What is vegetable oil?
Vegetables oils are polyunsaturated. They are water-insoluble substances, consisting of mixture of triglycerides of fatty acids and also contain small amounts of other compounds, such as sterols and tocopherols, which fats antioxidants and play important roles in biological processes.
Vegetable oils are considered to be healthier to consume in food than saturated oils and they are large organic molecules containing many C=C.
Most vegetable oils are obtained from beans or seeds, which generally furnish two valuable commodities: a fatty acid oil and a protein rich meal.
Vegetable oils such as canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, olive oil and palm oil have been generally replaced animals fats in cooking largely because they are unsaturated. Medical recommendations stress the need to lower the amount of saturated fat in the diet.
At present there are four dominant vegetable oils: palm, soybean, rapeseed and sunflower seed.
Vegetable oils may be incorporated into food products as a replacement for dairy fat. Filled milk for example is made from skim milk powder reconstituted with an appropriate vegetable oil.
Cheeses also have been developed based on vegetable fat rather than dairy fat.
Margarine products with less than 80 percent fat (vegetable oil) by weight usually are label as vegetable spread.
