If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Even if you haven’t heard of the term “palm oil,” you certainly have come in contact with it. Palm oil is harvested from oil palm trees, which are native to West Africa. It is used in all kinds of products, but primarily in food production. You can find it in your cooking oils, your butter, and your shampoos, lotions, and much more. It is also insanely cheap to produce; it uses 10 times less land to produce the same amount of oil as the soybean plant.
So it’s cheap, plentiful, and makes our food tasty. Where is the problem?
As it turns out, the consequences of mass-producing palm oil are more sinister than our society realizes. The abundance of palm oil has made the production of processed and unhealthy foods skyrocket, fueling our nation’s obesity problem. Additionally, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) warns against heating palm oil to high temperatures, as it can lead to the creation of cancer-causing toxins.
The largest and most dangerous impact of palm oil production is the rapid deforestation that is required to sustain the industry. Palm oil trees thrive in the same tropical climate that rainforests do. Earth’s major rainforests are located in the South American Amazon, the African Congo River Basin, and in the South East Asia, specifically Indonesia and Malaysia. Countless acres of these rainforests have been burned to make room for massive palm oil plantations. Experts are predicting that 98% of Indonesia’s rainforest will have been converted to palm oil production by 2050.
Rainforest ecosystems are some of the most biodiverse on the planet, meaning they contain the highest amount of species in a given area. Indonesia alone houses between 10-20% of known plant, animal and insect species in the world due to its dense rainforests. Sadly, over ⅓ these species are in danger of extinction, while 14% of Malaysia’s species are listed as endangered.
