The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition. elim Kimberly King and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, palm oil has been getting more positive attention lately, it's used for preventing vitamin A deficiency, cancer, frame disease, aging, and more so listen closely and find out the latest facts on pump done right.

But later, we'll tell you what's going on around town and what's new at mother's market, but first step, Neil blomqvist is the Founder and President of Sustainable Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in the development and marketing of sustainable business solutions for the natural products industry.

Born in South Dakota, long quest received a Bachelor of Arts degree in business management and economics from the University of South Dakota, and has over 42 years of hands-on success building brands. And we welcome him to the mother's market radio show. How are you?

I'm good, thank you. And today we're talking about Palm done, right? So Neil, why don't you fill us in our audience in a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today's.

Okay, well, my mission, personal mission began back in the 70s when I got out of college, and after working in the business world for a bit, decided to take a pretty radical course and opened up a natural food store in Montana, and for 10 years was a retailer where dug deeply into all the areas around nutrition and organic and small family farms, and it became my life work, so there's been a commitment to trying to retain those values over the years. I spent 16 years running a company called Spectrum organic products out of Northern California, that's still one of the leading brands of fats and oils and condiments and all things connected.

So during that experience, I got a chance to really deeply understand the issues around nutrition and fat scan oils and sourcing from farm to finish product in the processing issues, and it's probably one of the most misunderstood areas of human nutrition still by the average consumer. So I guess part of my mission has been to really try to educate and help consumers understand, and also for myself really dig deeply into understanding those elements of nutrition and how they fit into the food system all the way from the farm through to finished products.

The most recent connection with fats oils has been with Palm Don right. When I was CEO at Spectrum, we introduced the first organic Paulo into the market in 2002, and it really gave me a chance to study it, and I went to the sourcing country in Colombia, saw where it was being farmed, how was being farmed, how was processed, and I saw this beautiful, rich red oil coming out of these presses that I had to understand more deeply, so I really took it upon ourselves as a company to really take for the first time organic Palma into the US market as a replacement for bad fats that were being used in the natural food industry for margin and baking products and all kinds of things, 'cause we were still using hydrogenated oils back then in the natural food industry, so you're really only cutting edge way back when... Yeah, definitely.

Wow. So my first question really... So this is amazing, 'cause you really did start early, what is the historical use of the tropical fats by humans over our evolution?

Well, if you're within 15 degrees north or south of the equator, tropical fats have been used as a source of nutrition and fat by humans for thousands of years, palm and coconut grew wild in that part of the world, and still does. And the amount of fat that's in that material is a very high concentration of fat, and it's very dense nutritional fat, so besides annotate was the main source of fat for people for thousands of years, and what happened over the, I guess, last 10, 150 years, tropical oils came into the Western world as one of the key part fats along with butter and lard and some of the other hard fats that was used to make mergers and spreads in the key ingredient for baked products. But during the late 40s, early 50s, science figured out how to take Sybil and turn it into a hard fat through hydrogenation, and there was this incredibly well-orchestrated campaign that was originated by the secant association to demonize tropical fats to replace them with hydrogenated subunit. And that's where it all began, where all of the information that's out there that still resides today around tropical fats and why they're so bad, originated out of that effort, and it was actually a lot of science that's now been proven to be false, that was used to demonize those fats.

It was an economic move that was very successful because we don't grow those things in the United States, we can't grow those fats here we can grow out of soybeans and canola and other seed oils, that through this hydrogenation process, you create this hard fact that works really well, it's incredibly stable. But it's not food.

So we had these bad fats in our food system for many, many years, and it wasn't until really the late 90s, early 2000s, when the science started to finally become clear that these fats were very bad, trans fats were the worst fats that you could consume and that they were a leading cause of degenerative disease, so as a result, we have the need for tropical fats to come back into the food system to replace those hydrogenated fats, so we've got an opportunity now to really show... Especially if you're doing organic Fair Trade from the farm all the way through the system, where you've got a very healthy fat coming from a very sustainable source that can be used for vegetarian products, it can be used, it's an incredible frying oil, if you go anywhere, Mexico or South, and you're eating any kind of fried food is fried in Palm, it's the most stable fringe that exists, so there's a lot of functionality and even nutritional side of tropical oils that people don't understand.

