Production of vegetable oils from fruits, oilseeds, and beans Conventional processing and industry techniques

Vegetable oils are fats extracted from plants and most of them derive from seeds or beans; other oils (such as palm and olive) 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 (USDA 2015). They cover more than 50% of the total vegetable oil world production, with 61.4 and 49.04 million metric tons in the year 2014/2015 and a growth of 330% and 148% in 20 years, respectively. Oil palm plantations have expanded especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, while soybean production has extensively spread in both the United States and South America. Rapeseed and sunower oils represent about 21% of world production, being respectively the third and the fourth most produced oils in the world. Reviews on the world vegetable oil consumption reported that America and Asia are the countries that consume more vegetable oils, as expected according to the country’s population and disposable income. China’s percentage share of vegetable oil consumption is still growing, in relation with the evolution of the per capita consumption (Mittaine and Mielke 2012).