Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and you might not know what palm
Speaker 1: oil is, but chances are, without realizing it, you consume
Speaker 1: it in some form or many different ones every day.
Speaker 1: It's an ingredient and about half of all packaged products
Speaker 1: sold at the supermarket, from instant noodles and ice cream
Speaker 1: to pizza and packaged bread, and it's also found in lipsticks, soap, shampoo,
Speaker 1: and detergent. In other countries, it's heavily used as a
Speaker 1: biofuel for cars and trucks. Indeed, the world consumed seventy
Speaker 1: five point eight million tons that's about sixty eight point
Speaker 1: eight million metric tons of palm oil in alone, which
Speaker 1: amounted to more than a third of all of the
Speaker 1: vegetable oils used on the planet. Palm oil's ubiquitous presence
Speaker 1: and the world's growing consumption of it has a lot
Speaker 1: of environmental activists deeply worried. The Union of Concerned Scientists,
Speaker 1: for example, warns that cultivation of the oil palm tree,
Speaker 1: which produces the fruit from which palm oil is extracted,
Speaker 1: is driving the hutting down and burning of tropical rainforests
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia, which is increasing health risks from pollution
Speaker 1: and pumping planet warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as
Speaker 1: well as driving animals such as orangutans, tigers, rhinoceros, and
Speaker 1: elephants from their habitats. So what is palm oil anyway,
Speaker 1: and how did it get to be so ubiquitous in
Speaker 1: modern civilization. It wasn't always that way. Palm oil is
Speaker 1: produced from the fruit of the oil palm tree, which
Speaker 1: is native to West Africa for centuries. It's been part
Speaker 1: of the traditional diet in that region as a source
Speaker 1: of fat and other nutrients, and is utilized as a
Speaker 1: cooking oil and an ingredient in folk medicines. While the
Speaker 1: palm oil that's processed for use in products is tasteless,
Speaker 1: palm oil grown in the traditional fashion in West Africa
Speaker 1: actually has an intense taste. It's an ingredient in soups
Speaker 1: and other dishes. Farmers planted it in forests as both
Speaker 1: part of agriculture and forestry, but the oil palm didn't
Speaker 1: stay in Africa. Europeans brought the oil palm to Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia in the eighteen hundreds and tried growing it on plantations,
Speaker 1: but it didn't start catching on in a big way
Speaker 1: until the mid nine teen sixties. One big booster was
Speaker 1: the World Bank, which spent nearly one billion dollars to
Speaker 1: fund oil palm cultivation in an effort to promote economic
Speaker 1: development and lift people in rural areas out of poverty.
Speaker 1: About half of that money went to fund a series
Speaker 1: of projects in Indonesia, which became the world's biggest producer.
Speaker 1: Between the nineteen sixties and the two thousands, the amount
Speaker 1: of land devoted to growing oil palm cultivation increased eightfold
Speaker 1: and spread to tropical areas across the globe. We spoke
Speaker 1: with Jeff Connt, director of Friends of the Earth's International
Speaker 1: Forests Program, which works to protect the rights of forest
Speaker 1: dependent people's by addressing the economic issues driving forest destruction.
Speaker 1: He explained the plant was improved and hybridized, and varieties
Speaker 1: were developed that grew very well in large monoculture plantations.
Speaker 1: Palm oil became a lucrative crop to grow. It's efficient
Speaker 1: in terms of crop yield per acre of land. Additionally,
Speaker 1: new uses were developed. Cotton said it's good for replacing
Speaker 1: margarine in that it's got a high melting point and
Speaker 1: when it's refined, it has no flavor that makes it
Speaker 1: good for baking. In the mid two thousands, after the
Speaker 1: US Food and Drug Administration started requiring the listing of
Speaker 1: trans fats on nutrition labels because they were linked to
Speaker 1: heart disease, processed food manufacturers began looking to palm oil
Speaker 1: as a trans fat free alternative. Then, around the same time,
Speaker 1: the US and other Western nations drafted environmental laws encouraging
Speaker 1: the use of vegetable oils such as palm oil is
Speaker 1: fuel as a way to reduce carbon dioxide output and
Speaker 1: slow global warming. But that well intentioned move backfired because
Speaker 1: the clearing and burning of forests for palm oil cultivation
Speaker 1: actually led to the release of massive amounts of carbon
Speaker 1: that had been stored in the peat on forest floors.
Speaker 1: Conna explained, oil palm trees often grow best in places
Speaker 1: where rainforests were It's definitely a factor in deforestation. Oil
Speaker 1: palm cultivation brought other problems as well. Monoculture cultivation is
Speaker 1: needed to produce a profit, and that wears out the
Speaker 1: soil after twenty five or thirty years, Content said, leaving
Speaker 1: the land unusable without intense and expensive effort. And while
Speaker 1: the palm oil industry provide employment for millions of people.
Speaker 1: It's also been plagued by accusations of human rights abuses,
Speaker 1: including the use of child workers. December eighteen article in
Speaker 1: Sierra Magazine, for example, describes Guatemalans working sixteen hour days
Speaker 1: on oil palm plantations and suggests the use of oil
Speaker 1: palm cultivation contributes to food scarcity because it's taking up
Speaker 1: land where local farmers otherwise could be growing corn, beans, rice,
Speaker 1: and other subsistence crops. In response to the growing criticism
Speaker 1: of palm oil, various stakeholders, agricultural producers, manufacturers who use
Speaker 1: palm oil and products, banks and investors, and some environmental organizations,
Speaker 1: among others, has started a movement to promote sustainable palm oil.
Speaker 1: The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, founded in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: has established a set of principles which includes avoiding use
Speaker 1: of forests that provide habitat to endangered species, reduction in
Speaker 1: the use of pesticides and burning to clear land, fair
Speaker 1: treatment of workers according to local and international labor standards,
Speaker 1: and consulting with local communities before new plantations are developed.
Speaker 1: According to the RSPO website, nine of global palm oil
Speaker 1: production is now certified as sustainable, but in addition to
Speaker 1: promoting sustainability, it's crucial to stop the growth of oil
Speaker 1: palm cultivation and reduce the amount of land devoted to it.
Speaker 1: Consumers can help drive such change. Knat said, because most
Speaker 1: palm oil in the US is found in junk food
Speaker 1: and cosmetics, the best way to avoid it is to
Speaker 1: not eat junk food. Today's episode was written by Patrick
Speaker 1: Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang. Check out our
Speaker 1: online shop at public dot com slash brainstuff, and for
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other sustainable topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff works dot com.