7 ms·

Palm oil is a nightmare in our food chain. It is horrible for the environment and horrible for the body (an aspect totally ignored in this article). And yet it

Palm oil is a nightmare in our food chain. It is horrible for the environment and horrible for the body (an aspect totally ignored in this article). And yet it has become near ubiquitous. Living in a big European city I can for instance buy 30+ types of margarine at my regular supermarket. But every single one is full of palm oil. Even supposedly healthy ones based on olive oil (looking at you Bertoli) are to a large degree palm. Even the bio/organic shop has nothing. It's nearly as bad for chocolate, spreads, cakes, veggie or non veggie charcuterie, ... Anything that's not a standardised/pure product is just palm. 2 years ago it was perfectly possible to avoid palm. Today I basically don't see any chance. Even organic and supposedly ethical products are full of palm, just under the pretense of some certification that sums up to 'the forest was killed 10 years ago so we are now able to call ourselves sustainable while the problem is shifted somewhere else'. Our food systems seem fundamentally broken. Unless I buy basics at the local market and cook everything from scratch I basically have to eat palm, glutamate, bamboo fibre, gelatine and whatnot other waste every day.

qwerty456127 6y ago
Aren't some kinds of palm oil actually good for health?
- JeromeLon 6y ago
  Palm oil is not unhealthy. Th reason it's bad is because the cheapest way to produce it is to destroy rainforest to grow palm oil trees in a tropical climate. UK consumers managed through campaigning to force the industry to source 50% of palm oil from non-tropical origins. When the worlwide demand for tropical palm oil drop enough, tropical deforestation will drop.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  the health angle comes from the proportions of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fats presented in the mix, but so does the mechanical angle that makes one mix more useful than another in recipes, i.e. spreads and biscuits; the saturated fats that are responsible for soft spreads and buttery biscuits are also the one that are bad for health. on the other hand palm oil is just a collection of acids, primarily the saturated palmitic acid, but while the naming stuck because it was firstly isolated there, most oil and fats contains a similar set of the same fatty acids in different proportions; pure butter contains like 15% of naturally occurring palmitic acid, and olive oil contains likewise 5-10% of the stuff. so well you can take any kind of oil, dilute or reinforce it with saturated / monounsaturated fats, and change it's healthiness in proportion of the rest of the recipe, but in doing so you also change their mechanical properties.
  - qwerty456127 6y ago
    > the saturated fats ... are bad for health. Citation needed. Isn't this a decades-old myth?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - germinalphrase 6y ago
      It’s recently in dispute, but calling it a “myth” seems strong as it was the medically agreed upon stance for decades.
      - germinalphrase 6y ago
        I would be interested in hearing the dissent here. To call it a myth would imply that it is intrinsically wrong, but is that proven fact or just newly popular thinking? The medical establishment still maintains that saturated fats are less healthy than unsaturated fats as standard advice.
        LoSboccacc 6y ago
        there's an abyss between "saturated fat are evil" and "eating a stick of butter every day is great for your health" but apparently the forum is looking for a science based dichotomy, which cannot exist because nutrition is all about daily intake - hence why my original post topic was about proportions and only tangentially related to saturated fat health, and why I carefully avoided to answer to the clear bait: notice how the same poster is claiming two post above that palm oil is good for health, but he doesn't provide any citation, instead pretending that everyone else does the homework for him.
frafra 6y ago
Palm oil is mostly used as a replacement for butter. It is cheaper, no less or more healthier, and probably more environmentally friendly (because butter requires a lot of cows, that produce greenhouse gases, and they also need to be fed on crops, which fields are often created by destroying forests, etc.). Palm oil is not the devil. We are just using a lot of fat (and sugar) almost everywhere. Even extra virgin olive oil is bad if you use too much: it is liquid fat, and it has more of it compared to butter (because butter has water in it :-D)! Using it for your pastries would not make you healthier. Just use the right oil/fat in the right quantity.
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  I totally disagree with your climate change rhetoric here. Even if butter generated a greater effect on climate doesn't mean that swapping rainforest for monoculture plantations is more environmentally friendly! I miss the "save the rainforest" focus on environmentalism in the 90s. I think it was more emotionally compelling for social action.
