While I was writing pieces for my fanzine (blog post on that coming soon) I wanted to make sure I included hard hitting pieces that will actually get people thinking, not just the typical fashion and beauty content you see in most magazines and on blog nowadays. One thing I've been researching more and more about these last few months has been our palm oil consumption, which was the perfect thing to include in my little fanzine; it's something relevant that needs to be talked about more and I had a opportunity to spread the word. To me, this is also the perfect content for my blog, where a younger generation of people will see it and do something about their palm oil consumption, like I've tried to do. It's only a short piece but I hope you take something away from it.
I’m sure by now you’re all aware of palm oil, but if you’re not I’ll give you a quick rundown. Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of the oil palms, and two types of oil can be produced; palm kernel oil, which comes from the kernel or stone in the middle of the fruit, and crude palm oil, which comes from squeezing the fruit itself. However, palm oil production has been the cause of some serious deforestation and continues to destroy the habitats of endangered species like Orangutans and Sumatran rhinos. Forests are burnt down in order to clear areas where oil palms can grow, but burning down the forests destroys a countless amount of wildlife and causes high levels of carbon dioxide and soot into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change.
Basically, using palm oil is destroying our planet, but you might be thinking ‘why not just stop buying products that contain palm oil?’, well that appears to be easier said than done. Palm oil is all over the place; you can find it in chocolate, margarine, and ice cream but it’s not just food, you can also find it in soap, shampoo, lipstick and washing detergent (check the ingredients next time you’re about to purchase something, you’ll be shocked by the amount it’s in). I care about the planet and I don’t want to be buying products that I know are so damaging to parts of the world, so earlier this year I decided to go as palm oil free as I possibly could. I checked the list on ingredients before buying anything so I could try and opt for the products with no palm oil or I searched google for a palm oil free alternative, but this is where it got difficult. I was shocked to find that there were hardly any palm oil free products I could use to replace previous products I’ve bought, and the majority of what I could find were by really niche brands that aren’t stocked in supermarkets, and the only supermarkets (apart from Iceland but I’ll get to that in a bit) that sold their own palm free alternatives were high end stores like Waitrose. I’m a student living off of a student loan, so I usually just do a small weekly shop for myself at my local Morrisons’, it’s not really possible for me to switch to expensive supermarkets and organic products from small online stores while living off of my student loan. This occurrence made me realise that not that many companies seem to be doing much about this major issue, and it’s hard for an individual like me to do my part in cutting down palm oil consumption when right now I can barely afford one pack of palm oil free biscuits from Waitrose.
While I’m glad to see stores are stepping up and supplying some palm oil free alternative products, it seems that only the wealthy are able to purchase enough of these products to make any sort of difference, that is except for Iceland. As of January, this year, the supermarket Iceland stopped putting palm oil in their own labelled products after reformulating over 130 products and have launched 13 new lines or frozen and chilled foods. While it’s only Iceland’s own food that doesn’t contain palm oil, this is still a huge accomplishment for a supermarket to achieve and I hope that many other supermarkets and cosmetic companies can follow them by reformulating products with alternative ingredients to help make a difference to amount of palm oil we consume. Brands need to produce affordable and accessible palm free products before it’s too late to do anything about it and we lose endangered animals for good.
If you too care about this issue then we need to do something about this, we need to spread the word. Share on social media, write about it on your blog, scream it to the world, do whatever you can to get the word out there that our home is being destroyed. Do your part so we can help save the planet for the next generation.
To sum up, we need more affordable and accessible palm oil free products, and we needs to spread the word and actively do something about this so more brands will step up and use different ingredients to help cut down our palm oil consumption and help stop all the deforestation, habitat loss and climate change.
Palm Oil Free Food Products To Buy:
Candy Kittens Peach Fizz Gourmet Sweets
Morrisons Organic Butter
All Eat Real Crisps
Flipz Milk Chocolate Covered Pretzels
Polo Mints
Nakd Cocoa Crunch Bars
Ombar Raw Chocolate
Heinz Tomato Ketchup
Whole Earth Maple Frosted Corn Flakes
I hope you learnt something from this blog post and will check the ingredients next time you're buying food. Do your own research, tell a friend or write your own blog post to help get the word out, we need to stop pour palm oil consumption.
India X