Food safety & nutrition issues: challenges and opportunities for Indonesian palm oil

Abstract

About 85% of palm oil, the most traded vegetable oil in the world, is used for food applications. Especially with increasing consumer awareness about the relationship between food, safety and health, the issue of food and nutrition safety is always become a major concern in the palm oil industry. The palm oil industry, in meeting the needs of the food industry throughout the world, must comply with food and nutrition safety standards, such as codex standards. In this presentation, some challenges related to food safety and nutrition will be discussed; including (i) the safety of compounds formed during the refining process, such as glycidol and chloropropanediol and (ii) safety aspects related to the fatty acids composition of palm oil. Finally, this presentation will also discuss opportunities for palm oil, not only opportunities to overcome the challenges of safety issues, but also in taking advantage of the potential unique benefits of palm oil, due to the content of its functional components, such as tocopherol., tokotrienol and carotene.