How to determine the presence of palm oil in products? Undoubtedly, palm oil is one of the extremely dangerous products for humans.
The problem is the melting point of palm oil, it is 40 degrees Celsius, which means that this substance can heavily pollute the human body, causing weight gain and the risk of cancer.
Palm oil is very cheap, dishonest manufacturers persistently add this vegetable oil to all dairy products: milk, cottage cheese, ice cream, cheese, cream, butter, cheese curds, yoghurts, etc. In addition, this by-product is actively used in the confectionery industry in the production of sweets and chocolate , cakes and pastries.
How to check for palm oil in products? Simple tests and tips.
1) Start by reading the product label. Some manufacturers do not write the wording “palm oil” in the composition, but indicate “vegetable fats”. If you see that ice cream or butter packaging indicates that it contains “vegetable fats,” you should know that we are talking about palm oil.
2) Pay attention to the price. If butter costs 40 or 50 rubles instead of 80-100 rubles, then this product was definitely made from cheap vegetable raw materials. Dairy products made from natural high-quality raw materials cannot be cheap.
Natural butter costs on average from 80 rubles, natural milk ice cream - from 30 rubles.
4) Do a simple test. Heat the butter to a temperature of 37-38 degrees Celsius, if it completely melts, then the product is natural. If there are pieces left in the creamy mass, this means that vegetable raw materials have been added to the product. Plus, oil with the addition of palm will not crumble; if you spread it straight out of the refrigerator, it will be plastic. Natural butter will crumble when cooled to 2 degrees.
5) How to check ice cream for palm oil. Take a small piece of ice cream and rub it on your palm; if a thin film remains, it means vegetable fats have been added to the product.
6) How to check cheese for the presence of palm oil. To do this, you need to leave the cheese for a long time at room temperature, that is, deliberately spoil it. When spoiled, natural cheese dries out; cheese with an admixture of palm oil cracks when spoiled.
7) Unnatural milk is stored longer at room temperature; if spoiled, the appearance does not change at all.
8) Natural sour cream gradually thickens when stored in the refrigerator. Sour cream made with palm oil does not thicken in the refrigerator.
9) How to determine the presence of palm oil in condensed milk. It’s very simple, such condensed milk is always a little bitter.
Be careful when purchasing dairy products and be sure to read the label.
Conscientious producers of dairy products work in accordance with quality and safety requirements, which cannot be said about the numerous scammers in the field of dairy processing enterprises. Fats of non-animal origin are almost always detected in products produced at such enterprises. In most cases, this is inexpensive palm oil, and not of the best quality. Palm oil in dairy products and other products is harmful to our health.
Milk, butter, cheese, cottage cheese, ice cream? Surely this is not a complete list of products that you often buy, from which you cook not only for yourself, but also for your children? Read the article to know for sure whether you are making a mistake when buying industrial and even homemade milk.
How can you tell if a product contains palm oil?
First of all, when purchasing a product, you need to carefully look at its name and composition. If the packaging says “dairy product”, “cheese product”, etc., and the contents contain a mention of vegetable fat, then we can conclude that the product most likely contains palm oil.
The low price of dairy products should also alert the buyer.
If the product has already been purchased, then the presence of vegetable fats in its composition can be determined by several signs.
Milk
The color of real natural milk usually does not have a bluish tint. If such milk stands in a cold place, cream forms in its upper layer, and in a warm room it sours.
This is what kislyak (sour milk) looks like number 6.
The counterfeit product does not change in appearance and does not turn sour, but after standing for a long time it acquires an unpleasant taste.
I would like to remind you that you can make equally healthy milk from plant products. For example, from sesame and so on.
Oil
To check the quality of butter, you need to take a small piece of it and place it on your palm. A sign of naturalness will be the complete gradual melting of the product with the formation of a whitish film on the surface.
Products with palm oil practically do not change their appearance and do not melt one hundred percent even in the palm of your hand, leaving hard pieces.
To check the quality of cheese, just cut a slice from it and “forget” it on the table for a while. A fake product, as a rule, will “sweat” and become denser, while low-quality processed cheese will quickly dry out and crack.
Processed cheese is generally not suitable for consumption unless it is prepared at home. The problem is salts - melting agents, which are necessarily present in the cheese product. This salt is dangerous to health, just like other chemicals.
Fortunately, there is always a choice: you can make cheese at home! And it's quite simple. For example, a quick recipe.
Ice cream
To understand whether there is cheap vegetable fat in ice cream, you need to pinch off a small piece of this sweet delicacy, put it on one palm and rub it with the other. The feeling of an oily, thick film on your hands means the presence of palm oil.
Such a product quickly melts and completely spreads, turning into a transparent liquid mass. Natural ice cream holds its shape for a long time, while becoming soft.
