Vegetable oils major uses

The food chain is the primary pathway of human exposure to dioxin, with meat (38%) and dairy products (28%) dominating. Fish ingestion can be a significant contributor in countries with high fish consumption (26% of total intake in the Netherlands), but is not an important factor in the US. The exact contribution of fruits and vegetables is unclear, but vegetable oil does appear to play a role in human dioxin exposure. Inhalation and consumption of contaminated water and soil are not major sources of human exposure to TCDD. 

Eight major oilseed crops traded in international markets account for more than 95% of the world s vegetable oil. These include soybean, cottonseed, peanut, sunflower, rapeseed, flaxseed, copra and palm kernel. Soybean is unique among these oilseed crops in that it also contains about 40% dry weight protein. Because of the large amounts of both oil and protein, soybean has dominated world oilseed production. The US, Brazil and China produce most of the world s soybean crop and as a widely traded commodity it is available throughout the world as a cheap source of quality protein and oil. 

One of the major non-food uses of vegetable oils (approximately 5(X) million pounds of oil per annum in the US) is the production of soaps, detergents, and other surfactants. The solubility and other physical properties of medium-chain fatty acids and their derivatives make them especially suited for surfactant manufacture. Coconut and palm kernel oils, which contain 40-60% lauric acid (12 0), are current major feedstocks for the surfactant industry. The mechanism of synthesis of lauric and other medium-chain fatty acids in plants involves the action of a medium-chain acyl-ACP thioesterase which terminates fatty acid synthesis after a 10 or 12 carbon chain has been assembled (M. Pollard,... 

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