Hacker News Reader

Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

Palm oils in particular are not very healthy and are suspected to be a leading cause of diet-induced heart disease. Not all fats are created equally, or in equal proportions. Palm oils are high in specific saturated fats that are linked to cardiovascular disease.

Palm oils are some of the most common fats found in prepared foods, especially foods that need solid fats at room temperatures. The majority of peanut butter preparations on shelves in the US have had all of their peanut oils removed and then replaced with palm oil for "better" texture and to prevent separation.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#Nutrition_and_health

View on HN

I don't know where you're getting that idea about peanut butter and palm oil, it isn't true of the major US peanut butter brands

https://www.peanutbutter.com/peanut-butter/creamy

https://www.jif.com/peanut-butter/creamy/creamy-peanut-butte...

Same major manufacturers, different SKUs, palm oil in the "natural" versions since hydrogenated vegetable oil is not exactly natural:

https://www.peanutbutter.com/peanut-butter-spread/natural-cr...

https://www.jif.com/peanut-butter/natural/creamy

Seems like a good time to remind people that if the oil is not domestic, it most likely comes in chemical tankers:

https://www.agflow.com/commodity-trading-101/a-guide-to-chem...

Your previous cargo might have been benzene or acrylonitrile.

Plenty of Skippy's products have palm oil in them instead of peanut oil, and when I've looked, the "creamy" varieties of peanut butter tend to use palm oil for texture and stability. Store brands do the same thing in my experience.

Adding a little for texture is very different than removing the peanut oil and replacing it with palm oil. If that were the case, the saturated fat/total fat ratio would be much higher and the palm oil wouldn't be the 3rd ingredient listed after sugar.

What an interesting, and dare I say nuanced, point.

Let’s add to it how good fats can become bad through releasing free radicals, which happens at approximately the same temperature that a lot of animal fats are cooked at.

A few years ago, I did some reading on PubMed to figure out what fats are best to cook with. Came to the conclusion that extra virgin olive oil, which papers use the acronym "EVOO" for, is best for frying, whether that's pan or deep frying, and cooking in general.

It's high in monounsaturated fats and studies found that various compounds in EVOO prevent the formation of free radicals, volatile organic compounds, aldehydes like formaldehyde, etc compared to other cooking oils.

One study looked at the use of frying oils over time, since the longer the oils are heated, the more they decompose into harmful compounds. EVOO won out on that, too, and significantly inhibited the creation of harmful products. This would be relevant for restaurants, which tend to reuse oils over long periods of time, or anyone that cooks big meals for themselves or others. If you're going to be standing over a pan cooking for hours at a time, it's worth reducing the amount of harmful compounds you'll inevitably breathe in.

Typically refined oils are preferred for frying because they can be used at higher temperatures, but I've found cooking with EVOO to be just fine, just don't cook things at temperatures where it might start smoking.

Adam Ragusea does a lot of well researched videos around food science, and did one around using olive oil, even past the smoke point, fairly recently - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_aFHrzSBrM

Some good interviews with food scientists, etc. Interesting for anyone wanting to learn a bit more on this subject.

I've swapped to using EVOO for most anything where it won't be too overpowering of a taste.

I fry most everything in ghee these days. It’s delicious and the smoke point is north of 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ghee is like 30% palmitic acid. I use it for cooking everything that doesn't call for oil, but people on a palm oil crusade might want to steer clear.

I recently bought ghee for the first time from Organic Valley. Looking at their website, I don't see how it's 30% palmitic acid, could you please clarify?

https://www.organicvalley.coop/products/butter/ghee/clarifie...

Palmitic acid is called like that because it was first isolated in palm oil but it's naturally occurring in animal fat and breast milk because it's naturally produced by them.

Its not they are adding palm oil to butter and ghee, it's the because palmitic acid is not unique to palm oil (well some unscrupulous producer do adulterate ghee with palm oil but let's not go there yet what I'm saying apply to pure ghee)

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fatty-acid-profiles-of-g... 16:0 is the acid you're looking for.

Very interesting point. Do you have any of your preferred research papers handy?

I went searching just now out of curiosity and did find this one [1] which indeed affirms what you're saying.

Personally, I reach for ghee when I want a neutral oil (e.g., for cooking scrambled eggs). And, like you, I reach for some fancy EVOO for everything else. I have to confess my approach to get here was a lot less scientific though; I mostly settled on these two using the metric of deliciousness.

Here's what I was able to find from my notes:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12090031

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15291498/

https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e363

Pretty sure they're all on SciHub.

Here's some about heat, frying and other methods of cooking when it comes to creating mutagenic compounds:

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/safe-cooking-temperatures/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29911312

https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/chemic...

Last one is about acrylamide, which I believe there is little evidence to believe it's harmful (it's been a while since I've actually looked at studies on it), but I assume the conditions that produce it also end up producing compounds that can be harmful.

I actually have them saved in my personal wiki, when I'm on my home network I'll bring it up and post the citations I've collected here.

Your body produces palmitic acid on its own, 30% of your fat is palmitic acid yourself produced. Reducing consumption of palmitic acid mostly reduces your quality of life, a balanced diet with a good biscuit and noeccessive calories does much more than eating dry, sandy biscuits and excess on sugar later on.

Thank you, I did not know that.

> Excess carbohydrates in the body are converted to palmitic acid. Palmitic acid is the first fatty acid produced during fatty acid synthesis and is the precursor to longer fatty acids. As a consequence, palmitic acid is a major body component of animals. In humans, one analysis found it to make up 21–30% (molar) of human depot fat,[16] and it is a major, but highly variable, lipid component of human breast milk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid

High-palmitic acid diets and dry, high-sugar diets are hardly the only two options.

Yeah but I bet people that are sold on palm oil is evil are on low fat diet. And that the calories from fat they don't consume come from carbohydrates, not proteins.

That's a strange assumption and certainly isn't true for me. I limit carbohydrates as much as possible. The majority of my calories come from fat and protein.

so wht fat you add to your diet? animal fats are, like, 30% palmitic acid.

Olive and avocado oil, flax seed oil, oil from fish and meat. I think there's a difference between eating palmitic acid that's part of a larger fatty acid profile in meat, and being conscious of just how much saturated fats you're eating, versus refined palm oil that's mostly been refined down to palmitic acid itself. If you're eating peanut butter, you might be literally eating refined palm oil by the spoonful, versus a relatively small amount of palmitic acid in meat.

Fine, true, palm oil is one of the rare exceptions. But the point is, this is not a tremendously complex issue. A person of average intelligence can learn about partially hydrogenated trans fats, and one or two other fats to avoid, and master this whole issue in a few minutes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com