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Loading...After All That Rainforest Destruction, Palm Oil Is Not Even Healthy for You
Palm oil has popped up on a lot of ingredients lists in the last several years. It’s been widely used by food manufacturers as a replacement for trans fat, after the trans fat labeling requirement went into effect in 2006. But the fast-rising demand for palm oil, a common ingredient also of soaps and personal care products and a growing source of biofuel in Europe, has had devastating consequences for the environment. And though it may not be as bad for you as trans fat, it isn’t exactly a health food.
A new study, led by researchers at Stanford and Yale universities and published in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that the development of oil palm plantations in Indonesian Borneo, a.k.a. Kalimantan, is driving “massive carbon dioxide emissions.” A leading producer of palm and palm kernel oil, Indonesia “is also one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gasses, due to rapid loss of carbon-rich forests and peatlands.” According to the United Nations, 98 percent of Indonesia’s forests may be destroyed by 2022.
In 2010 alone, the study estimates, land-clearing for oil palm plantations in Kalimantan released more than 140 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is equal to annual emissions from 28 million vehicles. By 2020, plantation expansion will account for 558 million metric tons, or more than all of Canada’s fossil fuel emissions. Researchers combined field measurements with analyses of high-resolution satellite images and government lease records to come up with these estimates.
The Indonesian government has pledged to curb deforestation as well as emissions, but some are skeptical about whether it can make good on that pledge. As reported in Scientific American, “much of Indonesia’s proposed policy centers on a plan to site new plantations on already degraded land, thus sparing the need for further forest clearing. But without clear parameters, that designation can easily be skewed,” said study leader Lisa Curran of Stanford University. The government, moreover, has not been able to crack down on rampant illegal foresting.
From China to the European Union to the U.S., the market for palm oil is exploding, and a May 2009 article in the U.K.’s Independent explains why:
In its own way, palm oil is a wonder plant. Astonishingly productive, its annual yield is 3.6 tonnes a hectare compared with half a tonne for soy or rapeseed. Originally found in West Africa, palm oil is uniquely “fractionable” when cooked, meaning its properties can be easily separated for different products. Although high in artery-clogging saturated fat, it is healthier than hydrogenated fats. For manufacturers, there is another significant benefit… it is cheaper than soy, rapeseed or sunflower.
Another advantage of palm oil for food production is that it “is highly versatile and can be substituted for hard animal fats (butter and lard); for soy, olive, or canola liquid vegetable oils; and for partially hydrogenated oil,” as explained in a 2005 report called “Cruel Oil” from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
It’s high-yielding, cheap and versatile. It’s no wonder palm oil is in huge global demand by food manufacturers, who have taken to billing it as a health food of sorts by, for example, touting the fact that it’s derived from the “fruit” of the oil palm. Studies have shown, however, that palm oil, which is high in saturated fat and low in polyunsaturated fat, promotes heart disease, just like butter, lard and trans fat.
That rainforests are being leveled to make margarine, crackers, cookies and chocolates is a tragic irony, to say the least. The Independent called it an example of “environmental lunacy” in that “it isn’t just destroying one of the last great wildernesses, its rare animals and some of the remaining people whose ways are at odds with modern living. It also threatens to damage our own lives in the West.”
For the sake of the environment, rainforest wildlife, including Orangutans and Sumatran tigers and your own health, read labels carefully and avoid products containing palm or palm kernel oil. Or, look at least for palm oil that’s sustainably produced. According to the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil accounts for less than 10 percent of the global market.
Related Stories:
Species Gravely Endangered by Global Trade of Commodities like Palm Oil
Top 3 Victims of Palm Oil: Wildlife, People and Planet
Cargill Admits Buying Palm Oil from Illegally Cleared Orangutan Habitat
Read more: carbon dioxide emissions, environment & wildlife, greenhouse gas emissions, indonesia, palm oil, processed foods, rainforests, saturated fat, trans fat
Photo Credit: DrLianPinKoh
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very sad
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136 comments
+ add your ownhard to always know when labelling inadequate
(whoops, posted before I was done) There are a few tasty things out there that are free from palm oil though, I think Reese's peanut butter cups are one. So long as they're not calling it something else on the package, anyway.
It's damn near impossible to avoid palm oil when you buy groceries, you really have to check stuff hardcore. If you know a food to be very creamy or soft, there's a good chance there is palm oil in it; margarine and junk food (especially candy, cookies, and pastries) seem to be loaded with it.
Thanks.
ALWAYS read ingredient labels .If the product contains palm oil it is your choice . Just remember that animals die when rain forests are destroyed .
Lee W.--just because a palm oil plantation is efficient, does not mean it fights starvation. All those small farming families thrown off their land in Colombia or other allies of the US in Central or South America (especially indigenous communities) have to try to find work and food in the Cities--kids might find drugs or prostitution fill their bellies--while huge monoculture palm orchards promote disease, give no place for wildlife to navigate between uncultivated stretches, and just don't do anything to feed people in the country--just produce export product and cash for big corporations.
"The Green Revolution" and super-productive industrial agriculture sounds like it's the only answer to "feeding the huge population growth". The trouble is, hi-tech solutions always require irrigation, lots of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and often GE seeds and herbicides, so you can't save the seeds. No small farmers can afford this, and small-hold farmers, who may produce subsistence level agriculture for one family, produce 90% of the food for the people on the planet. Moving these people off the land changed the Phillipines from a net food exporter to a food importer in a few years, and is the reason, along with speculation, for food riots, not population.
Not sure about that, as I know it's the best but only use sustainable.
We don't want to destroy our rainforest
Palm oil is 10x more productive, per hectare, than other crops such as soy beans...have to look at both sides of the story as the world's population is growing and utilizing more efficient crops will be necessary to feed people - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrZnGpklxb4
Unfortunately the Western Environmental NGOs (WENGOs) continue to promote distortions and misrepresentations of palm oil in Malaysia. The truth is that Malaysia is exceeding the goals set forth at the 1992 Rio Summit to set aside over 50 percent of forest land under conservation; today, more than 56 percent of Malaysia’s forests are under conservation. Western countries such as the United Kingdom and Belgium have only 12 percent and less than 23 percent of natural forest land area set aside, respectively. Malaysian palm oil plantations are developed on lands long zoned for agricultural production, sequestering carbon emissions and frequently replacing less efficient plantation agriculture. Less than 10 percent of land use change in Southeast Asia since 2005 has been attributed to oil palm plantations according to the FAO.
It’s time WENGOs resist their sensationalist trend to spread fallacies about our industry and instead recognize Malaysia's efforts to lead the world in environmental conservation.
Oh come on!
Its common knowledge for ages that Palm oil is one of if not the worst kind of fat you can ingest.
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