Why is palm oil in everything?!!

[QuentinWinters]

Just bought some jus-rol pastry for a pie. Thought it smelt a bit wrong, so checked the ingredients. The fat is palm oil and rape oil!
I want pastry with butter or vegetable oil in. Palm oil tastes disgusting as well as being environmentally damaging. So cross

Suppose that makes it vegan and able to be eaten by more people

It's no more vegan than rapeseed oil or sunflower oil. Palm oil seems to be in so many things.

It seems to be in a lot of the plant-based meat substitutes, and I wonder if that is what makes them slimy and hard to digest.

It's cheap to produce.

Very cheap and very versatile

I know. It’s possible to buy products without it but you need to read all the labels (as you clearly do OP) and it can be on the pricey side 🤷‍♀️

Abel & Cole now do organic shortcrust and sweet pastry, both pure butter. Not cheap, £5 for 300g.

oil in pastry items is a big ewww for me. A lot of M&S stuff coming into Ocado also seems to be missing the palm oil . So fed up of having to back out of pages due to checking ingredients for DH addiction to pork pies and the like.

Wish supermarkets would add a no palm oil to the filter. A free range option would be useful too.

It's no more vegan than rapeseed oil or sunflower oil. Palm oil seems to be in so many things

But rape or sunflower are not solid at room temperature, hence the use of palm, until a few years ago of course you could have hydrogenated vegetable oils which were, but without those the most realistic option is palm and that is why it's so common.

Coconut oil could possibly used, but grows in much the same environments with the same environmental damage - only less efficient producing palms.

For pastry the only realistic alternative are animal fats.

I have some vegetable suet, and it has palm oil in it. I should have checked.

It’s cheap and high yield - you get much more oil per hectare of land than any other oil crop you could grow. Therefore it’s also cheaper.

Because you are buying a processed food and these are the cheap industrial oils that have replaced the more expensive healthy fats. This is one of the reasons we are all becoming more and more ill.

@MikeUniformMike I don’t find any plant based meat subs slimy and hard to digest

It's cheap to produce because the people farming the stuff are not getting paid a decent wage.

The Europeans are still at it, taking resources from africa, by destroying rainforests in Congo and else where.

You can buy sustainable palm oil. Not the point of the thread I know. But if avoiding all palm oil for ethical reasons then it can be damaging to those farm communities that rely on the income (big caveat to do your research on who actually pays a fair income though)

@BuffaloCauliflower, it's not just me saying it, and I've noticed it in several of them.

Quorn isn't slimy but can be a bit hard to digest. I generally like quorn.

Most of them are pretty good at filling the 'meat' part of meat and two veg type meals.

I avoid it too, I use a spread called naturli which has enough fat for pastry.

Shortcrust isn’t hard to do in a food processor.

I avoid it too, I use a spread called naturli which has enough fat for pastry

Why is coconut better than palm? it has much of the same problems surely?

I’m allergic to cows milk so I can’t have real butter like dh.

I’m very limited in my choices.

I already make my own cakes to avoid it, but I'm rubbish at pastry. Looks like I need to learn
I'm not veggie and would prefer lard or butter to palm oil.

Sainsbury's do an all butter puff pastry. I think co-op do too.

I really need to learn how to make this stuff myself.

Why is coconut better than palm? it has much of the same problems surely?
If you mean environmentally, you’re not wrong. It probably is actually worse but people haven’t latched on to that yet