ABSTRACT
I. FATS AVAILABLE FOR FOOD APPLICATIONS A. Introduction The annual production of oils and fats now exceeds 113 million tonnes and is on a rising curve. Table 1 contains data for the four major vegetable oils, some minor vegetable oils, and the animal fats. These are average annual oil production figures for a series of 5-year periods including some predictions for the future and show the increasing dominance of vegetable oils and particularly of soybean oil, palm oil, rapeseed/canola oil, and sunflower oil. The information is presented on a 5-year basis to avoid unusual harvests in any particular year. This book is devoted to the 80% of total lipids that are part of the human diet. An additional 6% is fed to animals, and the remaining 14% is the basis of the oleochemical industry, which produces mainly a wide range of surface-active compounds some of which are important in the food industry.
