Red Palm Oil (aka the Red Gold)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I bought some red palm oil, after hearing about some of its health benefits.

What is it?

Don’t confuse palm oil and red palm oil. They do both come from the same source, yet red palm oil is the unrefined stuff (the good stuff) Not to say that refined palm oil is bad for you, but because of the refining process it does lose some significant nutrients.
The oil is extracted from the flesh of the palm fruit:

It’s a high source of beta-carotenes (even more than in tomatoes & carrots), hence the red color of the oil. By refining the oil, the carotenes are lost in the process. Carotenes are awesome, very nutritional and kick-ass anti-oxidants.
Other nutrients that red palm oil contains include: vitamin K, CoQ10, squalene, phytosterols, flavonoids, glycolipids, and phenolic acids. Also, the vitamin E in red palm oil is made up of tocotrienols & tocopherols, whereas the vitamin E in most foods contains only tocopherol.
Tocotrienols have up to 60 times the antioxidant activity of ordinary vitamin E.

So, if it’s so good, why don’t we use it more often?

Like coconut oil, red palm oil contains a lot of saturated fats (but also unsaturated fats) and in current times, people are freaked out by saturated fats (but we know better, right?)
I can bore you with all the reasons why saturated fats are not bad for you, but lots of articles have already been written about this topic.
Other reason can be location, in countries where palm trees grow, it’s used more, for example Africa and Southeast Asia.
Red palm oil does have a distinctive taste and smell, that doesn’t go with every dish (or at least, that’s what I think) Personally, I found it to go well with spicy dishes, stir-fries and stews.
The brand I use is Aman Prana, but I believe this brand is not available everywhere, but I found these on Amazon that looked pretty good too!



(extra info source: http://www.ihealthdirectory.com/red-palm-oil/)