Why palm oil is in everything, and why that's bad
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- Опубликовано: 13 май 2024
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"Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything-and Endangered the World," by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman: thenewpress.com/books/planet-...
My old video about Crisco (vegetable shortening): • WTF is shortening? 
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I live in Borneo, one of some parts of Indonesia where palm oil plantation is part of life for most of us
I don't want to sound exaggerated, but I feel like my people here live in total dystopia. You might think that is not true, I think even half of population of Indonesia don't even aware about such living condition. But one of the thing that most people outside of Indonesia don't know is that we're one of the first victims when a mega palm oil plantation company annually burning up millions of acres of lands in order to start a new field plantations. The very air that we breath becomes a foggy poisonous hazard in a matter of days and it could lasts up to a year. Affecting not only our health, but our life as well. Schools are closed most of the time, economy is slowing down because people can't go outside the house for very long time. When it becomes much worse, the fog will eventually managed to enter our homes. Imagine wherever you go, no matter how far you run, you can only see smoke, and breath smoke. We used mask before it was cool lol.
I do agree that our economy are heavily supported by these plantations. It's not a very wise idea to shutdown products that use palm oil product as their ingredient, because it's cheap as dirt compared to other source of plant oil and very effective in terms of land usage and yield. I'm positive in the near future we can develop a plant or source with similar traits that doesn't have such harmful effect to the environment.
The real problem IMHO is the politics that surround this god-descended product. Gluttonous corporations doing anything they can in order to maximize their profit, even if it's ruining everything but themselves. The government who should be regulating the law and the practice sometimes get involved with collusions and corruptions that happen in the internal body of the corporations, while simultaneously campaigning that we should use reliable and "good" palm oil. seriously GTFO.
I'm not begging you guys to care. I just want to give you some facts that I've witnessed or even experienced myself so that we can all aware about what's happening in the industry, therefore you can make your own judgement of what should you do regarding this product and set your very own moral compass.
facts! in fact the neighbouring countries like malaysia and singapore blame your country for the haze that occurs every year here
And all the while in the US no one knows anything about it.
I hate that greed rules so much of our world. Truly, the love of money is the root of many evils
Is the air worse than Jakarta?
@@schizosndwch yes, the smoke didnt even go through jakarta usually, sometime it is so bad flight in Malaysia and Singapore has to be cancelled due to lack of visibility.
I live near Jakarta and I have friends where oil palm is grown. The smoke can be so bad that it turned the sky red. When there's nothing, there's nothing. But when the land clearing (aka forest burning) starts, it's definitely way worse than Jakarta air, to the point of schools closing, as OP said.
I was eating some soap and sure enough when i looked at the ingredient list.. there it was!
God dammit palm oil is in everything!
I was eating my toothpaste when I saw the ingredients. The stupid palm oil again.
Hey wait a minute
Y u eat soap? Bleach taste much better
@@jennyscookingchannel3079
Average bleach fan
vs
Average soap enjoyer
Sad lady with bad audio? Yes I saw that too. So I gave it a dislike
As a Nigerian we eat the palm oil in the red form, but I didn't know of the other forms of palm oil out there. I knew palm oil was everywhere and in everything, but it's wowing that it can look in other ways than I've been used to all my life. As for the taste of our palm oil, I think it's acquired, for me, I really love the taste as we often put it in our stews and soups and we also use it to fry stuff. Anyways, amazing video and thanks for the information!!!
the vegetable oil we buy is often refined palm oil (mamador, Kings,power oil etc.) there is no more groundnut oil in the market and it's sad... it used to be red palm oil and groundnut oil before the refined oils came in....
