What’s Up With That Food? Red Palm Oil

You may have seen this food item listed on myriad processed foods as “palm kernel oil”—that stuff that makes a bag of microwaved popcorn so delicious, and is sure to also cause inflammation in the body, according to health reports.

You may also have seen red palm oil in jars in the supermarket and wondered, what’s the deal with this? Well, we have two different foods on our hands here.

Type of food: Oil

Name: Red Palm Oil (Elaeis Guineensis)

Origins: Palm oil is derived from the fruit of the African oil palm tree. They are originally from West Africa, but can grow well wherever it’s hot and rainy. You can find them throughout Africa, along with Southeast Asia and South America. Currently, Indonesia and Malaysia are big producers of palm oil. The trees can produce fruit for up to an admirable 25-30 years.

Why/How Did We Start Eating it: Red palm oil (also often called palm fruit oil) is a common ingredient in tropical Africa, southeast Asia and Brazil. Traditionally, the oil is extracted by separating fruits from the tree and cooking them in boiling water. The fruits are then transferred to a wooden mortar, where they are pounded. All of this then goes back into the pot, is covered with water and simmered. The red palm oil rises to the surface, and then is scooped out.

Palm kernel oil, on the other hand, is a different story altogether. It’s off-white in color and higher in saturated fat. “Palm kernel oil is pressed from the seed, whereas red palm oil is pressed from the outer fruit flesh. I am guessing, however, that the kernel oil is capable of being more highly processed because it is capable of handling higher heat. And of course you don’t have the pigment issue,” said Lisa Howard, author of the Big Book of Healthy Cooking Oils. She’s talking about the fact that red palm oil is, well, red.

How it’s Used: Red palm oil (depending upon the particular palm oil) is often equal parts a monounsaturated and saturated fat, and somewhat soft at room temperature. It can’t handle the same high heat as palm kernel oil, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good cooking oil. Howard says palm kernel oil is “a favorite ingredient in commercially processed foods that would otherwise use butter”—think movie popcorn and, notoriously, Girl Scout Cookies. It also ends up in cosmetics, soaps, ice cream and myriad other products.

Howard features red palm oil in her book in a few recipes, including a Brazilian Shrimp, Coconut, and Cashews in Red Palm Oil, an African-style Cashew Chicken in Red Palm Oil, and a Hungarian-inspired Mushroom, Beef and Tomato Soup. “That’s pretty much my version of goulash.”

According to Yemisi Awosan, founder and CEO of the West African food company Egunsi Foods, it’s a staple in stews such as his company’s namesake, a melon seed stew, as well as in Nigerian vegetable stew and ofada, a spicy green pepper sauce. He calls it the “olive oil of Africa,” equating its common household use prior to the 1960s, to olive oil’s widespread use in Mediterranean countries. (Nowadays, he says vegetable and canola oil is more common in many African households.)

Unsustainable harvesting of this particular ingredient to support the growth of processed food—and the use of palm oil as a refined product—has resulted in deforestation along with species and habitat endangerment, most notably, orangutans. When a monoculture like this is created in a country, it negatively impacts the local community, farmers, and people, resulting in a less diverse food supply. Many manufacturers and countries have been making strides toward sustainable sourcing and practices, respectively, including Malaysia.