Uses of Palm Oil

A few years ago, U.S. nutritionists declared that palm oil was very unhealthy. Soon after that, the flavor of all fast-food French fries changed forever. Many would say the change was for the worse.

Here in Malaysia, palm oil is one of the major products. Gigantic palm oil plantations cover many hectares of land. And the French fries at McDonald's taste the way French fries used to taste! Yum!

Two days ago I had some Ritz cheese-sandwich crackers. Delicious! Yep, palm oil was ingredient No. 2 on the list. No butter at all.

In the supermarket aisle for cooking oil, there is about a 3-ft.-wide space for olive oil. It is fantastically expensive. Olives are not grown here, and I don't think I have seen a single olive, black or green, the whole time I've been here. Not even in a jar.

The bottles of palm oil are arrayed from one end of the aisle to the other, and the label simply says "cooking oil." I had to read about 30 labels before I finally found something that was a mix of canola and safflower oil. It is imported from Australia.

Here is the weirdest thing: "Ice cream" here is made from palm oil and powdered skim milk. I am not joking. You do not want to know what it tastes like. There is not a drop of cream, or even real milk, in it! The flavors are something else altogether -- lychee, durian, rose. They do have chocolate, but I have not tried it. I had vanilla with black currant syrup, and it was edible, but something was very wrong about the taste. That was when I read the label, and ... well. The ingredient labels on all products are printed in English (usually also in Malay, and sometimes in Chinese and Tamil as well).

In the shopping malls, you can get Haagen Dazs, Baskin-Robbins, and a wonderful gelato from a place called New Zealand Naturals. But you cannot buy any of those brands in the local supermarkets in Shah Alam. Only this bizarre palm oil product.

I asked one of my Malaysian friends about it, and she said that when Malaysians go abroad, they go crazy for the foreign ice cream. They love it! Well, no wonder!

Dairy products are just not big here. The cheese section of the refrigerated case in the supermarket has stacks and stacks of processed cheese-food slices -- and almost nothing else. There is one real cheddar (imported from Australia) at my supermarket, but they have been out of it for two weeks now. Its name is "Old Bitey"! There is also the French Laughing Cow cheese spread -- which is very tasty on cream crackers made with palm oil.

There is very good yogurt. My two favorite flavors are mango and kiwi fruit. No palm oil is listed in the ingredients.