Vitamin E is one of the major essential vitamins. Since vitamin E is an essential nutrient for protecting the bio-membrane from oxidative damage, people have to take in sufficient amounts of vitamin E to maintain and promote nutritional health.
Vitamin E consists of two subgroups called tocopherols and tocotrienols. Tocotrienols are less common and belong to the vitamin E family and are potent lipid antioxidant. In foods, in which they occur, they are generally only found in small amounts.
Tocotrienols have become a focus of research in recent years because of new findings showing their high efficacy in protecting against heart-related diseases, including lowering of cholesterol and against certain cancers.
The sources with the largest amount of tocotrienols include wheat, barley, rice and most abundantly, the fruit of the palm from which palm oil is extracted.
Palm oil is by far the richest source of tocotrienols.
Palm oil is unique because it contains both tocotrienols and tocopherols unlike other vegetable oils some of which contain mainly alpha-tocopherol as the major tocopherol component.
The tumor protective effect of tocotrienols form palm oil was demonstrated by Komiyama and Yamoka (1993), Nesaretnam (1995), Guthrie (1997) and others.
The vitamin E fraction of palm oil, which is rich in tocotrienols, appears to be important in reducing certain tumors because palm oil stripped of the vitamin E does increase tumor yields.
Food sources of tocotrienols