Q: I've seen the term "fractionated vegetable oil" listed as an ingredient on a protein bar. Is this different from hydrogenated oil?

A: No, it isn’t. The actual processes are different, but the end result is the same and has the same effects on your health. Let’s use chocolate as an example. Coconut oil was commonly used in chocolate in the past. That’s because coconut oil stays solid at room temperature. If liquid oil is used, the chocolate won’t harden correctly. In the late 80s, people were told that tropical oils (coconut, palm and palm kernel) increased cholesterol and that high cholesterol caused heart attacks. Chocolate sales dropped.

To get the properties required in chocolates and other confections, manufacturers had to use oil with the same properties as coconut oil. However, they found they could isolate other oils in fractions that resembled the properties of coconut oil. Such fractions can be isolated from a variety of oils, including cotton, avocado, peanut and soybean. They used the term fractionation, a term that wasn’t as widely known as hydrogenation. As I said, though, the end result in the product is basically the same.

Using fractionated fats makes it seem companies have made real changes toward using better oils, without actually changing anything. Really, only the wording changed. This is why we at Positive Changes were very careful in choosing the protein bar we did. We chose a bar that did not use hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated or "fractionated" fats.

Information excerpted from Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill by Udo Erasmus
(Burnaby, BC: Alive Books, 1986, p. 129-131).