How do you avoid palm oil?

I thought sustainable palm oil just means the replanting of fields that have already been chopped down. It’s just not on virgin land newly reclaimed from the forest.

NanaElla Thanks for posting the link to the ethical consumer website - full of helpful info.

Sustainable palm oil is a myth. Many of these certifications are bought not earned.

I just checked out two or three shampoos on the Lush site. They don’t list palm oil. I think it helps to avoid liquid soaps altogether.

Does anyone know if Ecover uses palm oil?

I shampoo my hair too frequently. When I was a girl I washed my hair once a fortnight and I had long strong glossy hair.

I'm confused too.
Some of these charts are quite old and I think improvements have been made.

According to Aldi on facebook this week -
"All palm oil used in our own-label food products has come from sustainable RSPO-certified sources since 2015. This position is being extended to non-food products by the end of 2018. - Aldi UK Facebook Team"

I've got one of those glass teapots Pamela but I rarely use it now because it doesn't pour at all well

I found this link which looks useful www.ethicalconsumer.org/palm-oil-free-list M&S seems to have a lot of good palm oil free products. I hadn't realised quite how bad the crisis was either so will be definitely making a more conscious effort from now on!

Bluebelle, I am not quite sure I understand your chart. Are they all ‘ offenders’? Under superstars, which I thought would be the best, is Nutella, one of my DD’s naughty pleasures. Just checked, palm oil is the second ingredient after sugar!

I watched the interview on Victoria Derbyshire with the Director of Iceland, and I honestly will never forget him saying, that a patch of forest the size of 24 football is cut down ever HOUR...jeez every HOUR!!! to make palm oil...and he finished by saying, quote ...''Far too high a price to pay for crunchy biscuits''!!

It really hit home to me then!!

I bought a glass teapot with an internal strainer but I keep buying the wrong tea.
I need bigger tea leaves and I keep forgetting which brand is suitable.
Once again I must make a bigger effort.
Lots of biscuits have palm oil in them, we could give them up?

Your friend at U3A is very wrong Jalima1108. There have been many studies which demonstrate that a meat-based diet requires more energy, land, and water resources to produce than a plant-based diet.

Palm oil is used as a conditioning agent that helps restore the natural oils of the hair that are stripped away by most shampoos.

Yes, that's the dilemma SueDonim. By reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and the petro-chemical industry, we use palm oil to produce alternatives.

I believe about half of palm oil goes towards making biofuels such as bio-diesel. It feels like it's difficult nowadays to do right for doing wrong.

Yes, that is probably one reason M0nica

but why is it in shampoo, etc?
We did use soap, not all these shower gels - in fact we used Palmolive when I was a child, but I think it was probably from sustainable sources.
In fact, I remember my DF using 'green soft soap' for his hair, he swore by it (I did not).

Jalima people cooked from scratch and eat a more restricted range of foods.

The reasons for the increasing demand for this product is in this link www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/dec/17/palm-oil-sustainability-developing-countries

We had a discussion today at U3A about vegetarianism and veganism and someone said that if everyone in the world became vegan, we would need to chop down all the forests to provide land to grow enough food.

I do know that we need very little animal protein in comparison to the amount of protein obtained from vegetarian food.

How did we manage years ago without palm oil? This is a recent development surely.

Jalima1108 I suspect it's nigh impossible in our modern world to avoid palm oil altogether. All we can do is try to reduce our consumption of it. Loose tea would be a start if you could find it packaged in natural material which doesn't contain palm oil. Actually, its that time of year when one can find lots of pretty tins and caddies of loose tea in the shops. Time to switch.

With great difficulty, I read the labels and try to remember what not to buy.

Now a big name such as Iceland has taken the lead hopefully other supermarkets will follow causing suppliers to think again .

My 3 and 5 yr old grandsons have promised (when they are older) to take gran to visit the orangutans in Borneo.

Will there be any left?

Thanks Delibes, I didn't know that.

Perhaps loose tea in the future then

It's only Iceland own brands which are free of palm oil, though, M0nica*.

We don't have an Iceland here and the only one within any reasonable distance doesn't have a car park.

Teabags contain polypropelyne as a sealant and so they don't disintegrate in hot water and polypropelyne is likely to contain palm oil. Palm oil may also be in the plastic wrapper that seals the box of teabags as, increasingly, palm oil based stearic acid is used as a slip agent in plastics manufacture as an alternative to animal-derived stearic acid.

Polypropelyne is one of the materials that break down into the microbeads which are polluting the oceans and getting into the food chain.

Shop in Iceland.

Lisagran I’m certain I won’t remember all of those! I o ly look for palm oil, I’ll have to up my game.
There should be a logo to warn us.
Still I suppose if we had every warning on the packaging to alert us to non pc ingredients we wouldn’t be able to see what we’re buying.

Twinings?
Why would palm oil be in tea?

Thank you, it's useful to have a list.

I scrutinise all the ingredients looking for gluten, so when I started looking for palm oil as well DH asked if I was going to 'gaze at that packet all day'.