Oil Palm Elephant and the Blind Men

Various unsubstantiated utterances have been made by some on oil palm cultivation in Sri Lanka, without looking in depth into the subject. Little knowledge is a dangerous thing! A leading politician, in the south, some months ago, prior to the elections, went to the extent of felling a few oil palm trees along a stream bank, probably growing out of seeds dispersed by birds and animals from existing plantations around. He was, of course, seeking to impress villagers in the oil palm cultivating areas ,prior to the elections! Some villagers have been vociferously demanding the banning of the crop, claiming that it is drying up their water resources, although the available scientific evidence does not support their contention. Anyhow, they have now succeeded with the President banning the crop without an in- depth analysis of the issues at stake!

Interestingly, the Government Medical Officers’ Association, some days ago, conducted a seminar on coconut oil, but the unstated objective appeared to be to promote coconut oil and concurrently degrade palm oil! However, except for a few presentations, that of a historian and several Aurvedic specialists, the others failed to articulate effectively a factual comparison of the two crops and their oils.

A lecturer of the Wayamba University ‘sang the usual song’ of oil palm cultivations excessively drying the soil and water bodies as against rubber, without supporting data. He should have conducted a comparative hydrological study of an exclusively oil palm cultivated area as against a nearby rubber only area to support his contention. The published comparative evapo-transpiration evidence of oil palm and rubber do not support his views. A biochemist (a retired professor) comparing the chemical composition of fatty acids in coconut and palm oil stated the virtues of coconut oil fats, but hardly anything about palm oil fats. It is a well known fact that coconut oil is a functional food , that means it has health benefits other than the nutritional. Its main health benefit is the high composition of the so called medium chain fatty acids, lauric, capric and caproic acids, which constitute nearly 63% of the total fatty acid content. Lauric and capric acids are reported to have anti-microbial properties. In fact lauric acid is also a component of mother’s milk and is reported to provide suckling babies immunity against harmful microbes. On the other hand, some coconut fats namely, lauric, myristic and palmetic acids comprising about 74% of the fatty acids in coconut oil are reported to elevate cholesterol. It is to be noted then that lauric acid is doing both good and bad! On the other hand, palm oil lacks the medium chain fatty acids, there being only a trace of lauric acid and accounts for about 46% cholesterol elevating saturated fats, nearly all of it being palmetic acid. Nevertheless, it has 39% oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, and 9% lenoleic acid, an unsaturated fat both of which reduce total cholesterol. It is important to note that the monounsaturated fat, oleic acid, in palm oil, as also in avocado and cashew nuts, decrease only the (bad) LDL cholesterol but not the good (HDL) cholesterol. Palm kernel oil on the other hand, comprising less than 10% of the total oil content in the fruit, has a fatty acid composition, very comparable to coconut oil. On the whole, therefore, palm oil can be argued to be more heart friendly than coconut oil! Regrettably, the good professor should have explained all this to the participants of the meeting! However, it is now accepted that consumption of coconut oil in moderation does not elevate the risk of heart disease. The same applies to palm oil.

The professor, however, was on the whole, sceptical of oil palm and one of his hacks was on tree trunk’s use as timber, a common practice in many oil palm growing countries. He stated that the trees are harvested only about every 25 years, and, therefore, the factories will have to remain closed most of the time! Is he not aware that coconut timber is harvested only every 60-80 years, but the coconut timber mills function throughout because all timber harvesting, whether oil palm or coconut, is not done at any one time!

One of the agenda items of the GMOA Seminar is felicitation of Dr D P Athukorale, a well-known cardiologist. I should add a word on my association with him in defending coconut oil consumption in the 1990s when I was Chairman of the Coconut Research Board. However, my first interaction with him dates back to 1983 when, I consulted him for high blood lipids, having returned from Brazil, spending one year on a World Bank mission, and eating beef steak regularly and lavishly! Dr Athukorale’s advice was then, amongst other things, to cut down on my saturated fat intake including coconut oil!

A decade later, when I took over the appointment as Chairman of the Coconut Research Board, one of the first things I came across was the above poster which had been widely distributed the world over! Coconut and palm oils were then accused as ” artery-clogging tropical oils”! Naturally, I was highly disturbed and began digging into the literature on the subject and educating myself on the impact of coconut oil on cardio-vascular diseases.

The history of it is that coconut and palm oil were the main vegetable oils used in the U.S and Europe prior to the World War 11. However, when vegetable oil shipments from SE Asia were disrupted due to the war, the west naturally looked for alternative oil sources and hit upon soya and corn oils. In fact at that time soya oil was used for making paint amongst other uses, but hardly as a dietary oil! With the war ending, and coconut oil shipments arriving again in the U.S and Europe, the soya lobby with the support of the American Heart Association, launched a massive misinformation campaign against coconut and palm oils, as depicted in the poster. The Ancel Keys diet- heart hypothesis, that was propounded by then, that saturated fats elevate cholesterol, leading to coronary vascular diseases, was widely accepted in the U.S and Europe, and people avoided consuming saturated fat. The misinformation campaign was so effective, it was said that the people were more scared of saturated fat than ghosts! The soya lobby, backed by the American Heart Association even attempted to ban import of tropical oils . As a consequence, the U.S government appointed a Senate Sub Committee to investigate into the complaint. However, the Coconut Authority of the Philippines hired a team of experts comprising cardiologists and other specialists from the Harvard Medical College to defend against the proposed ban. The team successfully argued the case pointing out that, apart from other evidence, whereas there were then 227 deaths for every 100,000 Americans due to cardiovascular diseases, there were only 22 Philippines, and the coconut oil content was less 1% in the US diet as against 6% in the Philippine’s!. In that setting it should have been natural for our doctors too to fall in line with the western thinking on saturated fats!

When we (CRI) started our campaign promoting coconut in 1994 , I approached Dr Athukorale, feeding him with new scientific information on coconut oil I had collected. We jointly had a TV programme in Rupavahini and also several seminars including ones in the Colombo and Peradeniya Medical Faculties explaining matters. Prof. Shanthi Mendis, cardiologist, then with the Medical Faculty, University of Peradeniya who had conducted controlled trials feeding coconut oil as against corn oil to subjects, was initially rather cautious with coconut oil consumption, but later came round taking up the position that, consumed in moderation, its risk was minimal!

Things have taken a U turn in the last two decades, in that coconut oil, one of the two so called “artery-clogging tropical oils”, has become the ‘ darling oil’ of the west’ and palm oil is present in nearly 50% of the processed food items in the supermarket!

In conclusion, the global demand for vegetable oils is increasing with increasing population and affluence. Oil palm’s comparative advantage is its extremely high oil productivity with a global average of 3.5 t/ha as against 1t/ha or less for coconut and all other oils. About 43% of the global vegetal oil supply is from oil palm, and it will continue to be the world’s highest oil supplier. Because of increasing demand for food but agricultural land limitations, there is a global trend of replacing less productive and profitable crops with the more profitable, and in this regard too oil palm’s vantage position as an oil crop cannot be matched. We produce only 50,000 MT of coconut oil whereas our vegetable oil demand is in excess of 200,000 MT; and even with substantial expansion of the coconut cover, the oil demand cannot be matched. There is thus a need to expand the oil palm cultivation to at least 50,000 ha to meet our oil requirement. The concurrent foreign exchange savings will be substantial. There is no evidence of environmental damage if the needed land is provided by replacing rubber. The small farmers are abandoning rubber cultivation because of low profit margins, and the net profit from oil palm is several fold that from rubber. Ideally, therefore, oil palm cultivation should be introduced to smallholders, too, as in other countries.

Dr. Parakrama Waidyaratne