  - KitDuncan 6y ago
    The point is you are cutting down the rainforest anyway. Most dairy is produced on factory farms that feed their cattle soy and corn and other monocultures.
    - dr_dshiv 6y ago
      Soybeans and corn don't replace rainforest. Palm oil does. No?
      - frafra 6y ago
        Deforestation of the rainforest is also driven by soy cultures and grazing. This is why my comment was not a "I just care about emission" thing as you were assuming.
  - da39a3ee 6y ago
elric 6y ago
> horrible for the body That's a bit of an exaggeration. It's quite high in saturated fatty acids, but not anywhere near as much as, say, coconut oil. > buy 30+ types of margarine Why buy margarine in the first place? Why not actual butter? Or fats like peanut oil, coconut oil, olive oil, .. ? > glutamate, bamboo fibre, gelatine What's wrong with any of those? What you put in your body is your choice, but this just sounds like FUD to me.
- teleforce 6y ago
  Most of the people are ignorant about the things and fat they put inside their body (that includes me). Please check this video on Vegetable Oils: The Unknown Story by the author of the book "The Big Fat Surprise" [1][2]. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2UnOryQiIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2UnOryQiIY [2]https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/1451624433 https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/14...
- smolder 6y ago
  Palm oils advantage is it doesn't separate. It replaced partially hydrogenated oils as the way to make peanut butter that doesn't separate for example, but doesn't kill you like partially hydrogenated oils do, as far as I know.
- exhilaration 6y ago
  Why buy margarine in the first place? Margarine seems to be more prominent outside of the U.S. There's usually only a few brands of margarine on American grocery shelves but in Canada there's a whole wall of margarine next to a small shelf of butter. It seems very strange to my American eyes.
- Vrondi 6y ago
  Perhaps they are vegan, since the rest of their comment seems to lean in that direction (and it doesn't sound like they enjoy fake foods otherwise).
calebm 6y ago
I've noticed that I tend to get minor acne-like breakouts on my face from a few things (like pre-packaged chocolate chip cookie dough, as well as several other products) - enough where I looked through the ingredients to try to isolate the cause. Palm oil is my top suspect, but I haven't found anyone else talking about these symptoms with Palm oil. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
I disagree about the health aspect. It's very unclear at the moment what the right proportion of saturated/unsaturated/polyunsaturated fats is and the nutrition science on this subject is horrible (partly because the palm oil, soy oil, etc. producers are keenly interested in getting their products billed as healthy). In the US most fast food is made with poly-unsaturated oils (e.g. canola/corn/soy oil) and those foods seem quite unhealthy.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  The evidence is pointing very strongly towards saturated fats being bad and towards an imbalance of unsaturated fatty acids towards omega-6 in the common western diet. These are not novel discoveries, this is mountains of research done over the last couple of decades. Cut down on saturated fats and tilt your balance of unsaturated fat more towards omega-3. The reason why fast food is unhealthy is not because of the specific oils used (and all of the ones you mentioned are much better than the trans fat nightmares we used to deep fry in). It's unhealthy because it's super heavy in calories, and because they're almost entirely carbs and fats and low-quality protein, and almost completely bereft of vitamins and minerals and fiber. The fat+salt+carbs combo keeps you from being satiated until you're stuffed full. Focusing solely on the fats used during cooking is myopic. You have to look at the whole picture.
  - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
    I've looked at the evidence and don't think it is as solid as you do. It also is hard to reconcile the recent trend away from saturated fats with diets that we know are healthier than modern diets, e.g. French cooking that uses lots of butter, a saturated fat. Or Mediterranean cooking that uses lots of olive oil, which is one of the more saturated cooking oils (it also is fairly high in unsaturated fat). I think there is more going on here than the nutrition studies indicate. I certainly agree about trans-fats. I would never suggest they're healthy. I don't think satiety is the full story about why fast food is unhealthy, nor just the lack of nutrients. It seems to be actively bad. And I'm obviously not focusing on only the fats used during cooking, but I was responding to a comment about palm oil, not about nutrition in general. Edit: I'm not convinced saturated fats are healthier, either, but I think the science here is very sketchy and generally of low quality.

