To be disappointed that COOK use palm oil?

[clairemcnam]

I but meals from COOK when I can't be bothered cooking. The initial selling point of COOK was that they only used ingredients you would find in your own kitchen. I went there today and chose a main meal, and went to choose a pudding. I chose one but there seemed to be a lot of ingredients, so read them, and was surprised to read palm oil.
COOK really need to up their game. I said to the assistant that I didn't know they used palm oil, and he confirmed yes they did.

So AIBU to have expected better of COOK?

On positive side came home and have started to make a rhubarb crumble instead.

I think i must be the only person who doesnt get cook...its expensive ready made food. If you want to buy it buy the same from marks for half the price. Yanbu. A company i really ont understand why theres a need

Star All WWF are talking about is RSPO.

This article references I think the research I read.
www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-06-16/orangutan-video-comes-as-sustainable-palm-oil-questioned/9811642

And the point of COOK was that they used only ingredients you would use in your own kitchen. No one else has done that.

I feel like I would like to reboot everyone’s cooking so that people would see that it’s perfectly possible to create meals easily and quickly from scratch, using ingredients of their choice. So, substitute olive oil for palm oil. Create a meal yourself, just as quickly and at half the cost. It’s really not hard.

clairemcnam Thanks for the abc link. I will have a dig around for my links tomorrow.

Create a meal yourself, just as quickly and at half the cost.

I can cook just about everything I would buy at Cook, or otherwise ready made, and most of the time I do.

But saying you can do it ‘just as quickly’ is just plain silly. Simple steak and red wine pie, for example: Slicing, chopping, browning, stewing, reducing, making pastry vs turn on oven, put package in oven.

The reason people buy these is convenience - either something that person can’t make easily themselves, or that they don’t have the time (or don’t want to spend the time) cooking it.

In our house we try to avoid palm oil, it’s really, really hard. So good for you for having some morals.

You are right to be disappointed with COOK.

Shoddy companies rely on the ignorance of people like @MoistMolly to keep selling their shitty ingredients. Stay true to yourself OP.

I shop at Iceland now for palm oil free stuff, I’m off out soon to buy their bread.

I had the hot cross buns at Easter, no clagginess. Even dh liked them which is high praise.

This is very interesting as COOK are a B Corp. The meaning of this is, a 'B Corp' is a certified business that's better for people and better for the planet. will be questioning them on this now in view of this thread and palm oil usage.

I make no exception for 'sustainable' palm oil and boycott it all - I don't trust that it is sustainable and in any event it makes food inedible IMO.

Big fan of cook here. Cook doesn’t actually use Palm at all directly!

They use some ingredients that contain it, but I would be surprised if others on here exclaiming disgust don’t use similar (digestives, margarine?) and all of those are RSPO certified.

So I think I’ll carry on with my love affair with Cook!

And as for creating similar to Cook meals easily and quickly from home....

Single working mum, two young children.

A) we get home at end of day and all hungry and tired. No way am I beginning cooking when I want to chat, chill with children, out away the laundry and help with homework. At same time - want healthy varied food. And minimal washing up so more time for me to flop on sofa post children in bed.

B) Yes I batch cook at the weekends. But certainly not every weekend! And not much space in freezer for lots of portions. Plus weekends so precious as single mum. I don’t want to spend all of them on the kitchen cooking.

So cook works perfectly and is my go to about twice a week.

No I don't use ingredients with palm oil in my kitchen. I suspect COOK had used chocolate with palm oil in the pudding I wanted to buy. I only use chocolate without palm oil. And no I don't use margarine. And I don't use biscuits with palm oil in them. This means I am eating less biscuits these days.

Why I loved COOK was that it sold ready made meals using quality ingredients you would use in your own kitchen. If they use palm oil, I may as well buy much cheaper from other supermarkets.

I think this is a short sighted decision by COOK to use palm oil. I suspect like most of their target market, I would prefer to pay a bit more and for them to use quality ingredients.

@clairemcnam

Even if a RSPO certified?