So that's my mission. Well, it sounds like you're on a great mission there, why has oil palm farming come under such fire in recent years, dating back to 25, 30 years ago, there was an intense move in Indonesia and Malaysia to take oil poem farming deeply into those countries for economic reasons.

So to this day, they're still continuing to destroy Virgin and second rate growth rainforest to expand the production of palm in those countries, and we call it conflict palm, the destruction of habitat, local communities, there's land grabbing, there's problems with how workers are treated, there's just an ongoing litany of problems that exist in that part of the world, and there have been attempts at trying to fix it, but those countries are difficult to operate in, there's a lot of corruption, the Palma industry is controlled by big corporate interests that are selling... Pomo is the most used oil in the world, internationally, and many countries like India and China, and those countries are predominantly using palm well in their diets, so populations are growing, the need for more poles growing, they keep planning more and more trees and plantations there. So we continue to get destruction of rainforest and habitat and abuse of workers, it's spewing carbon into the atmosphere. When you break open rainforest, virgin rainforest, you've got all this carbon that's been sequestered and Pete for thousands of years that goes up in the atmosphere, so it's really been a huge contributor to climate change. So it gets a lot of negative publicity. The NGOS are all over, umm, trying to expose these things, so the average consumer hears that and they think that all Palm is bad, but in reality, if it's done right... That's why we call it palm done, right? It has an incredible sustainable supply chain that nourishes the local communities, if it's done organically, you're sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere instead of putting it into the atmosphere, we're turning what we call brown fields or conventional farms, small farm, people that have farms that are second third generation farms, we're turning them into organic, so they're creating a much more balanced system for the rainforest around them, and it also, as a result of getting paid higher than conventional prices and fair trade practices, which puts a percentage of the purchases and our sales back to the communities, it actually does the exact 180-degree opposite of what goes on in Asia, so we also, because it's an organic product, it's also processed much more minimally, so you have a higher nutritional value, there's more protection of the oil throughout its processing supply chain, and we're even now, developing products using red palm oil, which has dense nutritional value in the form deactivate mine to corals, to a trialis trials, it's one of the highest concentration of Teatro of any plant on the planet, and as a result, you've got this incredibly rich nutritional boil that people don't really use or understand, so part of what we're doing is trying to take that kind of a product into the market and get people to use it as part of their daily life, is it that the team... Well, that's like the best is absolutely.

Wire plant-based saturated fats. Important for the human diet.

Well, humans need a combination of different fats, essential fatty acids, omega 3 and 6, and their derivatives are essential, we have to have them for good health and balance in our consumption of food.

Saturate are an incredibly good source of energy, so for anyone that's active, it's a fuel, and it is a fuel that can keep you from craving refined carbohydrates, for example, which have been one of the key sources of a lot of degenerative disease and diabetes and obesity.

So having a balance of fats, including saturate as a very good source of energy, fat creates your body's ability to metabolize and process and not have the kind of craving, sugar cravings and refined product cravings that a lot of people have because they're not getting a good balance of that.

So even though it's not an essential fat, it has that component of energy, a source of energy for the human body, and the other thing that's not well understood is that there is a percentage of omega 6, which is an essential fatty acid in Palm, and it also has a very high concentration of mono-unsaturated fats, over 40%, which is the main fat in olive oil, so modern saturated fats have been clinically shown to raise HDL, good cholesterol in the body, and as a result, you get this component of moderates as well as I saturate when you use palm well, now, coined, which is now the Darling vat that's come out in many years, the last few years has become next to all of all the next best seller in our industry, umm, it has over 80% statutes actually higher in saturated and has very little model and saturated fat, so when you look at the two, in comparison, you're actually getting a healthier fat profile from Palm compared to coconut, and the coconut people would probably go, Oh... Oh, not right, but if you look at the numbers. That's reality.

