Palm oil means different things to different people. For 650,000 Malaysian oil palm smallholders, it is a vital source of income. To KDU University College lecturers, students and its officials, they consider the vegetable oil nutritious and versatile in cooking. This is after they have been exposed to accurate information on Malaysian palm oil via a wall project at the university college in Utropolis Glenmarie, Shah Alam.
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recent bulletin contained an article focused on the palm oil sector. The article was full of errors, omissions, assumptions and other evidence of bias. The fact that those biases exist is a major problem, but the wider problem is the following: The WHO article’s stated concern was that the palm oil industry focuses on “lobbying”, to the detriment of scientific evidence.
Kathryn Hall, Ph.D., MPH, from the Division of Preventative Medicine at Brigham, was quoted as saying, “Observational studies of people taking vitamin E have reported benefits, and studies in animal models have suggested a protective effect, but when vitamin E supplements were brought into placebo-controlled clinical trials, the results were null. This made it easy to assume that vitamin E just doesn’t work. But what we’ve found is that it may have been protective in some and not in others, and that genetic variation is linked to these outcomes.
Vitamin E supplementation may reduce the risk for cancer but only in individuals harboring a particular allele of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, suggests an analysis of two randomized trials.
There is a longstanding debate as to whether taking vitamin E supplements increases or decreases a person’s risk of developing cancer. A new study suggests that both outcomes are a possibility and also explains why.
Low vitamin C levels appear to impair the gut-liver axis’ role in vitamin E transfer and bioavailability that is crucial in preventing inflammation, as a review reveals its findings in metabolic syndrome (MetS) patients.
A new study has investigated whether taking vitamin E supplements could affect risk of cancer and found that genetic variations in the gene COMT influenced whether vitamin E decreased or increased risk of developing cancer during and after the study periods.
It is understandable if the Western edible oil industry launches a vicious campaign against palm oil out of commercial interest, even if lies and half-truths are employed. But when governments side with the for-profit industry in phasing out the import of palm oil without careful consideration of the facts, it calls into question the fairness and democratic principles that Western countries often preach.
Tocopherols and tocotrienols constitute a series of related benzopyranols (or methyl tocols) that are synthesised in plants and other photosynthetic organisms, where they have many important functions. First described in 1922 as a dietary factor essential to prevent fetal reabsorption in rats, it was soon understood that they contained a vitamin (vitamin E) that is essential for innumerable aspects of animal development. Tocopherols are now known to be powerful lipid-soluble antioxidants, but only one isomer, i.e. α-tocopherol, is recognized as having vitamin E activity. In addition, this has regulatory roles in signal transduction and gene expression in animal tissues. Vegetable oils are a major dietary source.
