Food General Article Global News Health Sport

Palm oil, the most widely used vegetable oil worldwide

Have you ever eaten anything with palm oil? This is the most widely used vegetable oil worldwide! Maybe you sometimes enjoy eating chips, cookies or a sauce over the macaroni. There is a good chance that it contains palm oil. By the way, those products contain the white palm oil, this is the processed variant of the healthier red palm oil. The latter is also called extra virgin red palm oil. And this red palm oil is super healthy. However, there are also some drawbacks, for example, many people are concerned about the palm oil deforestation that sometimes takes place in South and West Africa, but also in Indonesia and Malaysia. This deforestation takes place in order to create plantations for the palm oil, and often comes along with poor working conditions.

Use of radar images to combat deforestation

In a few years’ time, the large food companies only want to purchase sustainable palm oil, with good working conditions and where no more forest is cut. But it is often difficult to check whether local producers adhere to this. A special radar system should help to accomplish this goal. The production of palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia will be strictly controlled by means of satellite images. If it is visible on the satellite images that trees are being felled for the extraction of palm oil, the customer must warn the producer and ensure that the latter stops felling the trees.

Sustainable palm oil gets a quality mark

If it has been possible to produce the red palm oil in a sustainable way, you will be able to recognize it by a special quality mark, the Certified Sustainable Palm Oil quality mark. Buy this kind, if you care about the trees and the working conditions of your fellow human beings. You can buy this palm oil in a good organic store (it is very likely there is one in your neighborhood) or in a webshop. You pay about 10 euros for a 325 ml jar.

What can you use red palm oil for?

You can use red palm oil to fry vegetables. You can then add those fried veggies to a tasty bone broth, for example. It has long been outdated that eating fat is unhealthy. In fact, saturated fats were also widely eaten by native people, and have been proven to be good for the eyes and the heart (even though the Dutch nutrition center claims the opposite; always do your own research!) Another use of red palm oil is to rub it onto your skin in case it feels a bit dryish, you will notice that your skin improves enormously. But of course you can also use it for dry hair, as a conditioner or moisturizer. Enjoy its many health benefits and go for the sustainable variant where no palm oil deforestation has taken place.