Did you know over 75% of eatables that you buy from the market, including packaged goods, contain some bits of palm oil?

Yes, believe it! Palm oil is super widely consumed.

Let us see why!

What is Palm Oil

Palm oil is the oil derived from the fruit of the oil palm tree and is generally classified into two types: Palm Oil and Palm kernel oil. It is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, used not just for cooking but in beauty products, packaged food items, and the list goes on!

It is composed of fatty acids and has an especially high concentration of saturated fats. Unrefined/Red Palm oil is significantly rich in beta carotenes, which gives it its characteristic red color. However, refined palm oil is a more bleached and deodorized product, which has lost its red-coloring carotenoids, rupturing its taste and color.

The rise of palm oil can be traced all the way back to mid-90s when there was an urgent need for a healthier fat substitute to be used in food applications. At that time, butter had been replaced by other fatty products like shortening/margarine, which contained unhealthy trans fat in huge amounts. Trans fats add to poor cardiac health, so naturally, the world started looking for the “one”. The “one” substitute that wasn’t unhealthy and expensive either!

And then, palm oil hit the stores!

Why did Palm Oil Become a Success

Palm Oil is an extremely versatile oil with many different properties and functions, which made it so popular and widely used among the masses. It is inexpensive as it has a much higher yield compared to other oil-producing crops. It’s colorless and odorless, thereby, reducing the risk of altering the product’s taste or look. It is very stable at high temperatures making it the perfect choice for those crispy crunchy textured fried products that we all love so much. It has extraordinary cleaning and nourishing properties making it a success in the beauty and personal care industry as well.

However, do you know where did this widespread use of Palm oil start? In the 1960s, scientists began warning about the adverse effects of highly saturated fats present in butter, which they speculated were sly allies of heart problems. It was then replaced with margarine which had a lower percentage of saturated fats but was unfortunately made up of trans-fat as a result of partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils. So, research soon revealed that this was actually worse than the saturated fats present in butter, and so, it birthed the need for a much healthier product in the oil space.

1. The Texture: Now, most vegetable oils are neither solid at room temperature nor reasonable. It is the highly saturated nature of Palm oil, which makes it semi-solid at room temperature and so, it can easily become a cheap substitute for butter or hydrogenated vegetable oil or margarine in products, where solid fat is more desirable. For example, in cookies and similar baked products, we need a solid mix. Palm oil will come to our rescue!
2. The Transfats: The health concerns related to trans fats, which are generally found in other vegetable oils but not in palm oil, have largely contributed to the increasing value of palm oil in the food industry.

It is a combination of different types of fats and its consistency after refining makes it a very sought-after product. However, palm oil is so cleverly disguised in the making of nearly all consumer products that you wouldn’t even know if your goods contained it. We can’t possibly begin to fathom how many products that are an important part of our now everyday life have palm oil as their major constituent.

3. Versatility: In order to actually figure out what all products contain palm oil, you would need to dig deep into the constituent label of your product and look out for the following names in that segment: Vegetable Oil, Palm Kernel, Vegetable Fat, Palm Kernel Oil, Palmate, Palm Fruit Oil, Palmolein, Sodium Kernelate, Palmitate, Glyceryl, Stearic Acid, Stearate, Palmitic Acid, Elaeis Guineensis, Palmityl Alcohol, Palm Stearine, Octyl Palmitate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Palmitoyl Tetrapeptide-3, Palmitoyl Oxostearamide, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Hydrated Palm Glycerides, Sodium Lauryl Lactylate/Sulphate, Ethyl Palmitate, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, etc. Yup, these are the various names that palm oil has to go by! Big FMCG companies that want you to not scoop out palm traces or they simply use another palm product, would pick one of these names.

The mass adoption began with processed foods and was quickly followed by other industries such as the cosmetic industry, packaged food industry, cleaning, and personal care products, etc. Nuclear products and transport fuel industries also began using palm oil to replace other oils because of its magical properties.

Unilever was one of the first brands to make the move from trans fats to palm oil. Soon after, most of the food processing industry switched to using palm oil instead of any other ingredient.

Palm oil’s versatility is not just limited to food. Unlike other oils, it can be separated into oils of different consistencies which renders it available for multiple uses. Not long after the processed food business had discovered the magical properties of palm oil, industries as diverse as personal care products and transport fuel also began using it to replace other oils. As it became more widely used in food around the world, it also started replacing animal products in cleaning products in personal care items such as soap, shampoo, lotion, makeup, etc. Today, more than 70% of personal care items contain one or more palm oil derivatives, so, though you may not know it, you almost certainly eat or use palm oil on a regular basis.

Highly populated regions in Asia, such as China and India, have an accelerating economy, which is tremendously aided by palm oil’s newfound popularity. Palm oil has been widely used to replace other oils. This oil is a huge part of the growing junk food industry, which includes brands such as Pizza hut, Domino’s, Subway, KFC, etc., all of which are largely using palm oil across thousands of stores from the USA to Japan.

If you are wondering, what palm oil does once it enters your body, click here!

Palm oil is used in nearly everything. You could find it in well over 50% of the packaged food products sold in the markets, including pizzas, donuts, chocolates, bread, etc. However, personal care products such as deodorants, shampoos, and lipsticks aren’t so far behind either, with palm oil being found in over 45% of the items that comprise this catalog. It is also used in animal feed and as a biofuel in many parts of the world.

Let’s talk about some of the everyday products that use palm oil and why.

