Palm Oil in Sri Lanka: A Missed Growth Engine — Or a Misunderstood One?

Viraj Weerasooriya
Apr 5
7 min read

A debate worth having

The debate around palm oil in Sri Lanka is worth having.

Public concern around health, food quality, environmental sustainability, and long-term agricultural direction should not be dismissed. In many ways, awareness is the first step toward better public thinking. Mixed opinions are useful too. They force difficult subjects into the open and prevent silence from becoming policy.

But awareness is only the starting point. It cannot be the conclusion.

Once an issue enters public debate, it needs to move beyond fear, repetition, and selective interpretation. It needs comparison. It needs context. It needs evidence. That is where the discussion around palm oil in Sri Lanka has often remained incomplete.

A recently circulated article reflects a familiar pattern in this debate. It links palm oil to saturated fat, higher LDL, atherosclerosis, stroke, fatty liver, insulin resistance, and oxidation through repeated heating. Some of those concerns are real. But the argument moves from valid concerns to a broader conclusion without fully asking two equally important questions: compared to what, and within what system?

That is the gap this discussion needs to address.

Where the argument is right

Palm oil is not considered a low-saturated-fat oil. There is no need to defend this fact.

In 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) updated its guidelines, reiterating that adults should limit their total fat intake to 30% or less of their energy consumption, with saturated fatty acids comprising no more than 10% of total energy intake. WHO specifically mentions palm oil and coconut oil as examples of fats high in saturated fat. It also links poor fat quality to increased risks of unhealthy weight gain and diet-related noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

The public health concerns regarding saturated fat are valid. Concerns about repeated heating and the degradation of frying oil are also valid. These are significant issues in any serious discussion on edible oils.

Therefore, the criticism is not entirely unfounded.

This is important because a stronger argument does not start by dismissing concerns. It begins by acknowledging what is valid, and then questioning whether the conclusions being drawn are proportionate, comparative, and complete.

Where the argument becomes selective

The issue arises when palm oil is discussed in isolation, as if it is separate from the rest of the diet.

This is where the reasoning becomes flawed.

Palm oil is composed of about 50% saturated fat. In contrast, coconut oil contains approximately 80–90% saturated fat. According to Harvard Health, palm oil, with around 50% saturated fat, has a more favorable fatty-acid profile than palm kernel oil and coconut oil, both of which have over 85% saturated fat.

This is significant because it reveals a contradiction at the heart of the public discourse.

If saturated fat is the primary cause for concern, then the same reasoning should be consistently applied to all oils that are already commonly consumed, not just to the one that has become a public controversy.

This doesn't mean palm oil is without issues. It highlights the debate's selectiveness.

And selective reasoning is not scientific.

A health discussion that needs a broader context

Global dietary guidelines do not attribute cardiovascular risk to a single type of oil. The WHO's recommendations are more comprehensive: they emphasize the overall dietary pattern, the quality of fats consumed, and what these fats are replaced with.

This perspective differs significantly from attributing the problem to one ingredient.

In reality, health outcomes are influenced by much more than just one type of oil. In Sri Lanka, the daily diet is affected by high carbohydrate consumption, sugary drinks, deep-fried snacks, processed foods, and the repeated use of heated oil. Each of these factors contributes to metabolic and cardiovascular risks. Public attention often underestimates the true extent of risks, as it is heavily influenced by visibility, repetition, and media appeal, rather than the actual significance of the risks involved.

This does not diminish concerns about palm oil but rather places it in context.

The issue is not whether palm oil should be scrutinized—it should be.

The question is whether this scrutiny is applied with sufficient comparison and context.

The bigger risk no one should ignore

The article is strongest when it discusses oxidation and repeated heating.

That concern deserves to be taken seriously. But again, this is not unique to palm oil.

WHO’s current guidance notes that trans-fatty acids are commonly found in baked and fried foods and pre-packaged snacks, and Harvard Health points out that partially hydrogenated oils, historically used for frying and in processed foods, were major sources of harmful trans fats.

A key insight from the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka (IPS) study is that health risks in Sri Lanka are also shaped by unhealthy processing and usage practices, including adulteration with used oils, repeated frying, excessive heating, and poor storage. The study notes that these practices affect both locally consumed palm oil and coconut oil.

This is a critical distinction.