The yoruba also use a form of original palm oil as desinfectent for new born babies
@@PHlophe Yeah, my mom did it for me when I was a baby
Red Palm oil Is a traditional oil , It has been used in cooking for 5,000 years or more, ancient Egyptians used it, it was considered a sacred oil. Real palm oil TODAY is produced in just two places, Africa and Northeastern Brazil . Palm oil is being slandered for centuries just like coconut oil, by whites , because the poor soil of Europe is not suitable for both, and both were produced by Africans, and coconut oil by dark asians too, more than 500 years ago this demonization started, but now with internet white "environmentalists" doing racist demonization again, at same time propaganda, this will be more known, especially by black people who lost their culture, Red palm oil is healthy and full of vitamins (not the refined one), and it doesn't become toxic or carcinogenic at high temperature, like all European and North American oils. Olive oil is good, to consume without cooking, but not for cooking, good fats \ oils for high temperature: coconut oil, lard, Red palm oil (real palm oil), butter. Sunflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil , and all other oils from Europe and North America are all bad, toxic and carcinogenic, which is why Europeans, Australia and North America have the highest rates of cancer.
I live in Enugu, and I inherited about 3 hecters, (16 plots) I’m here because I’m thinking of what to cultivate in the land. Does anyone know where I can get those short tree seedlings, I heard it’s in the north
Red (palm) oil is an important ingredient in many of the soup dishes my mum makes. She's from Nigeria btw. Sometimes she doesn't cook with it and just adds a little salt to eat it with boiled yam (real yams, not sweet potatoes) or potatoes. It's a nice in-between meat. It's like when Italiana drizzle olive oil over anti pasti. I remember childrens books that would feature the palm wine tapper and the men that would climb up those tall trees with machetes.
Delicious with roasted yam.
She might want to consider switching to other plant oils if that is an option because of the high saturated fat content. Eating a lot of palm oil is a good way to clog your arteries.
@@chlorophyllphile Soups that require red palm oil are not meant to be healthy, they’re meant to be a traditional dishes that signify the skills of the chef and the status of the family serving it.
Red oil isn’t used like seed or vegetable oils. It much denser, has a very distinct taste and sometimes can be used in tandem with vegetables oil or coconut oil. Unlike extra virgin olive oil, when cooking in high heat, that red oil flavour is even more pronounced.
Switching this ingredient changes the balance and flavours of the soup. This makes it an entirely different dish. It’s like making traditional mushroom soup without mushrooms and replacing it with onion. It’s a soup, but not what you wanted to make.
This might be a drastic example but it perfectly illustrates how borderline absurd it would be to replace the red oil in a soup like egusi with vegetable oil. It’s like a bad version of a poor man’s dish. It’s better to not make it at all than to make it with sunflower oil.
A much more common option is to make an oil/vegetable paste crossover. To supplement the desired effect of red oil.
@@jessislistless So it is not an option than, I see. That's fine of course, I just wanted to make sure she knew it is not very healthy.
@@chlorophyllphile it is very healthy. What are you talking about?
I see palm oil in a lot of foods I eat but I never had the thought of “wait palm oil is in everything”
I know right? What a business to own.
soybean and canola oil are much much worse.
Not only in food.
Once I heard about how cheap it was to produce and then I understood why I saw it everywhere
@@xarch7208 No it's not, canola is perfect for frying, and it doesn't destroy the environment or use child labor.
I really, *really* appreciate you taking the time and effort to dive into these sorts of investigative journalism topics with food. I learn so much with these videos. Please keep up the hard work, it is very much appreciated.
yea its why i subscribe to him, most would not go thru so much effort to dig into the science and research and just put out as much content as possible.
yep, I agree. Thumb up
that combined with the lack of preaching is so unusual.
Even if it's not necessarily about "Oh the history behind this thing is bad" all of these latest videos have had a very conscious tone to them, and it kinda goes back to the one about Kaolin, geography is destiny. It's just a shame that humanity's love of excess and penchant for greed has influenced these people's destinies. Imagine if the people living in these areas had come across the scientific developments first. Their destiny based on geography would have been a game changing gold mine for them. and could have changed the world quite literally, compared to the strife and struggles they go through now because someone else deemed them not worthy of fair treatment in order to make a buck, ya know? But it also goes to show how performative wokeness, whether socio-political or environmental, is crazy. Unless you're going to start farming for yourself, you can't escape many of the things that you know are so bad. But also, it's not necessarily about the individual choice. You choices do matter, but at the end of the day, who is doing this? Is me getting a straw at Starbucks killing the environment? Or are the corporations pumping waste and chemicals into our ecosystems to make everything that goes INTO said straw the problem? The individual's carbon footprint pales in comparison by orders of magnitude to corporations, and shaming people for using straws of all things, realistically, isn't even a drop in a bucket by comparison, and this is no different. Great piece Adam, keep em coming!