Now, there's other reasons why coconut oil has health qualities, but when you look at it from a fatty acid profile perspective, you're actually getting on the more nutritious fat profile, not how to... Palmerston, Well, this is very interesting information, and right now we need to take a quick break, but more in a minute, don't go away, we will be right. But okay, thank you.

And welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to the past shows. Plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com, and now back to our interview with Founder and President of Sustainable Solutions, Neil Lundquist. So we're talking about Palm done, right? So where do mono-saturated fats fit in the tropical fat story?

Well, that's an interesting question, because we've all heard of the Mediterranean diet, and the Mediterranean diet is based on a combination of different food and eating the Batak many, many years to the Mediterranean, Italy, Spain, how they eat, the whole French phenomenon of eating a lot of fat but not having health problems from it, and Monserrate fat from principally olive oil and nuts and other sources of food in the Mediterranean have always been that kind of key fact that spend in the Mediterranean diet. Well, lo and behold, Palouse over 40% Monserrate. In fact, people have no idea of that connection, they think about Palm... Well, and they go, Oh, it's high in saturated fats. It's really bad for you.

Well, again, it's that misunderstanding and not being well educated and negative publicity that came out about tropical fats and why they got pushed out of the market in the US, so now that they're coming back because we're replacing all of the trans fats and hydrogenated fats with healthier versions and tropical fats are the best solution, they're readily available, their lower cost, it actually has qualities that in some ways are even healthier than butter, for example, used in baking products, and if you're gonna make a pie crust or a cookie or a... Or anything that needs those qualities that you're looking for in a very good finished product that consumers are used to using seed oils like sunflower canal, and so it doesn't do the same job, you get a product that has far less of the kind of mouth feel and texture that you're looking for, and that's where this combination of interesting facts comes from between the Moon Saturn and the saturate makes it a very functional fat for a lot of different applications.

So ultimately, what you're saying is instead of using butter, you can use this palm... Correct.

Oh, that's interesting. I love to bake cookies.

So I'm gonna do that now.

I'll do the test. What advantages do plant-based saturated fats have over other fats?

Well, first of all, if you're vegan or vegetarian, having a choice that is not from an animal source is always going to give you an option if you're a food producer and you wanna make a product for the vegan community, umm... Either coconut or palm make excellent choices as a substitute for butter, it's lower cost, they're very stable, saturated fats are short chain fats compared to the longer chain fat, Omega 3 and 6, so they oxidize much slower, the heat stability is much better for application in the kitchen, so you can, for example, fry at higher temperatures, higher smoke point compared to other oils, and the stability is there, so you get less oxidation over time, whether it's stored in the cupboard or whether it's in a product that goes into the market. So you have the stability that the longer chain, that's from sunflower and canola, so I don't have heroes sing at saturated fats and what types of processing creates the healthiest saturate... Well, we're back to stability again, and how these short-chain fatty acids do under processing techniques.

So when you take the fruit or seed or whatever the oil source is to get the oil out, you've gotta put it through the processing system, and when you're doing that to seed or to Palm, you're using what's called an expelled pressing system, and there's heat and pressure that's built up to be able to get the oil out of that material, and after it's extracted through that process, it also goes through further steps called refining, and that also puts into a position where it gets heat application and other things to get it to a finished product. So those short chain fatty acids are gonna survive through that processing much better than longer chain fatty ass, it's just like in the kitchen, it's gonna do the same, and it's gonna have better stability because that shorter chain fatty acid has a tendency to hold together much better under stress, whether it's exposed to the oxygen or air that I might, you know, be exposed to, whether it's light, whether it's heat, all those things trigger oxidation and fats and less oxidation in the fat, the more it's gonna be healthy for you, so that's where saturate really come into play, they create so much versatility in how you can process and how you can use them in the kitchen that you end up with what goes into your body, much less oxidized fat, and we all know what oxidation does, it is the aging factor.

