In antiquity Olive oil has been a part of human culture for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows that olives were turned into olive oil by 6000 BC Pagnol, p. 19, says the 6th millennium in
Jericho, but cites no source. In ancient Egypt, plant oils including cedar oil, cypress oil, and olive oil were used during the
mummification process. Vegetable oils have been used as lighting fuel for lamps, cooking, medicine and lubrication.
Palm oil has long been recognized in West and Central African countries, and European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use as a cooking oil in Europe. It became highly sought-after commodity by British traders for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery during Britain's
Industrial Revolution.
Modern history Palm oil formed the basis of soap products, such as Lever Brothers' (now
Unilever) "Sunlight", and B. J. Johnson Company's (now
Colgate-Palmolive) "Palmolive," and by around 1870, palm oil constituted the primary export of some West African countries. In 1780,
Carl Wilhelm Scheele demonstrated that fats were derived from glycerol. Thirty years later,
Michel Eugène Chevreul deduced that these fats were
esters of fatty acids and glycerol.
Wilhelm Normann, a German chemist, introduced the
hydrogenation of liquid fats in 1901, creating what later became known as
trans fats, leading to the development of the global production of
margarine and
vegetable shortening. In the United States,
cottonseed oil was developed and marketed by
Procter & Gamble as a creamed shortening –
Crisco – as early as 1911.
Ginning mills were happy to have someone haul away the cotton seeds. The extracted oil was refined and partially
hydrogenated to give a solid at room temperature and thus mimic natural lard, and canned under nitrogen gas. Compared to the rendered lard Procter & Gamble was already selling to consumers, Crisco was cheaper, easier to stir into a recipe, and could be stored at room temperature for two years without turning rancid. Soybeans are protein-rich, and the medium-viscosity oil rendered from them was high in polyunsaturates.
Henry Ford established a soybean research laboratory, developed soybean plastics and a soy-based synthetic wool, and built a car "almost entirely" out of soybeans. Roger Drackett had a successful new product with
Windex. He invested heavily in soybean research, seeing it as a smart investment. By the 1950s and 1960s, soybean oil had become the most popular vegetable oil in the US; today it is second only to
palm oil. In 2018–2019, world production was at 57.4 MT with the leading producers including
China (16.6 MT),
US (10.9 MT),
Argentina (8.4 MT),
Brazil (8.2 MT), and
EU (3.2 MT). The early 20th century also saw the start of the use of
vegetable oil as a fuel in
diesel engines and in heating oil burners.
Rudolf Diesel designed his engine to run on vegetable oil. The idea, he hoped, would make his engines more attractive to farmers who had a source of fuel readily available. Diesel's first engine ran on its own power for the first time in
Augsburg, Germany, on 10 August 1893 on nothing but
peanut oil. In remembrance of this event, 10 August has been declared "International Biodiesel Day". The first patent on Biodiesel was granted in 1937. Periodic petroleum shortages spurred research into vegetable oil as a diesel substitute during the 1930s and 1940s, and again in the 1970s and early 1980s when straight vegetable oil enjoyed its highest level of scientific interest. The 1970s also saw the formation of the first commercial enterprise to allow consumers to run straight vegetable oil in their vehicles. However,
biodiesel, produced from oils or fats using
transesterification is more widely used. Led by Brazil, many countries built
biodiesel plants during the 1990s, and it is now widely available for use in motor vehicles, and is the most common
biofuel in Europe today. In France, biodiesel is incorporated at a rate of 8% in the fuel used by all French diesel vehicles. In the mid-1970s, Canadian researchers developed a low-erucic-acid rapeseed cultivar. Because the word "rape" was not considered optimal for marketing, they coined the name "canola" (from "Canada Oil low acid"). The U.S.
Food and Drug Administration approved use of the canola name in January 1985, and U.S. farmers started planting large areas that spring. Canola oil is lower in saturated fats and higher in monounsaturates. Canola is very thin (unlike corn oil) and flavorless (unlike olive oil), so it largely succeeds by displacing soy oil, just as soy oil largely succeeded by displacing cottonseed oil. The production of vegetable oils went up 125% between 2000 and 2020, driven by a sharp increase in
palm oil. The global production of vegetable oils went up 130% between 2000 and 2022 to 212 million tonnes in 2022. This is 120 million tonnes more than in 2000, but 3 million tonnes less than the peak observed in 2021. Palm oil registered the largest increase, both absolute and relative, as its production went up 57 million tonnes, or 255%; it overtook soybean oil as the main vegetable oil produced in 2006. ==Uses==