The World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean recently released an advisory on nutrition for adults during the COVID-19 outbreak to assist the people on a well-balanced diet for a healthier lifestyle. It advises the people to consume unsaturated fats found in fish, avocado, nuts, olive oil, soy, canola, sunflower and corn oils rather than saturated fats found in fatty meat, butter, palm and coconut oils, cream, cheese, ghee and lard.

Palm oil was regarded as not nutritionally ideal and imposes adverse effects on lipid profile due to its saturated fatty acids (SFA) content. The misconception on SFA began in the late 1950s, when a physiologist, Ancel Keys, found that SFA could raise total cholesterol, a surrogate marker of cardiovascular disease risk. This was widely accepted for over five decades such that saturated fats are considered bad for health.

However, emerging research findings, published over the recent years, have shown otherwise. The idea that saturated fat causes heart disease is now being questioned. For example, a diet rich in palm olein was found not to affect lipid profiles in healthy adults compared to other unsaturated vegetable oils, namely olive oil, canola oil, soybean oil and high oleic sunflower oil on serum lipid profile in healthy human adults.

We should not ignore the increasing number of systematic reviews and meta-analysis that were based on actual cardiovascular disease risks which are hard clinical end-points (CHD and stroke) including the very recent ones mentioned above.

Recently, several meta-analyses of randomised trials and prospective cohort studies and ecological studies, largely done in European and North American countries, showed either no association or a lower risk between saturated fatty acid consumption with total mortality and cardiovascular disease events.

The uncertainty regarding the effect of saturated fatty acids on clinical outcomes in part might be due to the fact that most observational cohort studies have been done in high-income countries where saturated fatty acid intake is within a limited range, between 7% and 15% of energy.

Furthermore, it is not known whether findings obtained from European and North American countries where nutritional excess is more common, can be extrapolated to other regions of the world where nutritional inadequacy might be more common.

It is important to study the impact of diet on total mortality and cardiovascular disease in diverse settings, such as those where over-nutrition is common and where undernutrition is of greater concern.

Moreover, what WHO and all other thinking alike need to know is that palm oil has a natural balance of saturated and unsaturated fats which makes it suitable for various food applications, does not require hydrogenation which produces trans fatty acids which is very unhealthy.

Palm oil remains to be the best alternative to replace trans fatty acids in many food applications. It is a very versatile edible oil with excellent properties and is used in a wide range of food products ranging from infant formula to cookies. Palm oil is rich in phytonutrients with numerous health benefits. Tocotrienols in palm oil are available in the market as nutritional supplements in the form of soft gel capsules. Being a strong antioxidant, it is recommended to people with compromised health as a daily supplement to boost their well-being, such as the elderly and those with chronic diseases.

Palm oil has a natural balance of saturated and unsaturated fats to ensure the absorption of various dietary micronutrients, does not require hydrogenation - treating oils with hydrogen to increase their shelf life - and is available in large quantities.

-- BERNAMA

Dr Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir is Director-General of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB).