ABSTRACT
Vegetable oils are fats extracted from plants and most of them derive from seeds or beans; other oils are instead extracted from the fruit endosperm. Surveys on the world production of the major vegetable oils ranked palm oil and soybean oil as the most widely produced vegetable oils. The compositional data of both macro- and micro-components of vegetable oils may significantly differ depending on the cultivar, geographical location, climate, maturity stage of the fruit, extraction, and/or refining process. The differences between the various types of vegetable oils mainly concern the fatty acid (FA) composition. Most oils contain mainly monounsaturated FA and polyunsaturated FA with low amounts of saturated FA (SFA), except for lauric oils that contain a large percentage of SFA. In vegetable oils, FA are mostly found as glycerolesters, where triacylglycerols represent at least 95% of a crude oil.