qwerty456127 6y ago

Aren't some kinds of palm oil actually good for health?

JeromeLon 6y ago
Palm oil is not unhealthy. Th reason it's bad is because the cheapest way to produce it is to destroy rainforest to grow palm oil trees in a tropical climate. UK consumers managed through campaigning to force the industry to source 50% of palm oil from non-tropical origins. When the worlwide demand for tropical palm oil drop enough, tropical deforestation will drop.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
the health angle comes from the proportions of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fats presented in the mix, but so does the mechanical angle that makes one mix more useful than another in recipes, i.e. spreads and biscuits; the saturated fats that are responsible for soft spreads and buttery biscuits are also the one that are bad for health. on the other hand palm oil is just a collection of acids, primarily the saturated palmitic acid, but while the naming stuck because it was firstly isolated there, most oil and fats contains a similar set of the same fatty acids in different proportions; pure butter contains like 15% of naturally occurring palmitic acid, and olive oil contains likewise 5-10% of the stuff. so well you can take any kind of oil, dilute or reinforce it with saturated / monounsaturated fats, and change it's healthiness in proportion of the rest of the recipe, but in doing so you also change their mechanical properties.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  > the saturated fats ... are bad for health. Citation needed. Isn't this a decades-old myth?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    It’s recently in dispute, but calling it a “myth” seems strong as it was the medically agreed upon stance for decades.
    - germinalphrase 6y ago
      I would be interested in hearing the dissent here. To call it a myth would imply that it is intrinsically wrong, but is that proven fact or just newly popular thinking? The medical establishment still maintains that saturated fats are less healthy than unsaturated fats as standard advice.
      - LoSboccacc 6y ago
        there's an abyss between "saturated fat are evil" and "eating a stick of butter every day is great for your health" but apparently the forum is looking for a science based dichotomy, which cannot exist because nutrition is all about daily intake - hence why my original post topic was about proportions and only tangentially related to saturated fat health, and why I carefully avoided to answer to the clear bait: notice how the same poster is claiming two post above that palm oil is good for health, but he doesn't provide any citation, instead pretending that everyone else does the homework for him.

frafra 6y ago

Palm oil is mostly used as a replacement for butter. It is cheaper, no less or more healthier, and probably more environmentally friendly (because butter requires a lot of cows, that produce greenhouse gases, and they also need to be fed on crops, which fields are often created by destroying forests, etc.). Palm oil is not the devil. We are just using a lot of fat (and sugar) almost everywhere. Even extra virgin olive oil is bad if you use too much: it is liquid fat, and it has more of it compared to butter (because butter has water in it :-D)! Using it for your pastries would not make you healthier. Just use the right oil/fat in the right quantity.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
I totally disagree with your climate change rhetoric here. Even if butter generated a greater effect on climate doesn't mean that swapping rainforest for monoculture plantations is more environmentally friendly! I miss the "save the rainforest" focus on environmentalism in the 90s. I think it was more emotionally compelling for social action.
- KitDuncan 6y ago
  The point is you are cutting down the rainforest anyway. Most dairy is produced on factory farms that feed their cattle soy and corn and other monocultures.
  - dr_dshiv 6y ago
    Soybeans and corn don't replace rainforest. Palm oil does. No?
    - frafra 6y ago
      Deforestation of the rainforest is also driven by soy cultures and grazing. This is why my comment was not a "I just care about emission" thing as you were assuming.
- da39a3ee 6y ago

elric 6y ago

> horrible for the body That's a bit of an exaggeration. It's quite high in saturated fatty acids, but not anywhere near as much as, say, coconut oil. > buy 30+ types of margarine Why buy margarine in the first place? Why not actual butter? Or fats like peanut oil, coconut oil, olive oil, .. ? > glutamate, bamboo fibre, gelatine What's wrong with any of those? What you put in your body is your choice, but this just sounds like FUD to me.

