Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A vegetable oil or vegoil is an oil extracted from oilseeds or another plant source. Some vegetable oils, such as rapeseed, cottonseed or castor oil, are not fit for human consumption without further processing. Like all fats, vegetable oils are esters of glycerin and a varying blend of fatty acids, and are insoluble in water but soluble in organic solvents. Table of contents 1 Sources 2 Extraction 3 External links Sources Common sources of vegetable oil include: Oilseeds: flax seed hemp (cannabis) linseed rapeseed canola (a special variety of rapeseed, bred to minimize toxin content) safflower sesame sunflower grape seed Other vegetable oils: almond avocado castor bean corn (maize) cotton seed coconut hazelnut olive palm -from the fruit of the African palm tree palm kernel oil - from the seed of the African palm tree peanut pumpkin seed rice bran soybean walnut According to the USDA, the total world consumption of major vegetable oils in 2000 was: Soybeans 26.0 million metric tons (MMT) Palm 23.3 MMT Rapeseed 13.1 MMT Sunflowerseed 8.6 MMT Peanut 4.2 MMT Cottonseed 3.6 MMT Palm Kernel 2.7 MMT Olive 2.5 MMT Note that these figures include industrial and animal feed use. The vegetable oil most widely used in human nutrition is sunflower seed oil. Palm oil, which is solid at room temperature, is used mainly to produce soaps and cosmetics. The majority of European rapeseed oil production is used to produce biodiesel. Extraction One can use the "modern" way of processing oil by chemical extraction, using solvent extracts, which produces higher yields and is quicker and less expensive. Another way is the "physical extraction", that does not use solvent extracts. It is made the "old" way by expeller-pressed mechanical extraction. See also: biodiesel, decorticator, expeller, extruder, fat, lipid, mill. External links Oil yields and characteristics. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.