take away those jobs from those poor people and hundreds of children will starve or be sold into sex slavery. Same thing happened when a bunch of rich college kids from nyc demanded sweat shops in SE asia to stop hiring children. This type of investigative journalism is only surface level deep.
I love that you incorporate experts on the topics you make videos about!
1:32 that’s Zomi which is spiced/seasoned palm oil. That’s part of what you were tasting. Typically when it’s solid, you can actually see the spices settled at the bottom of the bottle.
You can buy the plain oil without any spices/seasoning & season it to your preference when cooking.
I was eating a bag of granola while watching this, and out of curiosity I looked at the ingredients. Yep. Palm oil.
Vaseline? Palm oil :3
It's legit in 99% of any processed food.
My Oreo cookies, palm oil.
@@zapfanzapfan my vinyl floor? Palm oil.
Kitchen towels? Palm oil.
"loudly declining something on moral grounds while quietly accepting something just as bad over here, except now with some smug moral superiority" is a good summary of the 21st century and twitter, isnt it
Kind of ironic in a way though isnt it "I decline your claims of moral superiority to claim I am the superior one for realising it's all bad!" An enlightened centrist type thing
@@stephenward2743 only applies if the enlightened centrist actually claims moral superiority.
@@stephenward2743 He doesn't really claim he's superior in any way though. He will try to reduce his intake of palm oil as we all should be doing but accepts that it will be quite a difficult task to pull off since palm oil is in everything.
Yeah most people that spam how eating meat is destroying the planet eat more avocados every day than a vegan version of the cookie monster
its only about business, oil palm productivity destroy other oil vegetable industry, I.e: canola, rapeseed, sunflower, soy, corn etc. hence strong trade wars were imposed against palm oil by tarrif barriers, and environmental-health-labor issues.
Great topic and video. I think a video on the dangers of seed oils and PUFAs, which are also in everything we eat, would be right up your alley
I studied in a Malaysian school and some of the students did an anti-palm oil performance, which had some parents triggered. Those parents contacted one of the ministers. They and the palm oil companies they apparently threatened legal action against the school performance. Unfortunately, my school eventually kowtowed by apologizing to the palm oil companies and the ministry :(
thats what happen when you try to spread bs. serve their right.
@@minmin-fs1nn this the society we live in?
An Arabic name & pfp of local animated show character, you're Malaysian aren't you
Im malaysian and never heard of this. can you quote a news report?
@@JamilKhan-hk1wl probably didn't make the news
I like how Adam makes videos we never asked for yet it’s the best thing ever.
I love how I was gonna say this first but ya beat me hehehheheheheheehheehhehehehehehehe
@@kc7226 same
I learn so much from these videos.
@@mikemurphy80 hehe
True words
This was an interesting video for me. I’m a first generation Nigerian-American and we use palm oil (the real, orange thing) all the time in our food (sourced from Ghana or Nigeria). So for me that’s what I think of when I hear palm oil. It’s flavor is really important in a lot of our dishes. But how it’s been exploited around the world and its awful reputation makes me sad.
as always capitalism turns whats good and efficient for a few into unsustainable human rights violations due to the need for mass marketable products on the cheap. it really is sad that something that has cultural value and even environmental benefits can be contorted into exploiting cultures and destroying the environment.
@@tokuyou3811 Sounds like you're ready to leave.
@@user-op8fg3ny3j he's not wrong though, mass production may get you lots of something quickly but it's wasteful by nature and lots of companies exploit workers with or without regulations in place
I know right. I didn’t even think palm oil was anything other than the red oil my mum gets from the African store.