teleforce 6y ago
Most of the people are ignorant about the things and fat they put inside their body (that includes me). Please check this video on Vegetable Oils: The Unknown Story by the author of the book "The Big Fat Surprise" [1][2]. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2UnOryQiIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2UnOryQiIY [2]https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/1451624433 https://www.amazon.com/Big-Fat-Surprise-Butter-Healthy/dp/14...
smolder 6y ago
Palm oils advantage is it doesn't separate. It replaced partially hydrogenated oils as the way to make peanut butter that doesn't separate for example, but doesn't kill you like partially hydrogenated oils do, as far as I know.
exhilaration 6y ago
Why buy margarine in the first place? Margarine seems to be more prominent outside of the U.S. There's usually only a few brands of margarine on American grocery shelves but in Canada there's a whole wall of margarine next to a small shelf of butter. It seems very strange to my American eyes.
Vrondi 6y ago
Perhaps they are vegan, since the rest of their comment seems to lean in that direction (and it doesn't sound like they enjoy fake foods otherwise).

calebm 6y ago

I've noticed that I tend to get minor acne-like breakouts on my face from a few things (like pre-packaged chocolate chip cookie dough, as well as several other products) - enough where I looked through the ingredients to try to isolate the cause. Palm oil is my top suspect, but I haven't found anyone else talking about these symptoms with Palm oil. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

jeffreyrogers 6y ago

I disagree about the health aspect. It's very unclear at the moment what the right proportion of saturated/unsaturated/polyunsaturated fats is and the nutrition science on this subject is horrible (partly because the palm oil, soy oil, etc. producers are keenly interested in getting their products billed as healthy). In the US most fast food is made with poly-unsaturated oils (e.g. canola/corn/soy oil) and those foods seem quite unhealthy.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
The evidence is pointing very strongly towards saturated fats being bad and towards an imbalance of unsaturated fatty acids towards omega-6 in the common western diet. These are not novel discoveries, this is mountains of research done over the last couple of decades. Cut down on saturated fats and tilt your balance of unsaturated fat more towards omega-3. The reason why fast food is unhealthy is not because of the specific oils used (and all of the ones you mentioned are much better than the trans fat nightmares we used to deep fry in). It's unhealthy because it's super heavy in calories, and because they're almost entirely carbs and fats and low-quality protein, and almost completely bereft of vitamins and minerals and fiber. The fat+salt+carbs combo keeps you from being satiated until you're stuffed full. Focusing solely on the fats used during cooking is myopic. You have to look at the whole picture.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  I've looked at the evidence and don't think it is as solid as you do. It also is hard to reconcile the recent trend away from saturated fats with diets that we know are healthier than modern diets, e.g. French cooking that uses lots of butter, a saturated fat. Or Mediterranean cooking that uses lots of olive oil, which is one of the more saturated cooking oils (it also is fairly high in unsaturated fat). I think there is more going on here than the nutrition studies indicate. I certainly agree about trans-fats. I would never suggest they're healthy. I don't think satiety is the full story about why fast food is unhealthy, nor just the lack of nutrients. It seems to be actively bad. And I'm obviously not focusing on only the fats used during cooking, but I was responding to a comment about palm oil, not about nutrition in general. Edit: I'm not convinced saturated fats are healthier, either, but I think the science here is very sketchy and generally of low quality.