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Palmitic acid, the world-changing fatty acid in palm oil, has been shown in recent years of research to induce, proliferate, or metastasize several different kinds of cancers.
At 66 million tons produced annually, much from the world’s most biodiverse regions, palm oil is the world’s most commonly produced vegetable oil. It’s found in half of all supermarket products, from frozen pizzas to soap, and is nearly inescapable in the modern diet. Part of the reason for palm oil’s widespread success is that it’s a saturated fatty acid that remains liquid at room temperature, and therefore functions in cooking like butter, but has a texture like vegetable oil.
Although widely present in fatty foods from both animals and vegetables, many studies look specifically at palmitic acid from palm oil in the diet.
This week, a study was published in Nature which found exposure to high concentrations of a dietary fatty acid contained in palm oil promotes the metastasis, the process by which cancer cells spread to other parts of the body, of mouth and skin cancer cells in mice.
When measured against other fats, human mouth and skin cells that were transplanted into mice showed that palmitic acid significantly increased both the penetrance and size of existing pro-metastatic cancer cells. While it didn’t initiative the creation of cancer where there was none, the cancer cells which metastasized in this way “remembered how” when transplanted into mice that were not fed palmitic acid, and which didn’t have any cancer at all.
Another study looking at prostate cancer found that mice which were fed a high fat diet that increased their levels of palmitic acid had increased proliferation of tumor cells by promoting expression of transcription factors like STAT3.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) was found in another mouse model to be developed at an increased rate by the introduction of a palmitic acid-rich diet through the increase of β2AR, a receptor gene which plays the dominant role in promoting CRC cell proliferation.
A 2016 study found that the activity of CD36, a common receptor protein found on many cells that intakes everything from glucose, to oxidized LDL cholesterol, to the malaria parasite, boosted the metastatic potential of melanoma and breast cancer cells when fed with a high palmitic acid diet.
These studies have all been published since 2016, making them relatively recent in scientific terms, but they suggest that the next time one reaches for a jar of peanut butter from the shelf, it may be best to reach for just the peanuts instead.