@@tokuyou3811 there is always Cuba, if you hate it so much.
Palm oil is awfully useful for some folks working around food allergies. I'm allergic to corn (including corn oil) and my grandson had allergy attacks from even small amounts of butter or soybean oil. Palm was the only shortening we could use.
why not use groudnut oil or olive oil
Yes just cook with olive oil. You only need very small amounts so it is not really expensive and you can cook at higher temperatures.
please dont support these companies. they are actively stealing the lands of innocent countries. i have many friends in malaysia and they are going through horrible politics
@@alejandrosrwebmaster I use it too its only healthy oil that is great raw and dont destroy planet that much if you can use coconut or extra virgin olive oil nothing else if you have allergy to milk or are vegetarian or vegan if neither use fat or butter I am allergic to milk protein so I need to use olive oil
@@alejandrosrwebmaster Olive is pretty bad at high temperatures, but a good choice and probably the best cooking oil.
Wow, this is a wonderful little niche you have here. Not widely known information, helpful stuff that people actually want to know, engaging content. I love it. 👍
As somebody from West Africa (Ghana) Palm oil is a big part of our diet, but the plants they get the oil from grow naturally, like in my Grandmother's garden. I was actually surprised because I recognise the exact brand you were holding even though I live in the UK (usually I don't see Americans have the same brands with rest of the world)
i too recognized that specific brand and i went straight to the afro shop to get meself one lol! .
As an American, I feel that government and corporations never acknowledge that there is a world beyond our borders. Thank God for RUclips where I can see real people sharing the real world.😊👍
Same I recognized the brand my parents are from Ghana. I'm Switzerland you can find that specific oil in the few African shops around.
@@rebeccamartin2399 naive child.
The downside of palm oil is it has high monosaturated fat content. So for me, I will stick with coconut oil.
Africa Everyday recently made a video about how they produce palm oil in his local village, it was interesting how labor intensive the manual process is, and yet Babatunde said it is very integral to their local cuisine and thus worth it.
If it stays in the village and is consumed only by the villagers, it’s totally fine because there’s no extortion & it doesn’t really harm the environment, but when it’s at the corporate scale (as is the case in this video) it’s horrible and evil. Simple as that.
Well the point here is still that palm oil is a very productive and useful crop, it’s just that it’s farmed under very terrible circumstances
I think you missed the point of the video local production and consumption aren’t the problem it’s the massive companies
@@maxsmith8196 I'm adding to your point; palm oil is not bad, the modern corporations and management trends are
Palm oil is not bad, but capitalism is indeed bad for environment as shown in this video.
So the obvious solution anyone sane enough to think is just to erase capitalism. Not to abandon palm oil, even those ones produced by non-capitalist companies.
as a brazilian, palm oil (aka dendê) is a VERY important part of the african heritage, a lot of african brazilian foods are filled with this flavor you described when tasting the unpurified stuff, it not only flavours the food but also colours it. palm oil is produced in a more sustainable way here
I agree my dad is from ghana
aren't tons of sqkm of rainforest being roded for palm oil especially in brasil?
@@mokseee no, its in indonesia, most dendê palms are planted in agroflorests, as they serve mostly the internal market, and are so productive, mostly tiny farmers plant them
90% of the palm nut oil is denatured and is tasteless. Horrible stuff.
@@mokseee Brasilia is thousands of miles from the rainforest.
Adam I really like your videos. They are based more on research than on opinions and about very relevant topics. Thank you for your hard work!
True chads remember when he accidentally released this early
Yep
Yesss
Indeed
Yep
yea that day i was like:double upload?
I think if we replace palm oil for something else it will just become a worse version of palm oil. The problem isn't the palm oil. The problem is corporate behavior and the fact that we as a society allow corporate behavior to thrive. We don't hold corporations accountable for their actions, and destructive behavior does not get priced in.
Yeah these corporations are killing the earth and depleting our resources. Consumerism is also a horrible result of these corporations.
