In this study we demonstrated that the use of palm oil
compared with soybean oil and other cooking oils is independently
associated with increased risk of MI. This association is
not likely to have been confounded by age, gender, area of
residence, income, lifestyle, or dietary intake because of the
study’s matched design, the restriction of recruitment to survivors
of a first nonfatal acute MI, the use of randomly selected
population controls, and the statistical adjustments for both
lifestyle and dietary variables. Our validation of reported exposure
(type of cooking oil) against adipose tissue fatty acid
profiles suggests that reported cooking oil choices are accurate
and are unlikely to be due to recall bias, and that oils may have
been consumed over a long period of time e.g., 17 y for palm
oil and 8–10 y for soybean oil. Existence of a positive relation
in analyses stratified by smoking status or by area of residence
further suggests that the association between palm oil and MI
is not spurious.