Palm Kernel Oil & Nestlé White Chocolate

Gerard

Recently, whilst shopping, I decided to look at the nutrition label for Nestlé white chocolate chips, which was this:

I was surprised at the lack of cocoa butter in a product which is ostensibly chocolate, but palm kernel oil seemed to be quite a good fat in its own right. Indeed: Its fatty acid composition is not far off from coconut oil.

It is, however, worth noting that this is not straight palm kernel oil, but rather fractionated palm kernel oil. When an oil is fractionated, it is divided into the solids (stearin) and liquids (olein). Given that chocolate is meant to be solid at room temperature, it is all but guaranteed that this is the stearin. The chemical composition for palm kernel oil and its fractionated components can be seen in the following chart:

Both normal palm kernel oil and its stearin are incredibly high in lauric acid, similar to coconut oil. The next ingredient of note in the list is the hydrogenated palm oil. The hydrogenation process turns unsaturated fatty acids into saturated ones, which will mostly be stearic acid in this case. This means that hydrogenated palm oil will be composed almost entirely of palmitic and stearic acid. Partially-hydrogenated fatty acids (trans fats) are more or less illegal in the US, so it is a safe conclusion that this is indeed nearly entirely saturated fat.

Palm oil fatty acid composition for reference, but bear in mind the oleic and linoleic acid are both now stearic acid:

Soy lecithin is of course not ideal to eat, but it's in basically all chocolate products. If you view any variant of chocolate as acceptable to eat, then a little bit of soy lecithin is also acceptable to eat.

With all of this information in mind, it seems to me that that Nestlé white chocolate chips are a perfectly fine food to eat, barring any concerns around mixing fats/sugars. This is not too far off from eating coconut oil with sugar. It is probably actually better than cocoa butter, since cocoa butter is essentially just long-chain fatty acids (stearic, palmitic, oleic).

Is there anything here that I may be missing or may have analyzed improperly? I did not expect this result at all, much less from Nestlé of all companies.

LucH

@Gerard said:

Is there anything here that I may be missing or may have analyzed improperly?

Well, I won't say it so.
C16 is fine as long you mix it with other types. Need to go deeper in Sn-2 config, like in olive oil.
To understand the nutritional value of a fat, one must consider its molecular structure (stereospecificity), its food matrix, and its impact on the quality of circulating particles (the ingested food affects the matrix).
Reference:
Innis et al. (1994) : "Dietary triacylglycerol structure and its effect on infant fatty acid and calcium absorption." C'est l'étude fondatrice montrant que l'acide palmitique en position externe (Sn-1, Sn-3) se lie au calcium pour former des savons insolubles, altérant l'assimilation du gras et du minéral.
NB1: We have to avoid ultra-processed oil with palmitist too. Palme OK. I always keep an eye on compo: fine if a mix with palme, colza and sunflower in my snacks.
NB2: No problem for me if hydrogenation at min 99.5 %.

Mossy

I have a ton of notes throughout the years, on health and nutrition, but I tend to be going off the cuff these days, i.e, by memory. In that vein, I recall reading cocoa butter is indeed the key ingredient to look for in quality chocolate; and the further down the list it is, or even non-existent, the more the chocolate bar/candy drifts from quality.

My additional 2 cents, and my personal litmus test for all chocolate, and all processed foods, is whether they use "natural flavor". I avoid all foods with natural flavor, for I interpret it as faking the taste of what should be a real taste produced as the result of a proper balance of real-food ingredients. I've noticed Nestle always uses natural flavors.