That's what he literally said that replacement isn't the solution. Palm oil _is_ the replacement for other oils that are even more inefficient. The solution is less consumption and consumers making a demand for more ethical sourcing, which would consequently lead to more ethical farming and harvesting.
humans shouldnt be eating plant or seed oils. This is widely known in 2023. The “balanced diet of meat and veggies” scientists lied to you. America top 10 in countries leading with obesity. Palm and canola, and soybean oil is in almost all the junk food in this country. Almost nobody cooks with animal derived fat. It is absolutely the palm oil thats the issue
@@poppinc8145 No such solution will ever happen under a capitalist economy.
now listen ere pardner im gonna pour out a whole jug of olive oil just to prove how superior our hyper capitalist society is. poor people cant do that now can they??? how else am i supposed to eat my deep fried double cheeseburgers? exactly. america.
I am bingewatching all your videos, i really learn a lot and you do a great job at being entertaining!
This channel has so many answers to so many questions related to food I had in my life.
Hey Adam, I would love to see a video on the notorious “red #40”
Same! I know I could research myself but it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. What is it? Where does it come from? Why #40?
Yellow #5 has a lot of notoriety as well.
That was the batch number that worked just like WD40. Which is edible.
Or “blue #1”
Just artificial colors and flavors in general would be an awesome episode.
This is the kind of great stuff you get when your food RUclipsr came from journalism.
This is one of those things where you can only partially walk it back. The plantations are planted, so it'd be very difficult to restore the land to anything resembling a natural rainforest again, the best you could hope to do is improve the labor conditions while slowly walking it back. Alleviation of poverty worldwide also goes a long way, because a lot of people only choose the cheapest possible option because they feel strong pressure to do it, and poverty remaining anywhere is a threat to prosperity anywhere.
the best solution world should taxes all human to preserve the forest. all human needs rainforest so its fair everyone must contribute to preserve it. such third world country should not shoulder the responsibility of the world alone when they still have difficult matter to manage such as poverty.
@@ariffkhalid9473 Ah yes, *more* government solutions, for *more* corruption opportunities to embezzle funds. We do this already, foreign aid mostly gets sent back to politicians or kept by the local governments.
The best solutions have to account for human malice and stupidity, and this is horrible at doing so. No committee can stop international corruption, when they literally never have the power to enforce anything. The only thing that's ever really worked is straight up banning those products entirely, and forcing companies to not use it. Block nations who deforest from entering the world economy.
The only solutions that ever speak is the ones where you make it pay to listen.
@@xShadowChrisx you could also just, you know, not base your economy on profit but instead on fulfilling human needs.
@@syn010110 Which is, and always has been, the most inefficient way to run an economy. Unless you like efficiency of the human death toll, which in fairness, many psychopaths and ignorant blind folk love to see or not see depending on how many of them know the death toll stalin and mao racked up.
Sad part is, I already explained why these solutions are smooth brain to the guy above, but in case you missed it, you must account for *human stupidity and malice*. If you assign unilateral power to one group or person, to decide what is a "need" or not, you get corruption. Congratulations genius, you've killed millions to serve someone else's greed.
@@xShadowChrisx banning is far worse solution. to fulfil human needs of oil, palm oil is the most sustainable oil. getting rid of it cause company to subtitute to less sustainable oil like soybean, canola etc. guess what will happen then? food price will jack up, more forest will cut down to fulfill the void left by palm oil, because other oil produce less hence much area is needed to produce equal amount. you should ban other oil too, as they also destroy the plane, forest and cause massive extinction. did you know lots of species goes extinct europe and north america because development? did you know lots of polution to develop western civilazation? so stop the hypocracy when its fine for first country to destroy the nature in name developing but somehow if wrong to third world country to do same to their lands? if you want more forest, what about you undevelop your country and plant the forest back. you cant ask other to keep living in poverty and undeveloped for your selfish and hyprocrite sake. its easy you to say to stop cut the forest when you living the benefit of the same action. did you know to create the phone you uses, the server for youtube that we using here, lots of forest being cut down to mine the rare metal? what about you stop using technology then. or better, ban the electronic.
you know what will save the world fastest? cull the human population thus less need for food production.
