eliminate palm oil – You Choose

Living without palm oil: You can do it!

Welcome to YouChoose, a blog about individual climate action. We talked in previous posts about the importance of reducing the demand for palm oil. This week I would like to talk about food products that are more likely to contain palm oil.

It is a fact that, unless we stop buying, companies will keep deforesting. Avoiding palm oil is one of the actions we can take to stop deforestation. You will hear all kind of reasons why palm oil is actually good for the planet and how avoiding palm oil will do more harm than good. Don’t fall for the greenwashing. The skyrocketing demand for the cheap oil is fueled not by any necessity, but by an increase in demand for junk and fast food. The big conglomerates responsible for deforestation are also the biggest producers of junk food. Their palm oil suppliers are linked to human right violations, intimidation, and destruction of indigenous community. For this reason reducing the amount of junk and packaged food that we purchase is a fundamental step to invert the trend. When we purchase food containing or prepared with palm oil we are contributing to deforestation. Unfortunately there is no nice way to put this. Read here from Palm Oil Detectives how “sustainable palm oil” doesn’t really exist. It is just something invented to make consumers feel good and enable the continuous destruction of the rain forest.

Here is a list of foods where you are likely to find palm oil. Keep this in mind next time you go to the grocery store. I assure you that, after eliminating palm oil, my life hasn’t changed much, but my health and wallet may have actually improved.

Doughnuts: Fast food chains use palm oil for frying. I used to like doughnuts, but stopped buying them entirely and never looked back.
Candies: Almost all chocolate candies and bars in grocery stores contain palm oil. I used to buy some for my daughter when she was a kid or for Halloween. After realizing what I was doing, I stopped entirely purchasing them and lived happily everafter. I also noticed that, when I explained to my daughter the reason for it, she agreed and never asked for them anymore.
PopCorn: Please read the ingredients in microwave-ready popcorn packages and you will discover that all of them are made with palm oil.
Chocolate spreads: Products such as hazelnut spreads and sometime peanut butter spreads list palm oil among their ingredients.
Fast food, fried items, and hamburgers: Major fast food chains use palm oil for frying, especially in Asia, but also in the US. I know this is a little bit hard but limiting fast food as much as possible is important and not that depriving. It may actually be good for us.
Crackers, cereals, cookies, pancake mixes, soups, bread products: I read ingredients carefully and find palm oil in all these items. I invite you to do the same and look for available alternatives. There are few brands that don’t use palm oil.
Bakery products in grocery stores: A large percent of baked good in US grocery stores contains palm oil. In the grocery store where I shop, palm oil is found in almost all baked goods. I encourage you to check it out next time you shop and look for alternatives.
Frozen meals, ice creams, frozen waffles, and pancakes: Palm oil in ice cream? There are things I wouldn’t buy even if they were good for the environment.

Please share this post and do your part advocating a stop to palm oil consumption.

Comments? Send me an email at info@choosesustainable.org

Celebrating 2 years of palm oil free soap

Welcome to YouChoose, a blog where we explore ways of living sustainably. This week I would like to share a small victory in my effort to free myself of palm oil (and plastic bottles).

It has been about two years since I bought my last bottle of liquid soap. The original intention was to reduce the use of plastic bottles, after all there are plenty of soap bars that can be used as alternatives. However, as I learned more about the ingredients in common soap bars and how they contribute to deforestation I decided to look for soap without palm oil.

That is where the real challenge began. I naively went around looking for palm oil free soap and realized that it is virtually impossible to find one. Now you may look at the ingredients in the soap (liquid or solid) in your home and be at peace because you won’t see a single mention of palm oil, still you’ll see seemingly innocuous ingredients such as: Sodium laureth (lauryl) sulfate, glyceryn, sodium kernelate, or additional names containing the palm suffix. These ingredients signal the presence of palm oil in the product. For example components such as laureth sulfate can be produced synthetically from petroleum oil or made using coconut or palm oil. Unfortunately, unless it is clearly stated that the product is palm oil free, you can be 99% sure that it is produced using palm oil. Note that many of these products are advertised as “natural”, “vegan”, “green”, which of course technically they are, except that their production brings devastation and deforestation.

Having failed hard on my attempt to purchase a palm oil free soap bar locally I turned my attention to the web. There are online several companies that produce really great palm oil free soap bars, the prices are also quite steep. It is understandable how these products may not be for every pocket, which brings us to the more general question of whether one has to be wealthy to be able to afford sustainable products. As it happens some of these products were too pricey for my pockets as well.

At the end of the day a compromise had to be made. I had to give up a luscious, foaming, creamy soap and fall back on a 100% olive oil soap bar. I resolved to use the scented ones for hands and shower, and the unscented ones for dishes. The price is very reasonable, they come in a paper box and wrapped in paper. They however don’t make a nice rich foam and come in limited scents. In the end for me this is a small price to pay to avoid palm oil and all the trail of destruction that comes with it.

