The importance of extra virgin raw palm kernel oil benefits and use in cosmetics and natural health

Palm oil is a vegetable oil extracted by hot pressing from the pulp of the fruits of the oil palm, a tree native to tropical Africa from which palm kernel oil is also obtained, extracted from the kernel of its fruits .

1. Why is palm oil used? 

If the food and medicinal use of palm oil goes back 5,000 years in Egypt, it experienced a great breakthrough in the twentieth century in the food industry, its main outlet today in the world. But the oil of our ancestors was not quite the same as that found most today.

1.1. Palm oil, a dazzling growth

Extracted from the pulp of the palm fruit in oil, palm oil is native to Africa from west and central. Today it is cultivated in the tropics, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. Its largest producer is Indonesia (34 million tonnes or 85% of production), followed by Malaysia (17 million) and far behind, by Thailand, Colombia and Nigeria.

There are several

types of palm oil: 

• Virgin palm oil, red in color, rich in vitamins A, E and antioxidants, and used in African and Brazilian cuisine.

• Refined, heated and filtered palm oil. Refining deprives the oil of its interesting biological molecules; a process prohibited in organic farming. & nbsp;

• Hydrogenated palm oil: which has undergone a chemical treatment to reduce the risks of oxidation and degradation of the fat . It is prohibited in organic farming but can be found in organic cosmetics and cleaning products.