Edible Plant Oil: Global Status, Health Issues, and Perspectives

Abstract

Edible plant oil (EPO) is an indispensable nutritional resource for human health. Various cultivars of oil-bearing plants are grown worldwide, and the chemical compositions of different plant oils are diverse. The extremely complex components in oils lead to diverse standards for evaluating the quality and safety of different EPOs. The environment poses great challenges to the EPO safety and quality during the entire industrial chain, including plant cultivation, harvesting, oil processing, and storage. Environmental risk factors include heavy metal or pesticide residue pollution, insect or harmful microbial infestation, and rancidity. Here, the diverse components in oil and various oil-producing processes are discussed, including plant species, oil yield, and composition complexity, environmental factors that degrade oil quality. Additionally, we propose a whole-industrial-chain monitoring system instead of current single-link-monitoring approach by monitoring and tracking the quality and safety of EPOs during the entire process of plant cultivation, raw materials harvest, oil process, and EPOs storage. This will provide guidance for monitoring the quality and safety of EPOs, which were challenged by the deteriorating environment.

Keywords: edible safety; environmental factors; oil quality; plant oil; whole-industrial-chain monitoring.

Graphical Abstract

Graphical Abstract The quality and safety of edible plant oil is very important. In the entire production and industrial chain, including cultivation, harvesting, processing, and storage, it is necessary to layers of checks and set evaluation indicators to ensure the quality and safety of edible plant oils, which were challenged by the deteriorating environment.

Figure 1

Major countries producing palm oil (A), soybean oil (B), rapeseed oil (C), and sunflower seed oil (D) in 2016.

Figure 2

Microactive compositions in (A) herbal edible plant oils (mg/100 g) and (B) woody edible plant oils (mg/100g).

Figure 3

A comparison of different flavor substances in EPOs (%).

Figure 4

Environmental risks in (A) oil-bearing plant cultivation, (B) the harvesting and post-harvest process of EPOs, (C) during EPO processing, and (D) during EPO storage. The graph takes sunflower seeds as an example to show the risks that oil crops will encounter during harvesting and post-harvesting process.

Figure 5

The quality and safety of EPOs monitored during the whole industrial chain.