Palm Oil

[dvdmon]

I recently had a chance to purchase some virgin organic palm oil for a discounted rate. I thought I would try using it to make a little popcorn. No, not particularly low-carb, but it's a rare treat and I try to keep the amount low so my ECC's for the day don't get too high.

Anyway, palm oil is said to have some great nutrients, including tocopherols and tocotreinals (both co-factors of Vitamin-E), Co-Q10, and betacaratenes. It also, as I've found out, has about 10% O6, so I'm wondering if this is the best choice considering that we are already getting too much O6 (in comparison to O3). In addition, O6 and O3 are highly suceptible to oxidative damage from high heat (thus why fish oil and flax oil are always refrigerated and kept in dark bottles), so should Palm oil be heated much at all? I did notice that when heating the oil it got pretty smoky quickly - much quicker than coconut oil, even though its smoke point is supposed to be much higher (425 vs 350).

Any thoughts?

[Relief]

no answer to the 6-3 ratio (seems to me 10% 6 is pretty low tho) but my experience with the smoke point is the opposite of yours. I can get it really hot before it smokes or darkens at all. I find it perfect for frying up the occasional low carb tortilla for a crunchy treat. I also use it for baking. I like the neutral flavor. I use a lot more butter and olive oil generally and would use lard if I could find it locally and easily without the added BHA and BHT --but the plam oil ( which i can get at my safeway!) seems a good option for some things.

[dvdmon]

Yes, but if you are getting it at your local Safeway, my guess is that it is processed, is that right? Processed oils tend to have higher smoke points. The stuff I am using is completely unprocessed...

[Relief]

Its a spectrum product --oragainc and says it is pressed in colombia in "an environmentally stable manner"
what kind of " processing" would be in order to change the smoke point and what difference does that make if it doesn't create trans fats? these arent' sarcastic rhetorical questions--I'm really asking!

Mybe what is smoking in your oil is organic particles that haven't been filtered out. so my oil is processed in that the " dirt " is filtered out, but the properties of the oil are unchanged. what do you think?

[dvdmon]

All I know is that when I've seen listed the smoking points of coconut oil, it lists unrefined as 350 and refined as 450. What color is your palm oil? Mine is fairly dark red, which shows the caretenoids. If yours is clear or white, then all the caretenoids have been removed via the refining process. I have no idea what "environmentally stable manner" means. Hopefully it means that it was expeller-pressed and not chemically refined, but who knows, since that quote is pretty vague. The only product I see on Spectrum Naturals website that has palm oil is their shortening, which says is extracted via manual pressing, which seems consistant with their other products.

But you may be onto something about filtering. It could be that Spectrum filters all pieces of the plant out, and these small pieces are what are causing the smoking. Still, I wonder if the distinction matters? The pieces of the plant theoretically would have a great deal of the nutrient content contained in the oil, just wondering if the smoking is going to be an issue??