The Dark Secrets of Palm Oil

Hello everyone! Today I’m doing a bit of a different post to those I’ve done before on this blog, which is something I want to try and do a bit more in the future. A quick note: I was planning to bake and blog for Halloween, but unfortunately that isn’t going to happen because although I did make some pumpkin muffins, it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped and well … let’s just say I never want to bake with pumpkin again! So, sorry about that guys.

So, straight into it, palm oil. I was inspired to write about this after reading an article about palm oil from the lovely people (or should I say ‘green monsters’) over at One Green Planet. I wanted to help raise awareness about what this trade is doing to the planet and tackle some of the FAQs about this subject. So let’s get started!

What is palm oil?

Palm oil is a vegetable oil derived from the fruit of the oil palm tree. Most of the plants grown for the palm oil industry are in Indonesia and Malaysia, and 50% of each fruit on the tree is oil. Around 120,000 million square metres of the earth is taken up by palm oil plantations.

What is palm oil used in?

Palm oil can be found in an estimated 50% of the products in our supermarkets – food and non-food. It is most commonly found in…

• Chocolate
• Bread
• Margarine
• Ice cream
• Cookies
• Pizza Dough
• Instant Noodles

Also in some non-food products:

• Soap
• Lipstick
• Shampoo
• Biodiesel
• Detergent

Why is palm oil so bad?

The demand for palm oil has increased ten-fold in the last 35 years, and the growing need for space to plant crops has led to major deforestation. In Indonesia alone, three hundred football pitches worth of forest is cut down every hour to make room for palm plantations, which has led to Indonesia becoming the world’s third largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. Aside from the fact that this speeds up global warming, it is causing thousands of animals to lose their natural habitats, particularly orangutans, which are an endangered species. In fact, it has been estimated that in the last two decades over 50,000 orangutans have died because of deforestation due to palm oil production.

How do I avoid palm oil?

This is the very best part, because for a baker, avoiding palm oil is so easy! Our main enemies are margarine and chocolate, so next time you visit the shops, look at the different products for sale. The best way to avoid palm oil when it comes to margarine is to switch to butter! Butter vs. Margarine is an age old baking debate, but from now on I’m siding with the butter team. It’s natural and contains a bunch more vitamins than margarine does. The brand I’m switching to is also cheaper and English. It’s a win win all round! In the picture at the beginning of this post, I compared the Tesco Salted English Butter to Stork Margarine. Stork contains:

Vegetable oils in varying proportions (rapeseed, palm, sunflower), water, salt (1.5%), buttermilk, preservative (potassium sorbate), emulsifier (mono and diglycerides of fatty acids), citric acids, flavourings, vitamin A and D, colour (carotene).

Whereas, the Tesco butter contains:

Butter (Milk), Salt (1.7%).

I think I’m pretty certain on which one I want to be eating.

As for chocolate, it’s not hard to find a brand which doesn’t have palm oil listed in it’s ingredients. A slight difficulty is that palm oil takes on many different disguises. All of the products listed below contain or are an alias for palm oil:

Vegetable Oil, Vegetable Fat, Palm Kernel, Palm Kernel Oil, Palm Fruit Oil, Palmate, Palmitate, Palmolein, Glyceryl, Stearate, Stearic Acid, Elaeis Guineensis, Palmitic Acid, Palm Stearine, Palmitoyl Oxostearamide, Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-3, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Sodium Kernelate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Sodium Lauryl Lactylate/Sulphate, Hyrated Palm Glycerides, Etyl Palmitate, Octyl Palmitate, Palmityl Alcohol

It’s just as easy to still eat cookies, ice cream, bread and pizza dough if you don’t want to eat palm oil – bake your own! And use ingredients that don’t contain palm oil. Easy!

But – wait, there is a twist. Even with all these negatives to palm oil, we shouldn’t necessarily be cutting it out of our diets. When it comes to oils produced for food products, palm oil is the most eco-friendly. It requires ten times less land than other oil-producing plants. So, if there isn’t a non-oil product on the market, palm oil is the way to go – and to find a product that contains sustainable palm oil, look for one of these sustainability-guarantee labels:

I hope I’ve inspired a couple of you to think twice before buying a pack of margarine or chocolate again by writing this post, and if you want more information on the things I’ve talked about, please check out these awesome websites:

GreenPalm: Supporting RSPO Certified Sustainable Palm Oil

WWF: Which Everyday Products Contain Palm Oil?

Also, if you want to help in the effort to promote sustainable palm oil, you can sign the GreenPalm online petition here.

I’ll see you very soon with more baking posts and thank you very much for reading! 🙂