The problem is not only what oil is used. It is how oil is handled: reheated, reused, adulterated, and stored badly. That turns the issue into a food-system and cooking-practice problem, not a single-crop problem.

So the article is right to raise concern about frying practices. But it becomes weaker when it implies that this is uniquely a palm oil issue.

The supply problem we rarely bring into the health debate

Sri Lanka's issue with edible oil extends beyond nutrition; it is a structural concern.

An IPS study estimates the total demand for edible oil in 2021 at about 275,039 metric tonnes, while domestic production is only 72,769 metric tonnes. This indicates that approximately 74% of the demand was fulfilled through imports. The study also highlights that the foreign exchange outflow for imported fats and oils in 2021 was LKR 56.7 billion.

An editorial from the University of Peradeniya supports this view from another perspective. It reports that in 2020, Sri Lanka imported 219,295 MT of fats and oils, leading to a foreign exchange outflow of LKR 37.4 billion. It further states that domestic production included 19,759 MT of coconut oil and 24,567 MT of crude palm oil and palm kernel oil, highlighting the growing importance of palm oil in the local edible oil landscape.

This reliance on imports is not a minor issue; it is a significant aspect of the national context in which this discussion occurs.

The IPS study also reveals that the current Sri Lankan palm oil industry saves about USD 17 million in annual foreign exchange, provides 33,390 jobs, and meets around 6% of domestic edible oil demand, with nearly 10,330 hectares managed by eight RPCs.

This does not establish that palm oil is healthy.

However, it does demonstrate that the discussion cannot genuinely address risk without considering substitution, import reliance, supply security, and economic trade-offs.

The commonly suggested alternative in public debates, coconut oil, is insufficient on its own. The IPS report clearly states that local oils are not perfect substitutes for imported oils, and Sri Lanka continues to be a net importer of edible oils and fats.

Therefore, this is not just a matter of preference but a question of national supply structure.

Why yield and land-use efficiency matter

This is where the debate becomes even more important for Sri Lanka.

The new editorial points out that, on average, coconut yields about 0.8 MT of oil per hectare per year, while oil palm in Sri Lanka yields about 2–3 MT of oil per hectare per year. It further notes that oil palm yields are around five times those of coconut in oil-yield terms, and that under better management, it has much higher potential.

That matters because substitution is not just a matter of preference. It is also a matter of land-use efficiency.

If one crop produces significantly more oil per hectare than another, then replacing it blindly without examining the full production system creates a different kind of cost — one measured in land, productivity, and national supply capability.

This is one reason oil palm was seen as economically important in the first place.

And it is also why the debate cannot be reduced to a single health narrative.

What palm oil actually exposes

There is one more layer to this story that matters, especially for Sri Lanka’s plantation future.

The IPS study finds that Sri Lanka’s oil palm productivity is comparatively low at about 2.5 metric tonnes per hectare, compared with the best global productivity levels of about 3.6 metric tonnes per hectare.

That gap matters because it shows this was never only a health debate.

It was also an operational and systems debate.

Palm oil did not struggle only because of public criticism. It also collided with weak integration, uneven productivity, inconsistent policy direction, and the absence of a stronger end-to-end model.

The newly shared editorial also indirectly supports this. It argues that much of the local criticism directed at oil palm has been opinion-based and not supported by enough credible scientific investigation in the Sri Lankan context, and calls for transparent, evidence-based analysis instead.

That is the deeper lesson.

Palm oil did not create these weaknesses. It exposed them.

Awareness is the starting point — not the conclusion

Awareness around palm oil is a good thing. Public questioning is a good thing. Different opinions are useful because they stop complex issues from being buried under convenience.

But awareness has to lead somewhere better.

It has to lead to evidence. To comparison. To context. To systems thinking.

Because in agriculture, food, and public health, very little is caused by one thing alone.

And that is why palm oil in Sri Lanka should not be defended blindly. It should also not be condemned selectively.

It should be judged in the same way every serious issue should be judged:

in full context.

References

World Health Organization. WHO updates guidelines on fats and carbohydrates.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The Nutrition Source: Coconut Oil.
Harvard Health Publishing. By the way, doctor: Is palm oil good for you?
Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka. Palm Oil Industry in Sri Lanka: An Economic Analysis.

Nissanka, S.P. “Oil palm industry in Sri Lanka: Its production potential and current status, and future prospects.” Ceylon Journal of Science 52(2), 2023.