Do you have an alternative to suggest that’s less ecologically damaging? I keep hearing complaints about palm oil but I’ve never heard an alternative suggestion that doesn’t involve even more land use.
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starlinguk@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
The bad thing about palm oil isn’t how unhealthy it is (because what it is replacing isn’t healthy either); the bad thing is that palm farmers have destroyed many thousands of square miles of rain forest. When you fly from Singapore to Jakarta, virtually all rain forest you used to fly over is now palm. It’s an unmitigated environmental disaster.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
mattreb@feddit.it 3 hours ago
I think the problem is that all the global “fat” supply have gone into palm oil since it’s low cost and tastes nice, so the scale of it’s production make the problem worse…
so even if the alternatives are worse on paper, splitting the production between them could mitigate the damage maybe?
btw I found this quite comprehensive study
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
splitting the production between them could mitigate the damage maybe?
Moving half of current palm oil usage to other oils would require about 250M acres of land. Anybody got a spare country or two lying around?
Anyway, production is already split. As I mentioned in another comment, palm oil currently accounts for about 40% of plant oils, while using less than 10% of the land.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
You could not eat food with palm oil in it. There’s a suggestion.
Nothing I eat has palm oil in it. I don’t specifically avoid it, but I do avoid processed foods generally, and palm oil is only in processed food.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Avoiding processed foods is certainly a valid option, though not one I see gaining popularity anytime soon.
However, the average detractor isn’t suggesting sweeping diet changes, they’re suggesting buying products using other plant oils, as if that wouldn’t cause even more deforestation if everybody did it.
ctrl_alt_esc@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
You’re right, but if we used butter instead, the necessary cows would surely require yet more space.
starlinguk@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Its replacement depends on the product you’re trying to make. Like, they could not remove the cocoa butter from chocolate, for example.
Which reminds me, someone gave me a bunch of chocolate bars with a large “rainforest alliance” logo on it that had palm oil as the second ingredient. They’re inedible.
notsosure@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
It’s not a choice between palm oil or butter. You can create a vegan pie easily. Yummie yummie.
ctrl_alt_esc@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Isn’t palm oil vegan?
GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 5 hours ago
It depends on your definition of veganism. There is no animal product in it, but to use it in the quantities we do requires the destruction of a lot of habitat that certain animals require to survive.
notsosure@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
Nope, it contains bits and pieces of orangutans.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
Since veganism is mainly about ethicality, i’d guess not.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 9 hours ago
i think so since it comes from a tree
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
If only vegetable oils existed…
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
You mean like palm oil?
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Different use cases.
Fats that are solid ( or at least not kept liquid) are not directly comparable to oils. They fulfill a different function in baked goods. In particular, pie crust with vegetable oil would fail totally. It wouldn’t hold up.
Mind you, if you don’t object to hydrogenated oils, they can do the job. Yay margarine? But you can’t just dump 10 grams of canola into your biscuits and expect the results to look, taste, or feel like a biscuit. You’d get something, but it wouldn’t be the same.
starlinguk@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Palm oil doesn’t tase good at all so you can just as well use margarine made from sunflower or canola oil.