Why palm oil is in everything, and why that's bad


For more great Instant Pot recipes, please visit InstantPotEasy.com

Thanks to Audible for sponsoring this video! Start listening with a 30-day Audible trial. Choose one audiobook and two Audible Originals absolutely free: …

36 replies
  1. Anikesh Nair
    Anikesh Nair says:

    People who call for boycott of palm oil what are you suggesting as alternative?
    Rich European environmentalist should start their crusade against the bad eating habits of West rather than targeting palm plantation or coal mines
    Your unhealthy obsession with meat, dairy and packaged food is killing the world

    Reply
  2. Justin Case
    Justin Case says:

    The advent of seed oils are coincidentally linked to the rise of cancers. The occurrence of cancers were minor in 1870, but as seed oil started to proliferate in the early 1900's into all our foods….we can see how cancers has become a predominant health concern. PROCESSED FOODS contain your seed oils.

    Reply
  3. Mormodes
    Mormodes says:

    Look, at some point it stops being the consumers fault. You said it, palm oil is in damn near everything. It can't be up to the consumer every time to make sure they are purchasing only perfectly sourced products. If you give people a cheap and useful product, of course they will use it! Because our society has such large wealth gaps that a lot of people literally don't have any choice regardless of how much they love the planet. Politicians should be regulating things like this. It's what we pay them to do – protect the people. Instead, they allow corporations to do all this without issue. So if we should blame anyone, it's politicians and large companies who partake in complacency and slavery, not the consumers who are just doing what they need to in order to survive.

    Reply
  4. Ashida
    Ashida says:

    With current edible oil demand, replacing Palm oil will be more disastrous to environment, because Palm oil productivity per hectare is the highest insanely high where you need 10 hectares of Soy or Canola more to match 1 hectare production of Palm Oil, so unless we consume less oil in our food replacing Palm oil will drive more forest destruction for other type of edible oil plantation that requires more land clearing to keep up with demand. For example Brazil is one of main exporter of Soy bean, and Soy grown at cleared rainforest imagine how many hectares New plantation needed to keep up with soy demand if you shift to soy instead of Palm oil.

    Reply
  5. Nash Hon
    Nash Hon says:

    If palm oil is banned, planters in Indonesia and Malaysia won't just go 'oh its over boys, let's return these to wild forests and we start the next Google instead'. They turn to whatever crop replaces oil palm, and more land will need to be cleared as alternatives yield less oil, as Adam pointed out.

    Consume less of everything if you're concerned about health, environment, wildlife and slave labour (there's a huge element of FUD in those allegations IMO), don't just cut out PO, it doesnt work like that.

    Reply
  6. Daniel Palma
    Daniel Palma says:

    You know humans are only being used by the palm plants (and other plants) to propagate at the demise of other plants. The real culprits are the palm oil plants who have successfully used us…

    Reply
  7. Hemanth Harrilall
    Hemanth Harrilall says:

    You depend heavely on one author, Jocelyn C. Zuckerman, in your resentation. Ever consider increasing the credibility and objectivity of your subject matter by including research by other authors. Would be beneficial for your viewers. Besides Jocelyn C. Zuckerman, what is your information based on. Have you done your own research? If so, you may want to acknowledge them.

    Reply
  8. 38dragoon38
    38dragoon38 says:

    It's a crazy idea, I know, but perhaps the issue is that there are just too many people in the world now. Obviously, this will be heresy to all those heros of the left.

    Reply
  9. Mitchell Smith
    Mitchell Smith says:

    Cute that most vegan food and beauty products is dunked in palm oil, yet they act like they aren't killing just as many animals as meat eaters.
    The only way to save our health and to save the planet is to simply eat whole foods and be EXTREMELY strict on any and all import and exports. So much processed food and big companies use slave labour on products that don't even require it, chocolate and coffee is still heavily under this type of bad behaviour inspite of these logos that mean borderline nothing.

    Reply
  10. Waky Sr
    Waky Sr says:

    There's many lies perpetuated in this video and the book. The child holding palm oil is staged and scripted. Child always follow their parents in the farm as it's dangerous to leave her alone at home, and there's no employment contract. It's always white westerners who demonised palm oil, cause it eats into their domestic veg oil's profit. If you look at the Japanese who have higher forest cover, lower pollution and richer economy than the West, it supports sustainable palm oil, rather than vilify the industry.

    Reply
  11. A. S
    A. S says:

    As a Malaysian, I have to say the rhetoric on "slave labor" in Malaysia is extremely shallow. The issue goes so much deeper than just "they tricked them into coming here"; its mired in corruption, political backdoor dealings, and so much more.

