Can I eat palm oil if I have constipation?

Constipation is not a minor illness. It can easily threaten the patient's health. To relieve constipation, we can eat more vegetables and fruits rich in dietary fiber. We can also consume more oil to lubricate the intestines. So can patients with constipation eat palm oil? We need to understand what palm oil is and what the nutritional components of palm oil are.

Palm oil has a wide range of uses, and we can see palm oil in many aspects, but we must know that there are certain standards for using palm oil, and palm oil also has certain harms.

Palm oil is a tropical woody vegetable oil. It is currently the world's largest produced, consumed and internationally traded vegetable oil variety. It is known as the "world's three major vegetable oils" together with soybean oil and rapeseed oil, and has a edible history of more than 5,000 years.

Palm oil is squeezed from palm fruits on oil palm trees. The pulp and kernel produce palm oil and palm kernel oil respectively. The traditional concept of palm oil only includes the former. After refining and fractionation, palm oil can be obtained into products with different melting points, which are widely used in the catering industry, food industry and oil and fat industry. Southeast Asia and Africa are the main palm oil producing areas, accounting for about 88% of the world's total palm oil production. Indonesia, Malaysia and Nigeria are the world's top three producers. Currently, China has become the world's largest importer of palm oil, with annual palm oil consumption of about 6 million tons, accounting for 20% of the total market.

Palm oil is also known as saturated oil because it contains 50% saturated fat. Oils and fats are a mixture of three components: saturated fat, monounsaturated fat, and polyunsaturated fat. The human body's digestion and absorption rate of palm oil is over 97%. Like all other vegetable oils, palm oil itself does not contain cholesterol.

As a highly saturated oil, palm oil has been speculated to have the potential to increase cholesterol levels in human serum. However, after further experimental verification by many experts, it was found that consuming palm oil not only does not increase serum cholesterol, but tends to reduce cholesterol. The reason is that a large amount of research data shows that different saturated fatty acids have different effects on blood lipids. Palm oil is rich in neutral fatty acids. The content of substances that increase cholesterol in palm oil is very small (1%). Palm oil is rich in natural vitamin E and tocotrienols (600-1000mg/kg), carotenoids (500-700mg/kg) and linoleic acid (10%), which are very beneficial to human health. Some researchers have conducted separate studies on different races (Europeans, Americans, and Asians), and the results show that palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that fully meets the health needs of the human body.

We introduced above that constipation brings great harm to patients, so we recommend that patients with constipation can eat more fruits and vegetables rich in dietary fiber. In addition, patients with constipation can consume more oil to lubricate the intestines. Although the palm oil mentioned above has the function of lubricating the intestines, it contains too high cholesterol, so it is not suitable for patients with constipation.