I am struggling to get past how much I like every single story you tell. Thank you
Thank you for doing such a brilliant job tackling this subject, Much appreciated!
Hey Adam, you should look into the research done by University of Bath into Metschnikowia pulcherrima (a yeast). In the biology department we're looking into how we could perhaps grow it in some way to make it produce most of its biomass as useable oil. It could make an interesting follow up video.
No clue what the first word of that name means, but "pulcherrima" means "super beautiful" in Latin
Wouldn't that just cause it to be even cheaper, making it even more popular, making companies use it even more, and in the end just having the exact same number of plantations (and the problems that come with it) but just being more productive with them?
Serious question btw, I actually don't know, also excuse my horrible english
@@gerhardsmith7892 most often yeast and similar are much more efficient than plants or animals, so I think it will have much lower footprint nonetheless.
for the curious en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metschnikowia_pulcherrima
@@gerhardsmith7892 Yes, that could be a concern. Utilising a yeast could be a more efficient method of obtaining 'palm' oil. However, yeast isn't grown in a field that used to have a rainforest. It can be created in any industrial biotech laboratory, regardless of overall climate.
There is likely a large body of research into this matter, but I should imagine that the amount of oil produced is not the limiting factor in its use. A low cost replacement could cause it being phased out of being grown (perhaps a similar shift to insulin production)
There is a larger context that Adam alluded to in this video: if a low-cost replacement palm oil was found, what would happen to these communities? They found palm oil to replace rubber plantations, so the cycle of exploitation could just move on to something different, or just leave these communities in the dust.
It's a really pressing and well put question, and I'm sorry if it seems like I've beaten around the bush with it, but it's an incredibly complex and evolving matter. Hopefully I've given some reasoning as to why this research wouldn't be an outright harmful outcome.
As a Malaysian I was prepared to be pissed, since most Westerners do practice that double standard when judging products from other countries. But this was an excellent and balanced take. Well done Adam.
I’m not a fan of boycotting palm oil. As Adam mentioned it’s yield is insane - more product for less land. I fear moving to less efficient alternatives eg soybean oil would just move the deforestation elsewhere (the Amazon) and increase it overall.
But I have to agree with Adam that standards should be higher. You can believe the product is fundamentally good, but also believe it’s production is tainted and in need of proper regulation. Same way I feel about Americans and their Amazon delivery. Excellent service. Terrible production practices/working conditions.
But to be honest I don’t know how the industry will get better. It’s one of those uphill fights where seemingly easy solutions don’t always pan out the way people they will.
just see the soy production in amazon forest will be enough where there is so much deforestation... where we hardly to hear bad word about soy...
@@chonkydonkyexplains4778 off course. US is the number 2 production
As a fellow Malaysian, I can honestly say the demonization of palm has always felt like a colonialist agenda and at times, a bit discriminatory. They are simply too many pros with palm that its difficult to justify the cons.
Not to mention the fact that those sitting from the first-world countries were also the ones to impose ecological restrictions; of which we have dutifully upheld, only for them to turn around and wag their fingers upon us as the culprits of ecological destruction.
Its difficult to defend the practices of this country as well and I understand the claims. The issues are extremely systemic and it would take not just a person, but the entire country to rally against those in-charge to begin the healing process.
The problem isn't even really with palm oil. The problem is just with capitalism. The companies treat their workers like garbage, and they'd do that no matter what product they were making.
I just wish I had a solution to that. Or that anyone had a solution to that. All we can do is try and convince companies to be better, but since it isn't just one company's products and because it's so ubiquitous that's harder than most things.
Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I honestly don't think this problem will ever go away unless the global society moves away from capitalist ideas and notions. Which is...not going to happen anytime soon I think.
@@drakewarnock1239 What makes capitalism behave like that is debt. It's stockholders, not capitalism, who demand the company does anything it takes to produce infinite plus one dollars every quarter way past the point in which they've received gross profits on their investment. It's even more evident in the fact that those same bankers and stockholders were what sunk mercantilism and feudalism before it.
