IF palm oil were bananas, most of the debates about quality would suddenly become much easier – and perhaps far more honest.
I have long believed that if we cannot explain the quality of palm oil without intimidating people, then perhaps we do not understand it well enough ourselves.
For years, I have wanted to break this subject down into something anyone – yes, even non-chemists and non-engineers – could grasp without reaching for aspirin.
I finally carved out the time, and this is my attempt.
The spark comes from a small but enduring gem written nearly two decades ago by respectable chemical engineer, Ng Say Bock.
His booklet, Understanding Palm Oil Qualities, published by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC), remains one of the clearest explanations ever produced on the subject – not because it overwhelms the reader with science, but because it simplifies without dumbing down.
Its timing was then no coincidence. In July 2004, Malaysia introduced a new quality parameter into the Domestic Sales of Crude Palm Oil Contract: Deterioration of Bleachability Index, mercifully shortened to Dobi.
No, it is not a new brand of detergent – though many treated it with similar suspicion at the time.
The move was technically sound, commercially necessary and intellectually justified. Yet for many across the industry, the language felt alien then and, truth be told, it still does today.
Dobi arrived with its long-standing companions: free fatty acids (FFA) and the ever-elastic notion of good merchantable quality.
Many terms. Much confusion. Endless head-scratching. And far too many conversations where people nodded wisely while quietly hoping the topic would soon change.
What continues to puzzle me is not the absence of knowledge, but the absence of urgency in sharing it.
For reasons I still struggle to understand, the industry has not consistently invested in refreshing and re-circulating such valuable reference materials for wider public understanding.
Knowledge, after all, does not age well when left on the shelf.
Each year brings a fresh intake of curious minds – Gen Y, Gen Z, and now the Alphas – asking questions in a world far louder, faster and more sceptical than before.
Why would we not equip them with clear, accessible explanations to appreciate one of the world’s most important oils, instead of leaving them to piece together understanding from half-truths, hashtags and hearsay?
So let us step away from the laboratory bench and stroll to the fruit stall – where plain language rules, and a pinch of wit does the explaining.
We will use the banana as our guide – humble, familiar and unforgiving. Think of an oil palm fruit bunch as a bunch of bananas.
Once you see that, everything else begins to fall into place.
Bruises, freshness, delay and decay suddenly make sense – without a single equation in sight.
And just like that, palm oil quality stops being mysterious. It becomes common sense.
Most of us are accidental experts on bananas. We may not know their Latin names or carbohydrate profiles, but put us in front of a fruit stall and we transform into seasoned inspectors.
We tilt our heads, squeeze gently, peer suspiciously at dark spots, and quietly reject anything that looks like it has lived a little too hard.
A bruised banana? No thanks. A limp, ageing one? Only if it is destined for cake.
Quality, for bananas, is instinctive. Palm oil, however, does not enjoy this privilege.
Once extracted, it has no peel to betray its past.
No freckles to hint at rough handling. No smell that immediately whispers, I was delayed.
It sits there, golden and innocent-looking, refusing to confess whether it came from fruit handled with care – or from fruit that endured one insult too many.
That is why the industry, lacking human instincts, invented measurements. And that is where bananas come to the rescue.
Imagine, for a moment, that an oil palm fruit bunch is simply a bunch of bananas. Each fruitlet is a banana.
Each bruise matters. Each hour counts. Suddenly, palm oil quality feels far less intimidating and far more ... edible.
Let us begin with damage. A banana bruises easily. Drop it, spike it, throw it, stack it too high, or leave it too long under the sun, and you can almost hear its internal clock ticking faster.
The flesh softens, sugars break down, and decay quietly sets in. Palm fruit behaves in exactly the same way.
The oil inside reacts to damage and delay, deteriorating long before it ever reaches a mill - a deterioration measured in palm oil as FFA.
The industry accepts that perfection is unrealistic. No harvest is gentle from start to finish.
So a line is drawn – a pragmatic one. In palm oil contracts, the acceptable upper limit is FFA below 5%.
In banana terms, imagine inspecting a comb of one hundred bananas: if no more than five are damaged, the batch passes. Not ideal, but acceptable.