Unlike cheese or cottage cheese, dairy ice cream is not so easy to make at home. But it won’t be too difficult to prepare.
Not all “milk” on store shelves is dairy milk as such. Some products replace expensive animal fat with cheap palm oil.
Why is palm oil dangerous?
Palm oil is a product obtained by processing the leaves and fruits of the oil palm tree, native to Indonesia, Malaysia and New Guinea.
For dairy producers, palm oil is an unusually attractive raw material, since its cost is almost 4 times lower than the cost of milk fat.
Thus, the use of a palm substitute makes it possible to significantly reduce production costs, while also increasing profits. In addition, the addition of palm oil improves the taste of the final product and significantly increases its shelf life.
For this reason, manufacturers willingly add “palm” to milk, cream, cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream, butter, yogurt, and ice cream.
On the part of milk consumers, things are completely different. Due to its high melting point (from 38 to 40 0 C), palm fat is practically not processed by the human body, accumulating on the walls of blood vessels and slagging the body.
Palm oil leads to obesity and atherosclerosis, it can cause cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
The greatest danger is not so much palm oil in its pure form, but its trans isomers - products obtained during the thickening process for ease of transportation with their subsequent liquefaction.
How to recognize the presence of palm substitute
The simplest and most effective way is to study the text describing the composition of the product. The phrases “vegetable fat”, “vegetable oil” or “vegetable fat substitute” are a reason to be wary, and the words “palm oil” are a direct indication that the selected product contains derivatives of palm fruits or leaves instead of milk fats.
Pay close attention to the product name. A sign of replacing milk fat with vegetable fat will be all sorts of variations such as “Cheese”, “Curd”, “Sour cream”, “Condensed milk”, “Condensed milk” and the like.
Another reason to refuse a purchase is the presence of the word “product” in the name. For example: “Dairy product”, “Cheese product”, “Mayonnaise product” and others.
The presence of palm oil in a product will be unmistakably indicated by its long (obscenely) shelf life.
It is impossible to accurately determine at home whether a purchased product or yoghurt contains palm additives, since expensive laboratory tests are required to obtain a definite answer.
However, based on the external characteristics of products, one can judge with a high degree of probability whether they contain “palm” or not.
| Product | Signs of authenticity | Evidence of palm oil |
| Milk | Appearance of a layer of cream on the surface | Does not deteriorate for a long time in warm conditions, has a slight blue tint |
| Sour cream | It thickens in the refrigerator | After tasting, a feeling of a greasy film remains in the mouth |
| Oil | When exposed to heat, it will melt completely, leaving a thin white film. | When exposed to heat, it will partially melt, leaving small solid inclusions. |
| Cottage cheese | Acidifies when exposed to heat, retaining its original color. | When exposed to heat, it ventilates, forming a yellow crust, but the smell and taste are retained. |
| Cheese | When exposed to heat, it loses elasticity and becomes soft. | Under the influence of heat, large fatty droplets form on the surface, the product itself becomes denser |
| Processed cheese | Becomes soft when exposed to heat | It has a pronounced creamy taste with soapy notes; when exposed to heat and air, it weathers, becomes hard and cracks. |
| Ice cream | When exposed to heat it becomes soft, maintaining its original shape. | Melts for a long time, after melting it turns into a puddle of transparent liquid |
In addition to dairy products, palm substitute can be present in baby food, baked goods, confectionery and fast food dishes.
Therefore, before eating the above products, make sure that there is no palm oil in their composition.
How to identify palm oil in foodEnjoy your meal! Be always healthy!
Palm oil is a product obtained from the leaves and fruits of the oil palm tree. It appeared in Russian food products in the 90s, and every year the popularity of its use among various manufacturers became more and more.
Nutritionists and other nutrition experts consider this product to be quite dangerous for the human body. Due to the high melting point, which ranges from 38o to 40o C, palm fat is not processed when it enters the human body. It becomes a kind of plasticine, begins to accumulate on the walls of our blood vessels, clogs the body, provokes weight gain and can cause the development of cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
Palm oil is a cheap product. Thanks to this low cost, it is used in the production of various food products. This vegetable fat is added to milk, cheese, cream, butter, ice cream, cottage cheese, yoghurts, condensed milk, etc. It is often and happily used in the confectionery industry. The lion's share of sweets, chocolate, pastries, cakes and cookies lying on store shelves is “contaminated” with palm oil.
In addition to its low cost, it has several more unique properties:
Significantly increases the shelf life of products;
-improves taste.
Unscrupulous manufacturers successfully take advantage of these properties, not always indicating the exact wording in the ingredients. But you can fight this. There are ways to independently find harmful “palm” in the products you buy.