Genuine question as I’m not in the know but just googled and seems I might be ok using if rspo certified

Seems a bit harsh to bad mouth them all over MN when it may well be that palm oil is only used in a couple of their puddings rather than across their entire range. Did you contact them before posting this?

Plenty of ingredients I use in my home cooking (unfortunately) contain palm oil. It's bloody hard to avoid.

Just coming onto agree with insideoutsider and Siameasy. Not all countries are in the same category where palm oil is concerned.

And people in developing countries have to eat something. Palm oil is very useful for those who do not eat dairy and find it hard to get enough protein. I would like to know what environmentalists suggest the poorest West Africans ought to be eating. I suspect they don't care.

RSPO is a con. It is not sustainable. This has already being discussed on the thread,
The only reason I cook from scratch is to avoid ingredients like palm oil.

And COOK sell themselves on quality ingredients. Yes plenty of people use cheap crap chicken. margarine, etc in their kitchen and in ready made meals. I don't. And I expect COOK to use quality ingredients across their whole range.
When COOK started part of the attraction is I could choose what I liked. I get fed up reading labels all the time.

And this is not about poor people in west africa or anywhere. If you buy food from COOK, you are not having to buy the cheapest food you can afford.

As that Greenpeace article says, "It is now or never for the palm oil industry. As global
temperatures rise and populations of endangered species
dwindle, companies will come under increasing pressure
to prove their supply chains are clean or ditch highrisk
commodities altogether. The future of the palm oil
industry and other sectors depends on their adoption
of a new model of trade based on radical transparency,
independent verification and zero tolerance for
deforestation and human rights abuses."

The only way to get the industry to shift to responsibly-sourced palm oil is to demand it, along with investigating the certification of any palm oil that claims to be responsibly-sourced (yes, RSPO has its problems but it's a start. Trying to get an organisation to come together to certify responsibly-produced soy has hardly got anywhere in the last decade).

IME you need to create standards and ideally have them compete with each other until you end up with standards that are both demanding and have industry adopting them. An ideal standard that the industry ignores is less use than a lower one that gets widespread takeup.

Yes but your OP was The initial selling point of COOK was that they only used ingredients you would find in your own kitchen.

Plenty of basic ingredients, like chocolate, use palm oil. You're implying that cook are being misleading, when in fact they most likely are only using everyday, quality ingredients. It's not like they are themselves using industrial vats of palm oil. I think you're being unfair.

not about the poor people in west africa [sic] or anywhere

Well I am about the poor people in West Africa. And a discussion about palm oil that excludes them is just more First World Woke Shit.

Do you boycott meat as well as palm oil?

Meat has a far worse environmental impact.

Chocolate with palm oil in it is not a quality ingredient. If I want ready made meals with palm oil in it, I can go to any supermarket and pay far less.
Many supermarket ready made meals have low quality ingredients. COOK charge a lot more and their USP is quality ingredients you would find in your kitchen.
Why anyone would make home made and use something with palm oil in it or margarine is beyond me. I use chocolate from ALDI that is palm oil free, olive oil and butter.

Tumbleweed as to whether you boycott meat as well. I surmise that you do eat meat. I don't understand this evangelising about palm oil, while merrily ignoring the much greater effect that consuming meat and animal products have on the environment

I have read that the issues around palm oil arent quite so straightforward as they seem. Cant remember all the arguments. Something about alternatives being more environmentally damaging. Sometimes these arguments are not simple. eg plastic versus paper/glass

Using sustainably sourced palm oil is the key in solving the issue , the media has hyped this up so people are in a frenzy about how bad palm oil is, but the truth is as more people boycott it outright, it drives up the demand for other oils that take 10 times the amount of land to produce what palm can. Sustainably sourced palm is tackling the environmental issues and if everyone stopped using palm it would be the single biggest mistake our generation has ever seen, use and look for suppliers who bare the RSPO logo or who acknowledge the use of sustainable palm and help solve this problem, let's not create an entirely new and bigger problem.