    You also have to consider the fact that Malaysia has done our utmost to adhere to every certification out there in regards to palm sustainability. Malaysia also has restrictions on plantations on peatland as well as permanent reserved forest. To add to that, Malaysia has not reneged on our pledge at the Rio summit in regards to maintaining our forests. We even have our own MSPO certification standard to try and ease the sustainability woes echoed by the first-world countries.

    Also you're advocating people to move away from palm but yet palm is the most efficient crop out there as well as the most versatile. Not to mention the fact that if the world succeeds in demonizing and cancelling palm, you would be condemning one of this country's major exports and effectively depriving thousands of local smallholders (as well as millions within the production chain itself) their source of income and ultimately be throwing this country into financial turmoil; more so than it already it.

    The issue is FAR more complex and is inextricably linked to this country as a whole and it doesn't help the issue when people only cover one small part of it.

    Reply
  12. amanda bangan
    amanda bangan says:

    As a fellow Malaysian, a native of Borneo where I can arguably says, "endless acres of palm oil plantation", and a science undergraduate, this issue is always prevalent in my mind. The first undergraduate course I entered gave me an insight on this topic. As usual, i guess, from a Malaysian lecturers' POV, there is a defensive tone when we discuss about the sustainability of our practices regarding our country's oil palm industrial practice. it pretty much brings me to nowhere, and of course activist who are virtue signalling their way about this issue slowly made me, oh well, unless y'all can provide another huge yield per acre ratio alternative, I'm not gonna say much more.

    with that being said, growing up, I keep hearing from my parents lamenting how this huge oil palm company is a huge bully to the natives. Their tricks are dirty – they let the natives argue among each other for their land's right while the company slowly change the native's land border, to make way for their oil palm plantation. natives will argue among each other about the border, arguing whose land were bigger, of course, bigger land means bigger area for our agriculture practice, larger yield of our crops and better income. Now that I'm away for study i don't hear as much but this story is like my childhood bedtime story in the past. Poverty alleviation scheme, natives land being stolen, use of low wage labour, all these are what I am used to. And the petty fight among these 3 nations of "who to blame" on the fog. It all boils down to the politics surrounding this issue. Those who are deeply involved in the industry and like the money they are making – well, they are a lost cause. and me, a mere citizen, a consumer, still learning more what other issues my country are dealing with, feel just as helpless.

    Idk whats the point of me sharing this anyway but this video enlighten me on how the same issue that happened to my native land right is actually happening to any country that make oil palm as part of their country's income. I was starting this video with a slight defensive manner but I am glad this is not some other virtue signalling of 'oil palm bad'.

    Reply
  13. Koko_56
    Koko_56 says:

    Crisco had "Fully hydrogeneated palm oil" as second ingredient on the list? Does that not make it a "trans fat"? In Europe, ingredients are listed in order of most quantity, so that would make trans fats second mot used part of Crisco, yet somehow that counts as very little? What?

    Reply
  14. Yin Sen Low
    Yin Sen Low says:

    What deforestation are we talking about when land is converted to grow palm trees in palm oil producing countries?? May I ask if producers of corn oil get their corns which happened to grow naturally in the wild where land need not be cleared.?? Why can these people clear their land to plant maize whereas the others can't? Perhaps if palm oil is not a threat to corn oil then issues like these will not be brought up. Perhaps please ask those manufacturers to produce their products with corn oil and what not and exclude palm oil okay? Then they will be happy. Nobody is forcing them to use palm oil in their products.

    Reply
  15. Bok Woon Chua
    Bok Woon Chua says:

    Thank you for drawing attention to this, but "Palm Oil Is Everywhere" is hardly the issue here (like you're trying to portray). If anything, palm oil sounds like a wonder ingredient that has many useful applications. It's the shady practices that go behind manufacturing it. If pam oil was everywhere but made sustainably, there wouldn't be a problem.

    Reply
  16. Brian Lynch
    Brian Lynch says:

    Why do all these youtube idiots want to be a SJW. America does not exist to fix the third world. Why are the people that live in these countries unable to force the government to change. That is what we did to the British. Man up.

    Reply
  17. niksack
    niksack says:

    Stolen land? Slave Labor? You don't know anything about palm oil industry especially in Malaysia. There's no stolen land and worker are pay handsomely based on how many kg they can harvest. There's no forest burning. So middle finger to y'all who didn't know the palm oil industry and just want to give bad reputation to palm oil. My parent purchase the land and pay the worker and most of the worker are either Indonesia or local worker.

    Reply
  18. NostalgiaGamerJS
    NostalgiaGamerJS says:

    Wowie, working 6 days a week to make a wage barely able to live on? Sounds familiar – Oh wait, I live that life! Except instead of 3 kids and 10 years at a company, I'm only trying to support myself and I'm barely treading water after 5 years in the workforce. Our whole world is fucked, we all have it shit no matter if it's in the first world now compared to anything else.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *