The Contradiction of Vegetable Oils
Vegetable oils are among the world's most widely consumed food ingredients. Yet the way they are produced follows a logic that no longer aligns with today's challenges.
The industry is optimized for maximum yield through centralized, energy-intensive, chemistry-based processes — while nutritional quality, environmental cost and downstream impacts become secondary.
At the same time, valuable protein-rich plant material is largely diverted into animal feed rather than used directly as a food resource.
This is not a technological limitation. It is a systemic contradiction.
More than 200 million tonnes of vegetable oil are produced globally each year. To maximize yield, large-scale production relies heavily on solvent extraction, most commonly using technical hexane — a petroleum-derived mixture of hydrocarbons.
The solvent dissolves the oil from crushed seeds and is subsequently recovered. The crude oil then undergoes further refining before becoming the standardized vegetable oil used in food products.
An Industry built for Scale
A Solvent under renewed Scrutiny
Technical hexane is authorised for food extraction in the EU, but its safety is currently being re-evaluated by EFSA as the existing toxicological evidence is considered insufficient for a comprehensive safety assessment. The review includes potential neurotoxic, reproductive and developmental effects associated with components of technical hexane.
The Environmental Cost of Solvent Extraction
As a petroleum-derived volatile organic compound (VOC), hexane can be released into the atmosphere during extraction, recovery and handling. Although modern plants recover and reuse most of the solvent, losses still occur.
Solvent recovery also requires energy for evaporation, distillation and desolventizing — adding complexity and energy demand to the production process.
Today’s vegetable oil industry is built around large, centralized processing plants. Farmers supply the raw material, while much of the processing and added value takes place further down the chain.
What if more of that value could remain closer to where the crops are grown?
A Value Chain out of Balance