I make liquid soap from the olive oil soap bar this way:

Bring 6 cups (or about 1.5 liters) of water to a boil
Grate 1 bar (or 3.5 ounces) of soap. Cutting the soap in small pieces also works

3.5 ounces of olive oil soap cut in small pieces

When the water is boiling lower the heat and place the soap in water
Turn off the heat and let the soap melt

Let it cool off
Transfer to a bottle, it is liquid at the beginning, but becomes dense later

The amount of water may vary depending on the soap and on personal preferences so one may need to experiment a little. One can also add essential oils for specific fragrances. On my part I now use basic olive soap also for dishes and found it to be fairly good.

Perhaps in time I’ll find better alternatives, I recently found a possible substitute for the dishes, but haven’t tried it yet.

At the end of the day I have come to a conclusion that we can’t keep the same habits and hope that the outcome will change. We have to give up some things we like to switch to more sustainable products. We can argue that all these efforts are just a drop and don’t make a big difference, but if more people say no to products derived from palm oil the outcome may actually change.

The YouChoose app provides several links and information on beauty products and cosmetics ingredients that are unsustainable and bad for the environment.

Send me your experience at info@choosesustainable.org and I’ll add it to this blog.

If you liked this post please share it!

A palm oil free life: Is it possible?

Welcome to YouChoose, a blog where we explore ways of living sustainably. This week I would like to talk about achieving a palm oil-free life.

Avoiding palm oil is imperative to stop deforestation. It is also one of the most difficult tasks when transitioning to a sustainable lifestyle. Palm oil was a relatively unknown ingredient until a few decades ago, but now it has become one of the most pervasive components in the mass-produced products we buy every day.

Palm oil is found in almost everything we eat: cookies, crackers, candies, spreads, jellies, cereals, and packaged products. It is also found in many house products such as laundry soaps, and in personal care products such as shampoos, soaps, conditioners, lotions, lipsticks, creams, cosmetics, and toothpaste.

Occasionally we hear halfhearted declarations from some world leader about reducing the import of products that are responsible for deforestation, however, after doing research for the YouChoose App, I learned one important thing: If I wanted to find out who was responsible for the extensive deforestation of the past few decades, the decline in biodiversity, and the extinction of primates I needed to look no farther than the mirror.

The high and growing demand for this cheap oil by multinational corporations has led to widespread destruction of rain forests in South East Asia and is bringing primates and other species to the verge of extinction. These rain forests are cleared usually by setting them on fire and are replaced with mono-culture plantations of palm trees (which are not a native species to that region) to produce palm oil.

I checked the products in my house, in the pantry, in the bathrooms and kitchen and found out that most of them indeed contained (explicitly listed or hidden behind other names) ingredients that are derived from palm oil.

Look at the ingredients of every packaged item you want to purchase

Cleaning and personal care products don’t list the ingredient as palm oil, but hide it behind the names of the chemical compound derived from it. The YouChoose App provides a list of chemical compound names that usually indicate the presence of palm oil.

A common skin-care product found in convenience stores. Can you spot the palm oil?

I really had to take a hard look at myself, which is never easy to do. I could no longer blame others for my doing. In that painful moment of awakening, I decided to embark on a journey to free myself of palm oil.

Here is a list of actions we can take to eliminate or substantially reduce our dependence on palm oil. Each action in itself is a journey and will be discussed in separate posts.

Be firm in our resolve, this is a very difficult path, but we shouldn’t doubt that it is worth pursuing.
Read ingredients of every food item at the grocery store. Palm oil is found in the most unexpected places.
Read ingredients of personal care products and avoid those that are derived from palm oil. A list is provided in the YouChoose App and it will also be provided in a following post.
Read ingredients of house cleaning products and avoid those that include palm oil.
Read ingredients of beauty and cosmetic products and avoid those with palm oil. A list of these is provided in the YouChoose App and it will be provided in a following post.
Don’t be fooled by “vegan”, “green”, and “eco” labels or by statements from corporations on how they plan to make their palm oil sustainable by 2025 or 2030. These are empty words that only betray the callousness of these enterprises.

After you go through this list you will discover that there aren’t many products you can buy in stores and, if you are brave enough, your journey will begin. It will involve giving up things you like, abandoning easy choices, and probably some discussions with your friends and family.

It is also important to remember that not all palm oil is destructive, there are many small companies that source their palm oil from places were the plant Elaeis Guineensis is native (mostly West Africa) and grown responsibly. These are not the major brands found in big store shelves. Before purchasing products with this ingredient it’s important to check with the company to see where and how they source their ingredients and purchase only if the answer is satisfactory.

To answer our initial question: Is a palm oil free life possible? The answer is Yes, but it’s not easy. Here is one topic where doing the right thing involves choosing the narrow path. I’ll share my progress in following posts. The YouChoose App provides links and resources with information on this topic.