Comments on: Palm oil fights back

By: Lisa Bee

Lisa Bee — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:30:02 +0000

I would prefer ANY OIL TO the nasty GMO Oils AKA Soy or Corn or Canola. It is all toxic waste full of Roundup and human genes!!! Nasty Monsanto corp.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 04:30:49 +0000

Better to stick to extra virgin olive oil from a reputable brand and prepare your own food (whole foods only, no processed foods). Palm oil (olein) is just fine, but palm kernel oil is a different beast entirely. Coconut oil is also dangerous, but I am not sure about virgin coconut oil as it may be different. I live in Indonesia and palm oil is popular here of course, but palm kernel oil is known to be dangerous, as is coconut oil. Palm oil (not the kernel oil) is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids.

Basically I’d choose from extra virgin olive oil, which I use everyday as my main oil, or palm oil. Avoid fried foods and only buy foods from the produce section of your supermarket. Processed foods are evil.

In my opinion coconut oil if far from dangerous. It is a terrific fat that we use almost daily in our own cooking.

By: Bruce Kleisner

Bruce Kleisner — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:37:27 +0000

I would add that any processed food with canola oil or rapeseed oil or corn oil or safflower oil or anything like that (high PUFA) – whether hydrogenated or not – is very unhealthy. Palm, coconut, butter, leaf lard, and palm kernel are the best oils for baking.

Most of Newman’s cookies have canola oil, not just palm oil. The only ones with just palm oil are his Alphabet Cookies. Everything else has canola oil, which is toxic.

Refined sugars and starches are also bad. Hydrogenated oils have been implicated as causing abdominal obesity in monkeys, compared iso-calorically to other fats.

http://www.obesityresearch.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/7/1675

By: anonymousperson

anonymousperson — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:33:30 +0000

There is substantial evidence that saturated fats are in fat good for you. CSPI was wrong about trans-fat, and they were wrong about saturated fats. (clearly they are an organization with ulterior motives)

Butter, lard, coconut, and palm oil are all in fact health foods.

The only possible health problems with cookies are the processed starches and simple sugars in them, which are unhealthy.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Cheers–

MRE�

By: David

David — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:00:04 +0000

Thank GOODNESS! Finally someone posting about the annoying antics of the CSPI! People are so hopelessly confused about all of this, it’s good to see some clarification. “Helen’s” post is so deranged sounding she’s probably a shill for the soybean processing lobby who are in a tizzy about people moving away from trans fats. They bought the science leading to people thinking they were safe about 25 years ago – turned out to be a pretty good investment!

I knew about the danger of trans fats over 10 years ago and have avoided them. In spite of being a man with a rather sedentary lifestyle – which I’m not claiming is healthy – I never developed “the pear shape” A little over a year ago circumstances in my career forced me to start eating in restaurants more often, because I didn’t have time to cook for myself. This was not fast food though…often they were “nice” restaurants. Guess what…by May of this year I was starting to develop a “gut”. Mind you I was NEVER eating fried foods…stop doing that about 10 years ago. The problem is that trans fats are lurking EVERYWHERE in processed and restaurant food. For example, in an Italian restaurant, if you order sausage with pasta, the sausage might have been deep fried in trans fats to heat it, even though trans fats do not normally occur in sausage.
At any rate since then I’ve been really careful about it…I don’t order anything that could possibly have a trace of trans…which is quite difficult even at upscale restaurants…and guess what…gut is receding.

As for carbs I think they serve a role. I’m probably not as anticarb as this blog…if you have healthy glucose metabolism they have their place. I do consume pasta on a fairly regular basis but when I cook it myself I generally use whole wheat pasta, a meal of that keeps me “non hungry” for about 4-5 hours so I don’t think it causes an insulin spike like some foods. A lot of people I know who go on low carb diets become irritable.

Hi David–

Trans fats are certainly lurking everywhere, especially in restaurant food. That’s why we always encourage people to eat at home as much as possible. Probably the best thing you can do for yourself healthwise is spend more time in your own kitchen.

Cheers–

MRE

By: Helen

Helen — Fri, 26 May 2006 14:36:22 +0000

I had noticed a return of “palm oil” in many things that are listed as “NO TRANS FATTY ACIDS, NO HYDROGENATED FAT, ETC.” I knew the industry would sneak Palm oil back in place of it thinking the public had forgotten how bad it was for us, and of course I was right. I read all labels, since my carotid artery is 40% blocked, ( no doubt due to years of palm oil saturated coffeemate, and margarine, thinking I was safe!) I buy nothing with either ingredient in it. You just have to shop at the right places, like Trader Joe or such and read, read, read.

Hi–

Somehow you missed the main thrust of this post and the previous one on the subject. Palm oil is not bad; in fact, it is quite good. It is a naturally saturated fat found in palms. It got an undeservedly bad reputation a few years ago from the anti-saturated-fat crowd, so most food processors switched to trans fats so that they could declare them as being polyunsaturated, that being the buzzword for ‘healthful’ fats at the time. Current research shows that trans fats are a health disaster, so food manufacturers have turned back to the palm oil, palm kernel oil, and coconut oils that they shouldn’t have strayed from in the first place.

Cheers–

MRE