In a strongly worded statement, Kok said WHO was “surprisingly oblivious” to studies done on the health benefits of palm oil.
“This reflects grave ignorance and a fallacy on the nutritional value of palm oil among the medical officers in WHO’s EMRO (Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office),” she said.
Yesterday, WHO advised adults to avoid palm oil in their diet during the Covid-19 outbreak and use alternatives such as olive oil.
It said people should consume unsaturated fats found in fish, avocado, nuts, olive oil, soy, canola, sunflower and corn oils rather than saturated fats found in fatty meat, butter, palm and coconut oils, cream, cheese, ghee and lard.
Kok, however, argued that palm oil had a natural balance of saturated and unsaturated fats, and this was an internationally accepted fact.
“This therefore renders the information contained in the advisory as completely inaccurate and illusory,” the Seputeh MP said.
She said studies had proven that palm oil, particularly unrefined red palm oil, contained high nutritional values, particularly vitamin A, vitamin E tocotrienol and vitamin K.
She also pointed out that some international aid agencies, including those under the United Nations, had recommended that red palm oil be given to some poor nations in Africa to augment vitamin A deficiency.
However, Kok said she was not surprised by WHO’s latest advisory, saying it was not the first time that it had published misleading articles on palm oil.
She noted that last year, it carried an article which discredited palm oil and likened it to tobacco and alcohol.
She urged WHO to consult Malaysia’s top scientists and expert panels at the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) to get their facts right “before allowing its EMRO to shoot itself in the foot”.
Kok also took WHO EMRO to task for promoting a certain group of other vegetable oils such as olive oil, a Mediterranean edible oil.
“This explains the partiality of WHO EMRO. Notably, it has also unleashed and propagated such a whimsical advisory at an opportune time, during a pandemic, to selfishly serve its regional interests,” she said.
Kok urged WHO to tell the EMRO to retract its advisory and “vigorously maintain its neutrality”.
WHO’s advisory had also garnered criticisms from the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, which said such advice was “antiquated”.
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