This blog post is sponsored by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Although this post is sponsored, all opinions are my own.
While growing up in India, my mom used to cook with palm oil for frying goodies. So palm oil has a little history attached to me too. Palm oil in food is used as cooking oil and is extremely tolerant to high temperatures. It is used as industrial frying fat and is also well suited for processing noodles, potato chips, French fries, doughnuts and other snacks.
Do you know about 50% of supermarket goods for sale contain palm oil; from margarine and chocolate, pizza, to donuts and cookies, to even household items like lipstick, shampoo and soap. Also70% of the world’s cosmetics and household detergents contain raw materials derived from palm oil. Globally, 13.47 million tonnes of palm oil is consumed but just 21% of it is certified as being from sustainable sources.
RSPO campaign believes that achieving 100% certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) in Europe is not only a realistic ambition but a vital one too. The production of ‘bad’ palm oil is rapidly destroying virgin rain forests and ecosystems and causing air pollution to rise and putting many species at risk of extinction. If grown sustainably, ‘good’ palm oil can benefit local communities with fair working conditions and help protect valuable species and forests.
There is an exciting news a global campaign is launched which highlights the many consumer goods that contain palm oil and that everyone can make a choice between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ palm oil. So next time when you shop, look out for the RSPO symbol on products, reassurance it only contains RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil. See examples of products with the RSPO symbol here: http://www.rspo.org/trademark/trademark-products-gallery . To find out more about RSPO visit: www.rspo.org/about . That way we can say yes to good palm oil and no to bad palm oil. In the end we want to preserve our nature too so that coming generation can also enjoy its fruits
0This is Swathi ( Dr. Ambujom Saraswathy Ph.D) from Zesty South Indian Kitchen who loves to explore cuisines from all over the world. Whenever possible I try to to give an Indian touch to several of the world cuisine, and has weakness for freshly baked bread. All the recipes you see here are created by me and approved after taste-test by my family.
Suja Manoj says
Nice post Swathi.
April J Harris says
Very interesting post, Swathi! I've wondered about palm oil recently as I know there have been issues with sustainability. I'm really glad to know about RSPO.