What you eat is very important. It is commonly said, ‘you are what you eat’. In other words, what you eat has a way of determining what you will become. An international colleague said: ‘For most of us, we feel a certain twinge of guilt every time we eat a really fatty or greasy piece of food, as we know that the chances are it is increasing our risk of suffering from a heart attack… but it tastes so good. I agree fat meal taste well, but endeavor to stick to heart friendly diet.
Vegetarian or no vegetarian, most of us consume large quantity of oil per day. Most of the oil contains large percentage of saturated fatty acid that increases bad cholesterol and reduces good cholesterol in the body which predisposes to heart diseases such as heart attack. While most of the oil will fail heart friendliness test, our old red palm oil ( epo pupa) will scale the test with ease. Contrary to belief that red oil is not good for the heart, there are a lot of researches that proved beyond reasonable doubt that it prevents cardiovascular diseases.
Palm oil
Palm oil is produced from the fruit of the Elaeis guineensis. It is a vegetable oil, not an animal or dairy product, and therefore does not contain high cholesterol. Palm oil is sometimes confused with palm kernel oil, but it is different. Palm oil is derived from the fleshy part of the palm fruits, while palm kernel oil is derived from the seed or the kernel. Palm kernel oil and palm oil are two different oils with very distinct fatty acid composition. This explanation may not be necessary for some of us who lived in the villages but the current generation might not have seen a palm fruit before.
Palm oil can be classified as both saturated and non saturated fat. That saturated fat is bad for the body depends on the type; saturated fat in red oil is palmitic saturated fatty acid which does not increase the body cholesterol level. Red palm oil contains a mixture of saturated fatty acids (51%), monounsaturated fatty acids (38%), polyunsaturated fatty acids (11%) and a whole spectrum of anti-oxidative carotenoids (vitamin A), tocopherols and tocotrienols (vitamin E) as major constituents.
Palm oil is trans-fat free. It does not need to go through the hydrogenation (hardening) process. Trans fatty acid achieved by hardening has been shown to lower the good cholesterol and increase the bad cholesterol. In comparison, most vegetable oils (corn oil, soy oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, etc) require hydrogenation hardening of oil, hence the high concentration of trans- fatty acid.
Benefits of red oil
•It does not promote the formation of plaques in the arteries. Atherosclerosis is the thickening and hardening of the walls of the arteries. Fatty deposits or plaques are made up of mainly fats and cholesterol. Atherosclerosis results in the narrowing of the lumen of the arteries, thus inhibiting the flow of blood.
•Vitamin E in red oil diet inhibits platelets (blood cells that aid blood clot formation) from sticking together. These high contents of tocotrienols (Vitamin E) are very potent anti-oxidants. If a tissue, such as the heart is starved of oxygen, this condition is termed ischemia. Even short periods of ischemia can cause large amounts of cell damage. If the tissue is reoxygenated, this process is called reperfusion. In many cases, the sudden supply of oxygen to cells that have been deprived of it causes further damage. This damage during reperfusion of a tissue or organ can be reduced by the use of certain antioxidants.
• Palm oil diet either increases the production of a hormone that prevents blood-clotting (prostacyclin) or decreases the formation of a blood-clotting hormone (thromboxane).
•The high vitamin A (carotenoid) content of red oil is 300 times higher than tomatoes for equivalent amounts. Vitamin A aids good vision
Warnings- the bad side of palm oil is pronounced when it is poorly processed and badly cooked. To eradicate these likely bad effect the following precautions should be adhered to:
•Do not adulterate palm oil in an attempt to make more profit. Do not mix with other apparently cheaper oil like ‘ori’ in Yoruba language and avoid adding hot water. All those things added negate the benefits of red oil.
•In cooking with red oil, please stop bleaching it. The bleaching destroys all the good nutrients in the oil and converts good cholesterol to bad cholesterol. If your reason of bleaching is to prevent the oil from ‘sleeping’ use your hot plate or burning stove to wake it the following morning.
•Limit other oil and use red palm oil as the people of old age and enjoyed healthy life
•Be moderate in consumption.
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