palm oil

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Palm Oil, Long the Bad Guy, Has Something to Teach Us

Other industries could learn something from its turnaround story

(Newser) - Depending on how you look at it, palm oil is an angel or a devil. The angelic part is its versatility: no other vegetable oil is like it. As the Guardian puts it, palm oil is cheaper than other options, and works in wonderous ways, making "cookies more healthy,...

It's in 50% of Packaged Foods, but the Cost Is Steep

The Baffler looks at the problem with palm oil plantations in Guatemala

(Newser) - Palm oil is in half of all packaged supermarket products, not only in foods but also cosmetics. The stout palm oil tree has always been an important food source in its native West Africa, but its use in global consumer products has exploded in the past few decades. Today, Indonesia...

Canada's Oddly Hard Butter Spurs Investigation, Threats
Canada's Oddly Hard Butter
Spurs Investigation, Threats
the rundown

Canada's Oddly Hard Butter Spurs Investigation, Threats

Buttergate has blown up

(Newser) - A Canadian cookbook author has helped fuel what is being referred to as "buttergate"—an outcry over an apparent change in Canadian butter that leaves it hard all the time, even when kept at room temperature. On Feb. 5, Julie Van Rosendaal tweeted the following: "Something is...

Girl Scout Cookies Linked to Child Labor

Some of them still include palm oil from unsustainable sources

(Newser) - They are two young girls from two very different worlds, linked by a global industry that exploits an army of children. Olivia Chaffin, a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee, was a top cookie seller in her troop when she first heard rainforests were being destroyed to make way for ever-expanding...

Horrors Befall the Women Who Make Beauty Products Possible

The AP investigates the palm oil industry

(Newser) - A 16-year-old girl recalls how her boss raped her amid the tall trees on an Indonesian palm oil plantation that feeds into some of the world’s best-known cosmetic brands. At another plantation, a woman named Ola complains of fevers, coughing, and nose bleeds after years of spraying dangerous pesticides...

WHO Draws Parallel Between Palm Oil and Big Tobacco

When it comes to lobbying

(Newser) - What does the $60 billion palm oil industry have in common with Big Tobacco? Lobbying tactics, says the World Health organization, namely attempts to influence research into the health effects of palm oil, Reuters reports. And as more countries move to ban trans fats, which make liquid oils solid at...

Indonesia Threatens to Ban Leonardo DiCaprio

They're not happy about his environmental concerns

(Newser) - Leonardo DiCaprio may be banned from returning to Indonesia over his criticisms that palm oil plantations are destroying the country's rainforests and endangering wildlife, an immigration official said Saturday. The Oscar winner made a one-day visit to protected Mount Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra last weekend and uploaded...

2 Countries Got Into a Fight Over ... Nutella

French minister accused spread of ravaging environment

(Newser) - France's environment minister caused an international brouhaha by picking on the wrong nutty spread. Segolene Royal singled out Nutella as the cause of environmental destruction, including climate change and "massive deforestation," and said people should stop eating it because it contains palm oil, the Guardian reports, prompting...

Girl Scouts: Thin Mints Killing Orangutans' Home

Duo protests cookies' palm oil recipe

(Newser) - America's cookie buyers shouldn't have to choose between buying Girl Scout cookies and saving orangutans, say a pair of Michigan girl scouts leading calls for the organization to change its recipe. Seventh graders Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva, who have rallied Girl Scout troops across the country and...

Orangutans In Trouble as Forests Shrink

Loggers, plantations bring great ape close to extinction

(Newser) - Illegal loggers and palm oil plantations may make the orangutan the first great ape to become extinct, scientists warn. In Indonesia, a mere 6,600 of the apes remain, while on Malaysia’s Borneo Island, the population has fallen 10% to 49,600, the Telegraph reports.

Peasants Booted for Biofuel Bucks
Peasants Booted for Biofuel Bucks

Peasants Booted for Biofuel Bucks

Green crop brings black days for displaced Colombian farmers

(Newser) - Paramilitary gangs are driving thousands of Colombian farmers from their land to make way for the nation's latest lucrative crop: palm oil to produce biofuel, the Guardian reports. The violent land grabs have helped create some 3 million displaced Colombians. "It's the dark side of biofuel," said a...

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