How to determine the presence of palm oil at home
First, read the label. If you see “vegetable fats” in a product, it most likely means palm oil.
Natural high-quality raw materials cannot be cheap. Therefore, if you are going to buy butter for 40-60 rubles per package, be prepared for the fact that this butter is made from low-value vegetable fat. Cheese is cheaper than 400 rubles per kilo or a glass of ice cream costs less than 30 rubles. also raise suspicions.
Pay attention to the title. All kinds of variations, such as “dairy product” or “cheese product”, “cheese”, “sour cream”, “cottage cheese” or “curd mass”, “mayonnaise sauce”, “condensed milk” or “condensed milk”, etc., probably say that this is an unclean product. In general, the word “product” on the label is a signal of replacing milk fat with vegetable fat.
The surprisingly long shelf life of the product also indicates the presence of "palm".
How to identify palm oil in butter
- heat it to 37°C and monitor the process: the natural butter will melt completely and a white foam and film will remain on its surface; the product with the addition of vegetable raw materials at this temperature will not melt completely, small solid inclusions will remain;
- analyze your taste sensations: when eating a sandwich with pseudo-butter, your teeth will seem to “get stuck” in it, real butter will not leave a feeling of plaque on your tongue and teeth;
- remove the package of butter from the refrigerator and leave it at room temperature: while the natural product will become soft, the butter with added vegetable fat will remain hard;
- if the butter that was in the refrigerator breaks or crumbles when cut, we can definitely say that the butter was made with the addition of palm oil;
when cutting a creamy-vegetable hybrid, you can see specks on the cut - this is due to recrystallization of vegetable fat during storage;
- look for GOST. On packages with 100% butter there is GOST R 52969-2008.
How to determine palm oil in cheese at home
— semi-hard cheeses made using plant raw materials either stick to the knife or break and crumble when cut;
- leave a piece of cheese in the room for a while: if your semi-hard cheese has thickened and is covered with oil drops, then you are about to eat fake cheese;
— GOST R 52686-2006, indicated on the packaging, practically guarantees the absence of vegetable oils.
How to identify palm oil in ice cream
— take a small spoon of ice cream in your hands and rub it between your palms: if you feel a filmy feeling on your hands, there are additives in the ice cream;
- let your dessert melt: a real dairy product becomes soft, but retains its shape (in the photo below), a palm delicacy takes a long time to melt and eventually becomes a clear liquid;
— natural ice cream is marked with GOST R 52175-2003.
How to determine palm oil in milk, fermented baked milk, kefir
- artificial milk has the property of not spoiling for a long time, being in the heat, and having spoiled, it does not change at all in appearance;
- milk, even with a low percentage of fat content, should not be blue;
— an indicator of the quality of milk is the appearance of a layer of cream on the surface.
In fact, vegetable oils are extremely rarely added to milk, kefir and fermented baked milk. It is difficult and unprofitable.
How to identify palm oil in sour cream and cottage cheese
- you ate a spoonful of sour cream or cottage cheese and felt a greasy film in your mouth, which means you came across a product with a milk fat substitute;
— natural sour cream begins to thicken in the refrigerator, pseudo sour cream does not have this possibility;
- if you don’t put a plate of natural cottage cheese in the refrigerator in time, it will begin to sour, but at the same time retain its color, and if a yellow crust appears, the product becomes weathered, but the taste and smell are preserved, know that you are dealing with a “palm tree”;
— for real cottage cheese the law is GOST R 52096-2003, for sour cream - GOST R 52092-2003.
How to determine palm oil in condensed milk
- look at the composition of the product: there are flavors, stabilizers or some other components, except for the obligatory milk and sugar, therefore, herbal additives are still present. The thing is that when palm oil is added, condensed milk begins to taste bitter and to mask this, manufacturers resort to taste improvers.
- GOST R 53436-2009 was not found on the can, which means there is a deceptive product inside.
And be careful with boiled condensed milk, here the percentage of deception is very high, its indicators reach the level of 95%.
And finally, try to follow the latest research from nutritionists, consumer rights societies, and the media. Remember and make your list of reliable and decent manufacturers. And then you have a great chance to emerge victorious from the fat war.
Material prepared by Yaroslava Baraukhina
Palm oil is a product obtained from the leaves and fruits of the oil palm tree. It appeared in Russian food products in the 90s, and every year the popularity of its use among various manufacturers became more and more.
Nutritionists and other nutrition experts consider this product to be quite dangerous for the human body. Due to the high melting point, which ranges from 38o to 40o C, palm fat is not processed when it enters the human body. It becomes a kind of plasticine, begins to accumulate on the walls of our blood vessels, clogs the body, provokes weight gain and can cause the development of cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
Palm oil is a cheap product. Thanks to this low cost, it is used in the production of various food products. This vegetable fat is added to milk, cheese, cream, butter, ice cream, cottage cheese, yoghurts, condensed milk, etc. It is often and happily used in the confectionery industry. The lion's share of sweets, chocolate, pastries, cakes and cookies lying on store shelves is “contaminated” with palm oil.
