BrainStuff Classics: Why Is Palm Oil in So Many Things?

form or many different ones every day. It's an ingredient in about half of all packaged products sold at the supermarket, from instant noodles and ice cream to pizza and packaged bread, and it's also found in lipstick, soap, shampoo, and detergent. In other countries, it's heavily used as a biofuel for

cars and trucks. Indeed, the world consumed seventy five point eight million tons that's about sixty eight point eight million metric tons of palm oil in twenty seventeen alone, which amounted to more than a third of all of the vegetable oils used on the planet. Palm Oil's ubiquitous presence and the world's growing consumption of it has a lot

of environmental activists deeply worried. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, warns that cultivation of the oil palm tree, which produces the fruit from which palm oil is extracted, is driving the cutting down and burning of tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia, which is increasing health risks from pollution and pumping planet warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as well as driving animals such as orangutans, tigers, rhinoceros, and

elephants from their habitats. So what is palm oil anyway, and how did it get to be so ubiquitous in modern civilization? It wasn't always that way. Palm Oil is produced from the fruit of the oil palm tree, which is native to West Africa for centuries. It's been part of the traditional diet in that region as a source of fat and other nutrients, and is utilized as a

cooking oil and an ingredient in folk medicines. While the palm oil it's processed for use in products is tasteless, palm oil grown in the traditional fashion in West Africa actually has an intense taste. It's an ingredied and soups and other dishes. Farmers planted it in forests as both part of agriculture and forestry, but the oil palm didn't

stay in Africa. Europeans brought the oil palm to Southeast Asia in the eighteen hundreds and tried growing it on plantations, but it didn't start catching on in a big way until the mid nineteen sixties. One big booster was the World Bank, which spent nearly one billion dollars to fund oil palm cultivation in an effort to promote economic development and lift people in rural areas out of poverty. About half of that money went to fund a series of

projects in Indonesia, which became the world's biggest producer. Between the nineteen sixties and the two thousands, the amount of land devoted to growing oil palm cultivation increased eightfold and spread to tropical areas across the globe. We spoke with Jeff Connet, director of Friends of the Earth's International Forests Program, which works to protect the rights of forest dependent peoples

by addressing the economic issues driving forest destruction. He explained the plant was improved and hybridized, and varieties were developed that grew very well in large monoch culture plantations, palm oil became a lucrative crop to grow. It's efficient in terms of crop yield per acre of land. Additionally, new uses were developed. Cotton said it's good for replacing margarine in that it's got a high melting point and when it's refined it has no flavor that makes it good

for baking. In the mid two thousands, after the US Food and Drug Administration started requiring the listing of transfats on nutrition labels because they were linked to heart disease, processed food manufacturers began looking to palm oil as a trans fat free alternative. Then, around the same time, the US and other Western nations drafted environmental laws encouraging the use of vegetable oils such as palm oil as fuel as a way to reduce carbon dioxide output and slow

global warming. But that well intentioned move backfired because the clearing and burning of forests for palm oil cultivation actually led to the release of massive amounts of carbon that had been stored in the peat on forest floors. Connon explained oil palm trees often grow best in places where rainforests were It's definitely if factor in deforestation. Oil palm

cultivation brought other problems as well. Monoculture cultivation is needed to produce a profit, and that wears out the soil after twenty five or thirty years, Content said, leaving the land unusable without intense and expensive effort. And while the palm oil industry provides employment for millions of people, it's also been plagued by accusations of human rights abuses, including

the use of child workers. A December twenty eighteen article in Sierra Magazine, for example, describes Guatemalans working sixteen hour days on oil palm plantations and suggests that use of oil palm cultivation contributes to food scarcity because it's taking up land where local farmers otherwise could be growing corn, beans, rice,

and other subsistence crops. In response to the growing criticism of palm oil, various stakeholders, agricultural producers, manufacturers who use palm oil in products, banks and investors, and some environmental organizations, among others, has started a movement to promote sustainable palm oil.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, founded in two thousand and four, has established ac of principles, which includes avoiding use of forests that provide habitat to endangered species, reduction in the use of pesticides and burning to clear land, fair treatment of workers according to local and international labor standards, and consulting with local communities before new plantations are developed. According to the rspo's website, nineteen percent of global palm

oil production is now certified as sustainable. But in addition to promoting sustainability, it's crucial to stop the growth of oil palm cultivation and reduce the amount of land devoted to it. Consumers can help drive such change, Connett said, because most palm oil in the US is found in junk food and cosmetics, the best way to avoid it

is to not eat junk food. Today's episode is based on the article palm oil is Everywhere, Here's why that Matters on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Higer. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klaying. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.