Beyond that threshold, quality slips, discounts follow, and complaints begin to ripen.
Here is the first hard truth, one that bananas teach mercilessly well: damage is irreversible.
You may mix bruised bananas with pristine ones to make the basket look better, but the bruised bananas remain bruised.
No amount of optimism, blending or creative accounting turns bad fruit good. Once quality deteriorates, it does not reverse course.
Then comes freshness - the more subtle sibling of damage.
A banana can be intact yet tired. It may not be bruised, but it has seen too many suns and too few buyers.
Freshness is not about injury; it is about time. Palm fruit, once cut, begins a quiet race against the clock. Delays in collection, transport, queuing, storage or processing all age the fruit invisibly.
The oil extracted later carries the memory of those delays.
In banana terms, Dobi is simply a measure of freshness. Think of it as a banana youthfulness index.
At one end sits the banana that has overstayed its welcome; at the other, the vibrant, just-right fruit that belongs proudly on a breakfast table.
Somewhere in between lies the industry’s comfort zone - fresh enough to be respectable, not so fresh as to be mythical.
Dobi reflects how quickly and carefully palm fruit moves from harvest to processing. And once again, bananas deliver the lesson cleanly: waiting never improves freshness.
No one has ever walked past a banana stall and said, “I’ll come back in few days - it should be better then.”
Yet much of freshness loss does not occur through dramatic mishaps, but through ordinary routines.
Harvesters cut ripe bunches. Fruit falls. Some are nicked; some are left behind. Loose fruit is scraped up with debris, loaded, unloaded, reloaded and eventually dumped.
Tractors rumble, lorries queue, mills get busy, and concrete platforms do their quiet but unforgiving work.
Every extra handling step ages the fruit; every extra hour etches another wrinkle into the banana’s skin.
This is why quality is born - or broken - long before the laboratory ever sees a sample.
And then there is taste. Anyone who eats bananas knows that not all bananas taste alike.
Pisang emas charms with sweetness. Pisang berangan has its own loyal following. You cannot argue a pisang emas into becoming a berangan by slicing it more carefully. Variety matters.
Palm oil, too, carries the fingerprint of its planting material. Some characteristics are genetic. Once planted, they are largely fixed. Processing can preserve quality, but it cannot rewrite the fruit’s inherent nature.
When buyers complain that the “banana doesn’t taste right”, they are often reacting to expectations buried in the fine print - what traders politely call good merchantable quality.
It is less about bruises or freshness, and more about whether the banana is the banana they had in mind.
Markets, of course, are practical creatures. Not every banana needs to be eaten fresh. Some become fritters. Others turn into cake, bread or chips. Palm oil follows the same logic.
Different qualities find different homes. Problems arise only when bruised bananas are dressed up as pristine, or when tired fruit is quietly recycled back into the food chain without proper care.
That is when trust begins to rot. Because palm oil has no peel, the laboratory becomes its conscience.
A good laboratory functions like a car’s dashboard. It tells you when you are speeding, overheating or running out of fuel.
A neglected laboratory, on the other hand, is decorative at best and dangerous at worst. Driving blindfolded may feel thrilling for a few seconds, but it rarely ends well.
And this brings us to the part most often misunderstood: quality is not charity; it is strategy.
Across industries and decades, the evidence is remarkably consistent. Better products build loyalty, resist price wars and reduce the need for constant firefighting.
Better bananas sell themselves. Better palm oil earns trust quietly, steadily and repeatedly.
Improving quality does not require heroic technology. It requires fewer bruises, shorter delays, better coordination and clearer accountability.
In other words, it requires treating palm fruit with the same respect we instinctively give bananas we intend to eat.
Which brings us, inevitably, back to the fruit stall.
Palm oil quality is not mysterious. It is bruised bananas and fresh bananas. It is time, care and honesty.
And perhaps the simplest rule of all - one that needs no laboratory, contract or policy document to understand: If you would not eat that banana, do not expect the market to swallow that oil.
Sometimes, it takes the simplest fruit to remind us that even the most complicated industries are, at heart, about care, time and honesty.
Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years of experience in the plantation industry, with a strong background in oil palm research and development, C-suite leadership and industry advocacy. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
