Catherine Saxelby's Foodwatch | Q. If I stick to vegetable oils will I avoid saturated fats?

Q. If I stick to vegetable oils will I avoid saturated fats?

Q. I have been told that just checking for vegetable oil in the ingredients list is not enough if I want to avoid saturated fat.

A. This is true. While most vegetable oils like sunflower or canola are low in saturated fat and high in healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats, this isn’t the case 100 per cent of the time. The big exceptions are palm oil and coconut oil. Palm oil, also called palmolein on the Ingredients list, is a vegetable oil that’s very high in saturated fat – as is coconut oil. Palm oil is a popular choice for food manufactures and is often the oil used to make snack foods, French fries, chips and other deep-fried fast food items.

You will often find VEGETABLE OIL on an Ingredients list and more often than not it will be because palm oil is used. One way of knowing is to cross-check the nutrition information panel. If more than a third of the foods total fat is saturated, it is unlikely the vegetable oil used is a healthier variety and you are best to give it a miss.

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