A palm oil free Christmas

[concernedforthefuture]

Looking for inspiration. We've gone palm oil free this year (DD wants to save the Orang Utans!) and am struggling a bit as all of our usual favourite 'things we only buy at Christmas' are full of the stuff. No tins of chocolates, Twiglets, Jacob's Crackers etc this year. Sustainable palm oil would be ok.

Particularly desperate to find a suitable Christmas pud!

Anyway, here's what I've found so far:

Toblerone (bags of minis are 2 for £5 in Tesco)

Tesco Finest Mince Pies

Tesco Finest Cracker Selection for Cheese

Would Iceland not sell a palm oil free Christmas pudding as all their own brand stuff is palm oil free

Waitrose six month aged Christmas pudding is Palm oil free- we have been aspiring to be free of palm oil for years and it is a generally good ploy to reduce kids' junk intake! Mine now know to check automatically and to put it back on the shelf.

A few suggestions now the Christmas pud seems to be covered:

Divine fairtrade chocolate coins.

Booja Booja and Montezuma have palm oil free boxes of chocolates.

Green and Blacks milk chocolate with sea salt bar is palm oil free.

M&S Mini mince pie selection are palm oil free as are waitrose duchy organic ones.

@duriandurian Unfortunately not. They are due to be making all of their own-brand items palm-oil free by the end of the year, but their current stock of Christmas puddings is not palm-oil free (at least not in my local store).

@duriandurian Fab. It's a bit of a trek for us to get to Waitrose as there isn't one locally, so wasn't going to go without knowing for sure! Might send my folks to save the fuel as they live closer!

A couple of sites you might want to check out for palm oil items or those without are : GardenandGreen.co.uk and also treehugger.

On the garden and green site look for palm oil checker and on the treehugger site look for 25 sneaky names for palm oil.

@JulieBindelAteMyHomework Thank you

You're welcome. I used to buy my husband Thornton's mint selection but as they use palm oil I now buy Bendicks.

M&s may also sell. I couldn't navigate their website to check. I think I recall all of the Matthew walker ones had Palm oil when I last looked.
As an aside I've been told that sustainable palm oil is also a disaster as 1) verification is iffy and certificates can be achieved with bribes and 2) the soil is very poor so is depleted after one or two years of use. We were v affected by the Haze which is a vile smog from rainforest burning and industrial pollution when living in Singapore so am keen to avoid Palm oil. Those links look v handy - thanks juliebindel

Umm, why on earth would there be palm oil in a Christmas pudding? It wouldn't even occur to me to check.

And well done to OP for your efforts. Even if I were to try it, I would definitely get caught out with stuff like this.

I hope no one's having avocado?

Charlotte- it's in flipping everything! Even stuff that has no need for palm oil.

Just a word of warning... Waitrose"all butter" mince pies have palm oil in, but the "1" ones don't

Aren’t the co ops own brand stuff all sustainable palm oil?

hi OP
unfortunately "sustainable" palm oil is not really ok:

www.greenpeace.org/usa/sustainable-palm-oil-no-not-really/

www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-06-16/orangutan-video-comes-as-sustainable-palm-oil-questioned/9811642

May I also recommend Sainsbury's crackers- there are two varieties which are palm oil free-range salt and pepper, and rosemary. Both are delicious!

Regarding sustainable palm oil, I know the certification can be dodgy etc, but^^ this article did make some good points about how, if we aren't using palm oil, the alternatives could be worse:

www.paigntonzoo.org.uk/conservation/conservation-campaigns/palm-oil

It's not easy to be sure you're doing the right thing!

Simplest pudding solution is to make your own:

75g breadcrumbs
37g flour
75g suet
75g moist brown sugar
130g raisins
75g sultanas
75g currents
75g chopped dried apricots
17g chopped dates
75g mixed candied peel
37g glace cherries
37g cooking apple, grated
37g carrot, grated
37g blanched almonds, chopped
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 egg
1tsp lemon juice
1tsp orange juice
1tsp black treacle
50ml stout
40ml brandy

Mix together. Press into a large greased pudding basin. Cover. Steam (for some hours).

The wierd quantities are because it is reduced down from a recipe that makes loads. This just makes one large pudding.

I think Palm Oil would be in puddings because of the suet. They'd probably use veg suet rather than beef suet, to be acceptable to vegetarians - and veg suet invariably has palm oil in. I'm making (attempting) my own mincemeat this year for exactly that reason - shop-bought mince pies and jars of mincemeat all have palm oil in the suet.

Oh glom I was just coming on to ask if anyone had seen any non-palm oil mincemeat
I don't have time to make it FFS! I just want to buy it...

@GlomOfNit Tesco Finest mince pies are palm-oil free