In addition to its low cost, it has several more unique properties:
- significantly increases the shelf life of products;
- improves taste.
Unscrupulous manufacturers successfully take advantage of these properties, not always indicating the exact wording in the ingredients. But you can fight this. There are ways to independently find harmful “palm” in the products you buy.
How to determine the presence of palm oil at home
- First, read the label. If you see “vegetable fats” in a product, it most likely means palm oil.
- Natural high-quality raw materials cannot be cheap. Therefore, if you are going to buy butter for 40-60 rubles per package, be prepared for the fact that this butter is made from low-value vegetable fat. Cheese is cheaper than 400 rubles per kilo or a glass of ice cream costs less than 30 rubles. also raise suspicions.
- Pay attention to the title. All kinds of variations, such as “dairy product” or “cheese product”, “cheese”, “sour cream”, “cottage cheese” or “curd mass”, “mayonnaise sauce”, “condensed milk” or “condensed milk”, etc., probably say that this is an unclean product. In general, the word “product” on the label is a signal of replacing milk fat with vegetable fat.
- The surprisingly long shelf life of the product also indicates the presence of "palm".
How to identify palm oil in butter
- heat it to 37°C and monitor the process: the natural butter will melt completely and a white foam and film will remain on its surface; the product with the addition of vegetable raw materials at this temperature will not melt completely, small solid inclusions will remain;
- analyze your taste sensations: when eating a sandwich with pseudo-butter, your teeth will seem to “get stuck” in it, real butter will not leave a feeling of plaque on your tongue and teeth;
- remove the package of butter from the refrigerator and leave it at room temperature: while the natural product will become soft, the butter with added vegetable fat will remain hard;
- if the butter that was in the refrigerator breaks or crumbles when cut, we can definitely say that the butter was made with the addition of palm oil;
- when cutting a creamy-vegetable hybrid, you can see specks on the cut - this is due to recrystallization of vegetable fat during storage;
- look for GOST. On packages with 100% butter there is GOST R 52969-2008.
How to determine palm oil in cheese at home
— semi-hard cheeses made using plant raw materials either stick to the knife or break and crumble when cut;
- leave a piece of cheese in the room for a while: if your semi-hard cheese has thickened and is covered with oil drops, then you are about to eat fake cheese;
— GOST R 52686-2006, indicated on the packaging, practically guarantees the absence of vegetable oils.
How to identify palm oil in ice cream
— take a small spoon of ice cream in your hands and rub it between your palms: if you feel a filmy feeling on your hands, there are additives in the ice cream;
- let your dessert melt: a real dairy product becomes soft, but retains its shape (in the photo below), a palm delicacy takes a long time to melt and eventually becomes a clear liquid;
— natural ice cream is marked with GOST R 52175-2003.
How to determine palm oil in milk, fermented baked milk, kefir
- artificial milk has the property of not spoiling for a long time, being in the heat, and having spoiled, it does not change at all in appearance;
- milk, even with a low percentage of fat content, should not be blue;
— an indicator of the quality of milk is the appearance of a layer of cream on the surface.
In fact, vegetable oils are extremely rarely added to milk, kefir and fermented baked milk. It is difficult and unprofitable.
How to identify palm oil in sour cream and cottage cheese
- you ate a spoonful of sour cream or cottage cheese and felt a greasy film in your mouth, which means you came across a product with a milk fat substitute;
— natural sour cream begins to thicken in the refrigerator, pseudo sour cream does not have this possibility;
- if you don’t put a plate of natural cottage cheese in the refrigerator in time, it will begin to sour, but at the same time retain its color, and if a yellow crust appears, the product becomes weathered, but the taste and smell are preserved, know that you are dealing with a “palm tree”;
- for real cottage cheese the law is GOST R 52096-2003, for sour cream - GOST R 52092-2003.
How to determine palm oil in condensed milk
- look at the composition of the product: there are flavors, stabilizers or some other components, except for the obligatory milk and sugar, therefore, herbal additives are still present. The thing is that when palm oil is added, condensed milk begins to taste bitter and to mask this, manufacturers resort to taste improvers.
- GOST R 53436-2009 was not found on the can, which means there is a deceptive product inside.
And be careful with boiled condensed milk, here the percentage of deception is very high, its indicators reach the level of 95%.
And finally, try to follow the latest research from nutritionists, consumer rights societies, and the media. Remember and make your list of reliable and decent manufacturers. And then you have a great chance to emerge victorious from the fat war.
