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Literature Review Special Issue Palm Oil in Health and Technology
Interesterified palm oil and glucose homeostasis: a systematic review of preclinical mechanistic evidence and limited human nutritional studies
Loso Judijanto
Received: June 10, 2026 | Published: June 30, 2026
Citation: Judijanto l. Interesterified palm oil and glucose homeostasis: a systematic review of preclinical mechanistic evidence and limited human nutritional studies. Open Access J Sci. 2026;9(1):332-341. DOI: 10.15406/oajs.2026.094.00317
Abstract
The increasing use of interesterified palm oil as a functional replacement for partially hydrogenated fats has raised questions about its potential influence on glucose homeostasis. The present systematic review aligned the scope of inference with the available evidence by explicitly separating direct human evidence from preclinical and mechanistic evidence. A Scopus-based systematic search was conducted using predefined combinations of terms related to palm oil, interesterified or structured lipids, glucose homeostasis, insulin signalling, hepatic lipid metabolism and adipose inflammation. After relevance filtering, publication-year restriction, English-language screening and full-text accessibility assessment, 30 records were retained for qualitative synthesis. The synthesis shows that direct human evidence is limited and does not support a definitive conclusion that interesterified palm oil independently disrupts glucose homeostasis in humans. In contrast, several preclinical studies in rodent models report impaired glucose tolerance, altered insulin secretion or signalling, hepatic lipid changes, and adipose-tissue inflammatory responses after interesterified palm oil or closely related palm-oil exposures, especially under high-fat or metabolically stressful dietary conditions. Mechanistic and structured-lipid studies indicate that fatty-acid positional distribution may influence digestion, absorption and downstream lipid signalling, but these findings should not be treated as direct human clinical evidence. Unsupported pooled percentage ranges from heterogeneous animal and human studies, which were removed or qualified, and retained quantitative claims are mapped to individual studies. Overall, the evidence suggests biological plausibility for context-dependent metabolic effects, but current human evidence remains insufficient for firm population-level conclusions. Long-term, adequately powered human intervention studies using standardized dietary matrices and validated glucose-homeostasis endpoints are required.
Keywords: interesterified palm oil, glucose homeostasis, insulin signalling, hepatic lipogenesis, adipose inflammation
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