, how much of it we have is a problem.




> Palm oil is the choice of cooking oil in restaurants

That's interesting, do you have any source for that? Is that in US?

I know Palm oil is used in food production because it's neutral in taste, easy to process at industrial scale and overall stable in its characteristics.

As a European, using Palm oil as cooking oil sounds crazy because it actually provides no benefit in a kitchen at all...


I’ve never heard of that- some restaurants do use fats like coconut oil but I’d imagine most use what’s cheap and inoffensive


There are two types of palm oil. One is the palm oil perhaps you are thinking of (made from the fruit and with more solids/saturated fats). The other is palm kernel oil which is highly refined and basically like any other common vegetable oil


Okay. The question remains: Which kind of restaurants are using such a oil, and most of all why.


Reason is simple. They go for cheapest option that works well enough. Restaurants have tight margins. Thus they choose cheapest viable option. Same goes for most food products. Over the years the migrate to whatever has good price.


It’s cheap and it has a neutral taste. It also has a high smoking point, making it a great option for deep frying.


No it’s not the US. But in Asia, it’s in everything.


Ah, thanks for clarification!

Edit: Learnt now that it's the most-used oil in Indonesia, as Indonesia is also the largest producer of Palm Oil (64% of global production in 2020). So they likely use it locally because it's available in abundance there...

In 2020, Indonesia and Malaysia accounted for ~84% of all the Palm oil production in the world [1]

[1] https://www.iucn.nl/app/uploads/2022/10/Factsheet-Palm-oil_I...


The consumption in US still is top 5 in the world.

https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?commodity=palm-oil&g...

But we do have soybean oil and canola that’s more popular.




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