http://www.rspo.org/member_page.aspx...tid=3&ddlID=37
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Ahh OK... I still don't get it. ;) But that's alright, and I don't mean to sound like I'm criticizing him (I purchase one particular product for which I'm pretty much on the opposite end of a similar discussion) but to me, as in personally, I don't see the difference between eating an animal and eating a product that directly caused the death of an animal. If anything, the outright eating of the animal seems more upfront and ethical than does the eating of a product that was created only through the death of an animal. Anyway, I think it was mostly the degree of relief expressed that has me wondering about the thought behind it.
Here is a link for palm oil. One thing I didn't realize is that the increased demand for palm oil is largely spurred on by the "trans fat" reduction campaigns - palm oil, unfortunately, doesn't contain it.
http://www.cspinet.org/palm/
Kevin2, thank you for that very revealing website.
Oh my i have never heard of palm oil before- i find eating vegan hard enough as it is and so this is another ingredient i will be avoiding. Is it in alot of vegan food? Maybe we could make a list of things we know it is in to help us all
xxxxxx
I do my best to avoid palm oil.
Lush are doing their best to cut out palm oil from their products.
http://www.newconsumer.com/news/item/3149/
Wow!:confused: Thankyou so much everyone for this information. I had no idea about all that stuff. Now I will try and avoid it. If anyone knows of which products do and don't cantain it, please share.
Thanks Essy
i don't know about Australia, but it seems in the UK the majority of processed foods that contain oil are made with palm oil.
Well I don't eat much processed foods, so hopefully I'll avoid it, thank goodness.
And Thankyou!
There is a lot of it about, but there is also a lot of processed food that doesn't contain it (or contains such a small amount it's not worth worrying about).
If a food just says vegetable oil, look at the amount of saturated fat. If a large amount of the fat is saturated fat then it has a high proportion of palm oil in it. Palm oil is about 50% saturated fat, palm kernel oil is close to 80% saturated fat, other common oils are much lower in saturated fat. Rapeseed (canola oil) is around 6% saturated fat. I think in the UK only palm and rapeseed oil (or a mixture of the two) are generally labelled as vegetable oil.
I try and buy stuff that labels the oil, or else I look at the fat profile. If it is more than about 10% saturated fat to total fat ration then I don't buy it. You have to have a bit of leeway because some other ingredients (nuts, seeds, coconut) may add a little saturated fat.
I hadn't heard about any of this. *Adds palm oil to the list of things to aviod*
I hadn't heard that it was a problem, either. I'd had it in Ghana, where it is not "solid at room temperature" (because the temperature is higher!), it is an oil as the name suggests. Over there, it is used in the un-refined form, which is deep red, very tasty and nutritious. Drizzled on a carbohydrate food such as fufu, it is considered a complete meal, without needing meat or fish. :)
So I associated palm oil with Africa and was surprised to hear about the plight of the orang-utan as Africa is home to the chimpanzee and the gorilla! I hadn't really taken on board that the palm oil imported into Europe was from unsustainable plantations in Asia.
On the domestic front, does anyone know about Pure dairy free (Matthews Foods)? I use their soya version, which has 45% soya oil. Other ingredients include "Vegetable oils". I presume this is palm oil, and I think I remember seeing palm oil mentioned before their packaging had a makeover. I checked their website www.puredairyfree.co.uk (lots of vegan recipes) :) but could find no mention of palm oil.
I'd hate to have to stop using this product, :( it took me long enough to discover it when I first became a vegan, I don't know what else I'd put on my bread.
like Jessica just said - avoiding processed food for the most part will prevent any kind of contact with palm oil. And besides...it's more fun cooking stuff from scratch anyway! :)
This was a big story on the national news (10.30pm ITV) today.
If anyone would like to help out the orangutans endangered by palm oil plantations, you can actually "adopt" an orphan through the Australian Orangutan Project for $55. The money goes directly towards the sanctuaries that are caring for orphaned orangutans. Their mothers are usually killed as an indirect result of deforestation - when their home is destroyed and their usual food is no longer available, the orangutans resort to raiding human food supplies and are often shot by the locals, or by hunters supplying the bushmeat trade. (In their defence, the local people struggle to find enough food for themselves, since Indonesia has a high rate of poverty.)
Anyway, here's the link:
http://www.orangutan.org.au/index.php?id=23
It’s not just food – toiletries and cleaning products often use palm oil too.
I was concerned that the glycerine in Kingfisher toothpaste was derived from palm oil, so wrote to them asking about the source/sustainability of their palm oil, and they said:
“We have guarantees from our supplies assuring us that our palm oil comes from sustainable managed estates. We are satisfied that this type of production does not endanger the orangutang or other species.”
I also got some info from Ecover, who use palm oil in some products; they say it is difficult to be certain about the source of their oil, but they are involved with the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, and campaign for traceability.
(This information is a little old though.)
Mzee, Pure are in the same camp as Ecover - they are working (through the RTSPO) towards traceable sustainable palm oil.
For non-dairy fat spreads like this tho, it seems to be a choice between hydrogenated (trans) fats & 'solid' vegetable fats (palm or coconut), and I don't know of any based on coconut oil.
You could always try using oil on your bread (bit messy tho for packed lunches!), or stick to moist toppings, like avocado, hummus & pate's, so you don't really need a spread at all.
Thanks for doing the research, Helen.
I do use Marmite, tahini, peanut butter and pumpkin seed butter (not all on the same slice, though!) in my packed lunch, so perhaps I'll cut down the amount of Pure I use.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/fo...m-oil-20080421
Anyone seen any of this in the news?