So the more oxidized fat you eat, the quicker you're gonna age... It's a simple fact.

You talked a little bit about obviously the difference between coconut oil, palm fruit oil and then palm kernel oil, but can you elaborate a... REITS an interesting subject. As I mentioned previously, Coon rails become the Starling fat. For a lot of interesting reasons, it's starting to get under fire because of the stature issue, which is so misunderstood... Interesting, palm kernel oil, which is inside the palm fruit is this pit that looks like an apricot pit, and palm kernel resides in that pit, the palm fruit which surrounds it is where palm fruit oil comes from, and the palm fruit oil has this balance of saturate and mono and saturate that I described. Well, palm kernel oil has almost identical fat to coconut, and people don't realize that, and whenever the palm kernel oil comes up for many consumers are like, Oh, that's really bad fat. Well, if they're eating coconut oil is essentially the same thing, and they don't know that, they don't understand that palm kernel oil is also one of the key ingredients used in producing personal care, cosmetics, home care products, sodium laurel sulfate, which is in just about anything you walk into your bathroom, and anything that you're gonna use there in the shower, and that's the sin 'cause Scott saddlers light, it comes from palm kernel.

And so people don't really understand that it's a key ingredient, it's so many products, something like 50% of the products sold in our stores in this country, health Paul in some form, whether it's food or personal care, cosmetic products, so you can consume it, but you can also use it. A personal care.

So that's interesting, you talked also about this earlier, and I'm interested, what is red palm oil that seems to be something that... Is it new or is it just This is... No, it's actually ancient.

Okay, but we've just covered before science started to mess around with our food chain, just about all the oil that was consumed by humans was unrefined, it was essentially crushed from the material it came from, whether it was nuts or olives or palm, and people consumed it and they consumed it fresh and sit around, and palm oil is the unrefined palm before it is processed to turn it into the more creamy colored order, less kind of flavor-neutral product that people are used to for baking and frying.

But red palm has flavor, it's got a nice smile, sweet flavor, if it's processed properly, there are some good Pam, red palm oil products out there that you can use, just like you would use coconut oil in the kitchen, you can sorta with them... You can use it in a smoothie, but it's got this dense nutritional component to it with beta-carotene at much higher levels than carrots are tomatoes, and higher concentrations of vitamin E compared to any other fat. So you get this antioxidant consumption when you eat the fat, and it also gives the fat stability, so you have good stability in the kitchen when you're using it, you can't use it at as a high heat temperature as you would a refined product because of all these... Nutritional components that are in the fat, it has a lower smoke point, but if used properly, it's a very high concentrated source of nutrition.

Thank you for explaining the difference on that, what is the checklist that I should be using, our people should be using to choose a product with palm oil that's the most sustainable and healthiest possible... Well, organic is the first check-off, organic will guarantee that it's coming from a much better sustainable source compared to conflict palm. Probably the second most important thing is some kind of a social program there for life, there's Fair Trade USA, there are other certifications like that that guarantee the consumer that where it's coming from is protecting the workers, the farmers, and providing a value for the community there.

There's a certification called RSP, which is originated by the Paul mill industry, and there's an RSP identity preserved, which means that it's coming from farms that are actually certified and identity preserved, RPO does provide some guarantee if it's not organic, that's coming from sustainable sources in Asia, but there's very little of that coming into the US market because it's more expensive.

Okay, wonderful. Well, this has been very interesting, thank you so much for your great advice and we really appreciate your knowledge and we look forward to having you on again, but in the meantime, you can get more information on Neil and his website, which is Palm done. Right, dot com. Thank you so much and we look forward to your next visit.

Thank you, glad to be here.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition, E.