Wander down any supermarket aisle, from packaged snacks to frozen foods, past the coffee creamers, candy, and cosmetics, and you’ll see the likes of palm oil in nearly anything you pick up. Palm oil is broadly used in nearly half of all packaged goods, from foods to skincare to biofuels and everything in between. It’s the most widely used of all the vegetable oils worldwide, accounting for approximately 36% of the most commonly used vegetable oils. Much of the appeal lies in its ability to yield more oil per acre than any other commonly used vegetable oil crop, making it a more efficient and sustainable choice—IF it’s grown responsibly, which hasn’t always been the case.
The oil palm plant, as the name suggests, is part of the palm family. Native to West Africa, where the extracted oil is commonly used as a cooking staple, the oil palm thrives best in tropical climates found along the equator. Indonesia and Malaysia are the top producers of palm oil today, with Thailand, Colombia, and Nigeria also among the highest worldwide palm oil producers.
The oil palm fruit grows in large bunches on the tree, with each bunch typically containing between 1,500-3,000 small fruits and weighing anywhere from 20-50 pounds. The fruit itself looks similar in shape and size to a fig, but with a bright red-orange to reddish-purple skin and a bright reddish orange pulp (thanks to its high beta carotene content). The trees also have a long lifespan, with an average of about 25 years. Coupled with their ability to produce fruit year-round, their lifetime fruit yield capabilities are extremely high.
Palm oil has been used as an ancestral cooking fat for thousands of years. As such, it’s one our bodies have been historically adapted to use as a source of quality energy. Not so with other commonly used processed seed oils, which are still relatively new to the market (and our digestive systems) and don’t operate at all the same in human bodies as unprocessed, purer forms of fats. The benefits of quality unsaturated fats like palm oil, coconut oil, ghee, tallow, lard, grass-fed butter, and palm oil can be found in their rich nutrient dense profiles. These are fats that bodies were made to utilize, unlike their inflammation-inducing seed oil counterparts.
Where palm oil really shines is in its productivity and versatility. It’s uniquely set apart in the vegetable oil world because it has the ability to produce two distinct types of oil from the same fruit, both of which can then be used all across the board in foods, cosmetics, household products, and more.
“Palm oil” is the oil extracted from the pulp of the fruit and is also a bright reddish orange hue in its crude, unrefined form. This oil is commonly refined for processed foods, making it colorless and tasteless in the process. It can withstand high heat without oxidizing and is typically solid or semi-solid at room temperatures. It’s commonly used in cooking and baking as well as cosmetics like soaps and lotions.
“Palm kernel oil” is the oil extracted from the inner kernel of the fruit and is a pale yellow to light brown hue. It’s slightly more saturated and is similar in consistency to coconut oil. It’s used in many of the same ways as the palm fruit oil, usually in baked goods, for frying, in processed foods, and in skincare products.
In addition to its high fruit yield, the appeal of palm oil continues with its smaller than average land use requirements. It produces more fruit per acre than any of the other competing vegetable oil crops. It only takes up approximately 8.6% of cropland globally, yet yields nearly 40% of global vegetable oil. By comparison, soy uses 39% of agricultural land and yields 25.5% of global vegetable oil.
However, as we’ve often seen when unchecked industrialization comes into play, too much of a good thing isn’t always a good thing. Problems with the growing and harvesting of palm oil began to reveal themselves with the rise of industrial seed and vegetable oil production in the late 20th century, when demand for processed seed oils drastically increased alongside the demand for processed foods. Without a solid environmentally-minded game plan in place for how to sustainably increase palm oil yields, large portions of biodiverse forests and peatlands were cleared to make way for palm plantations, wiping out the habitats for a host of native plants and animals. Alongside these massive shifts, working conditions placed high demands on workers, often without fair compensation or safe working conditions. Supply for demand became the overarching goal to achieve, despite human or environmental costs.
Thankfully, environmental organizations began to take notice and step in. One such globally recognized nonprofit is the RSPO: Roundtable on Sustainably Sourced palm oil, founded in 2004. The ultimate goal of the RSPO is to set a global standard for the use of 100% certified sustainable palm oil. It aims to do this by linking all members of the palm oil supply chain under a unifying consensus for sustainability. The core facets of the RSPO are to ensure ecosystems are protected, workers are in safe working conditions and paid fairly, and the production of palm oil can operate most sustainably for all parties (and planet) involved.
You might be asking, why use it at all if it runs these risks?
Because the paradigm won’t change itself if we just turn a blind eye.
To boycott the use of palm oil altogether would mean economic and environmental destruction. Palm oil plantations are vital for smallholder farmers and their communities. Since palm oil is so efficient, it’s far more important to support the work of producing it in the most sustainable ways, ensuring no continued deforestation or destruction of other natural habitats while also treating workers fairly.
To rely on other vegetable oil crops instead, for example, would just further exacerbate the poor use of land, as we often see already in widely used mono-cropping agricultural practices. The oil palm produces more fruit per acre than any other vegetable oil crop like soy, coconut, or sunflower. This high output using the least amount of land makes its efficiency off the charts. The tropical land it thrives on also boasts much higher carbon sequestration capabilities than its farmland counterparts, making it a more environmentally supportive option if and when it’s grown sustainably.
Here at Artisan Tropic, we support the important mission for a global standard of sustainable palm oil. Our focus will always be on supporting farms that are working to pave a better way forward for the environment as a whole, from those that produce our plantains and cassava to those that harvest the palm oil we use.
We source our palm oil exclusively from Daabon, a fellow Colombian company that has gone above and beyond to set a high standard for beyond sustainable, ethical, and transparent palm oil production. Their focus is to protect planet and people in every single step of the growth and production process, from where they plant their palm oil plantations (never on deforested or otherwise protected natural habitats) to how they support their farmholders and their communities to how they process palm oil, ensuring their production practices are carbon neutral through utilizing renewable energy sources. Their motto of “actively doing good instead of just not doing harm” is in perfect alignment with our philosophy at Artisan Tropic to provide snacks that are not just good for you, but good for the planet, too.
Because palm oil is so widely used, part of the struggle is getting all sectors, from food producers to biofuel users to cosmetic companies and everyone in between, on board with exclusively sourcing and supporting sustainable palm oil methods. This is where the voice of the consumer can really go a long way. As we’ve discussed before, every purchase you make is a vote with your dollars. “Vote” for brands that have made the commitment to source sustainable palm oil only. The RSPO is a great place to start with an easily searchable database of committed brands and an easy-to-spot stamp on product packaging. By supporting brands committed to using only sustainably sourced palm oil, the overarching standard becomes one of sustainability.
It might not always seem like it, because paradigm shifting is a long and winding road, but taking these small steps to consciously choose the products you consume is what paves the way for better industry standards. Start by choosing to support the brands who are committed to nurturing both planet and people and bit by bit (or bunch by bunch, in this case), we see the standard change.
Check out the resources below for more ways you can educate yourself on this topic, get involved, and make a difference.
Learn more here:
https://rspo.org/why-sustainable-palm-oil/
https://palmoilscorecard.panda.org/#/home
https://www.tropicalforestalliance.org/en/about-tfa/about/
https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/8-things-know-about-palm-oil
https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/which-everyday-products-contain-palm-oil
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/climate/companies-net-zero-deforestation.html
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/19/palm-oil-ingredient-biscuits-shampoo-environmental
Works Cited:
https://ourworldindata.org/palm-oil
Hannah Ritchie (2021) - “Palm Oil” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/palm-oil' [Online Resource]