I happened to get sent a blog on this link and am intrigued as it's one of the issues that particularly pushes my buttons. You'd think so many people as orangutans would have been more heard of?!!
I know this thread was started a long time ago, but until I stumbled on it, I honestly had no idea about the environmental issues with palm oil, and I'm truly aghast. I'm making efforts to eliminate it from my family's diet, but it seems like it's in *everything*! I had been using Earth Balance margarine (funny they have the nerve to call it "earth" Balance with the palm oil it contains), and I found only one kind of margarine that is both non-hydrogenated and doesn't contain palm oil--spectrum canola spread. But frankly, it is kinda gross, so I'm still on the market for a good replacement.
But actually, where I'm having the most difficulty is PEANUT BUTTER!!! I had stopped using hydrogenated peanut butter and had switched to Skippy natural, because my children and I like *sweet* peanut butter, and Skippy uses sugar in their ingredients. But now I've discovered they also use Palm oil. And I have not been able to find a replacement, because it seems like the only non-hydrogenated peanut butters (ie. the "natural" or "organic" ones) only cater to those who like *salty* peanut butter. In other words, they contain no sugar whatsoever--only peanuts and salt, and it's difficult to reason with 4 and 6 year olds to get them to develop an acquired taste for it (not to mention trying to convince my own sweet-tooth). We live a busy life, and PB&J is a staple food for lunch, PB toast is often a quick breakfast, PB crackers a healthy snack, etc. So I hate to keep buying PB with palm oil in it. Does anyone know of a brand of sweet, natural, and palm oil-free PB??? (Oh, and crunchy if possible)
Could you possibly add your own sugar to the peanut butter? I like to add a drizzle of maple syrup or agave nectar to "natural" peanut butter.
I have found that palm oil is used primarily as a substitute for partially hydrogenated oils because it has similar physical qualities but lacks trans fat. Other oils, such as soybean, sunflower, and canola, seem to be more common than palm oil in processed food. I usually avoid palm oil primarily for health reasons, especially its high level of saturated fat compared to most other plant oils. I have known for a while that it causes rainforest destruction and that is upsetting, but I find it too difficult to avoid it 100% of the time. It is in two products than I consider irreplaceable.
Hi,
I mean from sustainable sources.
I haven't eaten food with palm oil in it for months because I connect it to destroying habitat but would it be more helpful to animals tobuy chocolate with vegan sustainable palm oil or go without?
Also I don't know if it's a myth but I heard bugs can be in chocolate - is this true even in vegan brands?
thanks alot
:oiv just been researching the RSPO i dont know if it is just me but they dont seem very trustworthy i found out that Unilever has the chair position what ever that means but they are an unethical company to begin with i am very confussed by the whole Palm Oil thing but i am going to cut it out of my families diet as much as i can but it seems to be in everything this is my first post so if it seems dum please forgive me i hope someone will reply to this post
Hello Karen. That's a good question to launch your forum career with!
Have you seen this article? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...lm-oil-targets . There are some other articles about it on the Ethical Consumer website but they don't look very up to date unfortunately - e.g. http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/comme...t/palmoil.aspx
I agree the membership of the RSPO is not very impressive from an ethical point of view, but arguably an industry organisation that needs to include major manufacturers to make a difference. I also prefer to avoid palm oil as far as possible but given that not everyone else is going to do that I hope these campaigns to make it more sustainable get somewhere :/
Some products call themselves 'vegan' but still contain palm oil.
The only UK peanut butter than is palm oil free is SunPat. So I add some oil to it if I'm making cookies.
I agree that the absence of palm oil in is not part of the definition of a vegan product. I think it's probably one of the vegan products that is more environmentally questionable though, so would prefer to avoid it for reasons that aren't to do with being vegan :)
Re peanut butter, I have been buying the fair-trade one from Oxfam (Harry's Nuts) lately, but I see that does contains palm oil, albeit from RSPO producers. I guess I should try and make my own, which is meant to be fairly easy.
I think it's fine to avoid it for environmental reasons and to campaign for more sustainable production that doesn't harm orangutans but saying that palm oil isn't vegan just muddies things up. Vegan is a word with a definition that you can't just change over one product. If you use that logic to decide what is and isn't vegan hardly anything would be vegan, mono agriculture in general causes all sorts of damage to the environment and has affected many species of animals. All we can do is educate people and campaign for something better, we can't just decide that plants aren't vegan anymore.
thanks everyone for replying to my post i know that ethically palm oil is up there with many other things (the list would go on forever i expect) i guess its one of those things that we just have to decide for ourselves were we draw the line thanks again for all our replies
I dont know about the helath issues of palm oil so if anyone could post a link that qould be awsome
how ever i know its bad for the enviroment as it is clearing raiforest and so in turn depleting soil qulity and animal life that is native to the area
also be warned there are products that will clearly state on them vegan friendly but they still have palm oil in them and so howe can they be vegan friendly so we need to stop the miss lableing and educate companeys what it means to lable and things a vegan when they are not!!
skasha
Palm oil IS vegan friendly. Please don't muddy the definition of vegan.
I think Skasha was thinking about whether the unethical resourcing of palm oil resulted in harm to animals... However, Skasha, the definition of veganism includes the words "as far as practical and possible", and it itself is not of animal origin, so it actually is vegan. Sometimes the harvesting of vegetables/fruits/grains etc results in accidental harm to animals too, but they are still vegan foods. No vegan can truly be 100% sure that everything they do, touch, eat, use, or wear is definitely completely free of association from harm to animals, but we can do our utmost to do the LEAST harm possible. :)
Obviously, when it comes to the animal kingdom and the environment, we ought to all do as much as we can, but within reasonable practicality and possibility. The individual needs to decide what those words mean to them.