Products That Use Palm Oil

Let’s start with the food processing and packaging industry. Some of the most common items that involve the use of palm oil or one of its derivatives include

• Pizza dough:

Palm oil is added to both fresh and frozen pizza dough to enhance texture and flavor, and to avoid the crust sticking together.

• Instant noodles:

It’s also used to pre-cook instant noodles, and it’s thanks to palm oil’s awesomeness that all you have to do is add hot water. You may be surprised to know but palm oil actually constitutes about 20% of the packaged weight of the noodles.

• Ice cream:

It raises the melting point for ice cream providing more stability at a higher temperature. In addition to that, palm oil also adds more smoothness and creaminess to your ice creams.

• Margarine:

Palm oil is used in margarine because it is solid at room temperature and free of trans fats.

• Chocolates, cookies:

Palm oil also helps create a smooth and shiny appearance on chocolates and keeps them from melting easily. When chocolates don’t melt easily, they become much simpler to handle. Such chocolates are, in fact, called as chocolate compounds and are now not included in the definition of regular chocolate. Read more on this, here!

• Bread:

Since it is solid at room temperature, it is used in cookies and other baked products to enhance their flavor and texture. Since it is inexpensive and easy to work with, it is also used in bread making.

Talking about the home, beauty, and the personal care industry, the most common products using palm oil include shampoos, lipstick, soaps, detergents, etc. It is because of this very specific to palm oil characteristic, cleaning and nourishing, that it was considered a great replacement for animal tallow, which was originally used for the production of such products. Using Palm oil for the same also makes the products more natural, and plant-based.

Palm oil is used in lipsticks and other beauty products because it holds color well, does not melt at high temperatures, has a smooth application, and virtually no taste.

In shampoos, it is used as a conditioning agent that helps restore the natural oil of the hair that is stripped away by most shampoos. It is also used to make soaps for its ability to remove oil and dirt from hair and skin as well as to moisturize.

As mentioned above, because of its cleaning properties, palm oil is also used to make soaps, washing powder, and other cleaning products. The composition of palm oil was very similar to animal tallow which was earlier used to make soaps and shampoos which is why it was a very easy replacement for the same

Palm oil can be used to produce biodiesel and biofuel. Unlike in food and personal care products, where palm oil turned out to be the perfect alternative when it comes to biofuel, palm, soyabean, sunflower oil, etc.; they all perform equally well. But, palm kernel oil has an added advantage, and at that: A very big one and that is the price.

But, just as trans fats were chosen in the food industry to substitute butter and its adverse effects on consumer health but turned out to be even unhealthier than the one they replaced; Palm oil was also initially adopted for its perceived environmental friendliness. Palm oil has been and continues to be a major driver of deforestation of some of the world’s most biologically diverse forests thereby endangering the species like Orangutans and Sumatran rhinos by destroying their natural habitat. The loss of these forests along with the conversion of carbon-rich soils present in the same has created a carbon belt in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, which constitute about 85% of the world palm oil cultivation. Fires set to clear forests and create land to expand palm cultivations are the top source of greenhouse gas emissions in these countries. These expansions are often associated with tremendous environmental devastation and attendant labor and human rights abuses. These are serious issues that the whole palm oil sector needs to step up and address because it does not have to be this way.

Palm oil can be produced more sustainably and we can limit the damage already done before it is too late. There are organizations working towards promoting and encouraging sustainable practices and benefits of the same. The Round Table of Sustainable palm oil (RSPO) is one such organization that was established in 2004 to address the rising concerns about the impact palm oil cultivation was having on the environment and the society as well. It has a production standard that sets best practices for producing and sourcing palm oil, and it also has a buy-in minimum price set for most of the global industry. They encourage companies to be transparent in their use and sourcing of palm oil ensuring they know who they’re buying from and where the oil is coming from, i.e., where it has been produced. Is it an already established cultivation or a new one? Does new cultivation involve clearing a new patch of the forest to create space thereby, inflicting deforestation?

You must be thinking, why don’t we just switch to an alternative vegetable oil?

Why Isn’t Palm Oil Banned

Palm oil is an incredibly efficient crop producing more oil per land area than any other crop. It alone meets about 35% of the world vegetable oil demand on just 10% of the land. To get the same amount of alternative oils, you’d need about 5-10 times more land which would eventually shift the problem to other parts of the world as well, threatening more species and habitats.

Palm oil is also an important crop for the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of emerging economies and millions of small farmers depend on its cultivation for their livelihood. In countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, palm oil cultivation played a major part in poverty reduction, and in developing their economies post-independence. Hence, taking more actions to tackle the issues is better than boycotting the use of palm oil entirely.

Palm trees are perennial and evergreen, which enables year-round production. It also requires less soil preparation as compared to other sources of vegetable oils thereby reducing the cost. Most importantly, it gives the highest yield per acre of any oilseed crop which is almost 5-10 times the yield of other oilseed crops. These are a few factors that have helped it hold its spot to dominance.

How did Palm oil enunciate itself into every corner of our lives? First, it has replaced less healthy fats in food products. Second, producers have consistently pushed to keep its price low. Third, it has replaced more expensive oils in the home and personal care products. Fourth, because it is cheap it has been widely adopted as cooking oil in Asian countries. It can handle frying without spoiling as it is very stable at high temperatures and blends well with other oils.

It was just the perfect commodity at the right moment for industrial usage, and so, each industry has, by now, adopted it to replace certain ingredients and never turned back.