Outlaw stock profiteering and interest banking and suddenly capitalism needs not demand "infinite growth", just he fulfillment of your market share.
Palm oil is used because the plant produces more oil per unit of land per unit of time than almost any other oil crop. It also happens to grow well in locations where land and labor is, unfortunately, cheap. However, there is a new oil crop that theoretically can out-compete palm oil: chufa (aka tigernut). At the highest yields, it far out produces palm oil, both on a per year basis and even on a per crop basis. However, chufa oil needs further development and greater market acceptance.
Thank you so much for sharing this information! It’s so important for us to be more conscientious of our consumption and what it’s supporting or causing.
The whole video talked about something that is awful and prevalent that it’s almost impossible to address. However, I liked how (I believe) you ended the video with an actionable item. Change the things we can change in our lives without condemning those who can’t.
And what will that do upon extinction? But humans are ants to the storm. Why would they question what is beyond their personal endeavors? Especially when they face annihilation.
In the end, try to progress instead of dying on Earth, mankind. Unless this is your fate... Humanity, "we" will move on without your species, so do not disappoint "us".
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 Extinction? Die on earth, die somewhere else. Doesn’t matter in the end. Everything living eventually dies. Nothing besides us benefits from our existence because our planetary problems are all caused by humans.
@@onionhead5780
There are those who can rule over the cosmos and those who are forgotten in time. I hope mankind is not the ladder.
If adam dig deeper
U would know how the west world push the narrative towards south east asia countries to plant more of plantations, other than palm oil included
And now they push the narrative how unhealthy these stuff while simultaneously putting the said stuff into current products
Evil west world
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 it's latter, not ladder. Your first comment also sounds like you are in the throes of teenage angst trying your hardest to sound intelligent and philosophical in a RUclips comments section.
Minor Detail: Notice the word "ZOMI" 1:33. It is a type of palm oil with a strong flavor and taste. It is the last to be collected from the base of the batch. It is a premier product for that. Other less quality palm oil is liquid at room temperature and is less saturated.
Yeah, here in Brazil we consume palm oil as part of our cultural diet, but I never saw any this thick, we usually call it "Azeite de dendê" and it's just a liquid red tinted oil.
so, it's like the opposite of olive oil?
Thanks for the additional info
@@archevenault you could say so
@@herrerasauro7429 yeah, but it's the less industrialized version. You will see in the products' labels Oleo de Palma when it's the clear stuff.
You need Raney nickel to hydrogenate unsaturated oils- it's a finely powdered form of nickel or nickel alloy. Unless they've replaced or updated the process, I'm surprised that this doesn't cause issues in people with nickel allergies, unless it actually does and I've missed stories about it (which is completely possible). It's one of those cases where you wouldn't really call it an ingredient because it's not in the finished product, but it's inarguably used to make it.
It's also really hard to avoid as a consumer in the US. Like you said, it's in nearly everything. I used to read the lable on everything I purchased and avoided a long list of things. Either because they are bad for the environment, or animals, or for my health, or the people who grow it, etc. I ended up with very few things that I could eat or use. And even those things are considered bad for some reason by someone. I think most of us do care about these things. But I think most people just find it too hard to avoid everything that is bad. So I think a lot of people just turn a blind eye to it all.
Palm oil triggers my IBS, so I'm very familiar with how wide-spread it is. There are entire categories of products the I don't even consider buying anymore.
I wish there was an alternative. I’m pretty good being a vegetarian, but like you said there’s simply so much more that is harmful to someone or something that it’s impossible to track for your average person. My grandmother just found out about the problems with Nestle, some of you reading this may not even know either.
Point is I wish people had an easy way of doing it, or we just had better alternatives. These changes would do massive good, they’re worthwhile.
@@nohooligans888 I wish there was an alternative, too. Though, I would probably be fine with it just being left out. I just don't care enough about texture to want to use or eat something so harmful for the world. I don't think that would go very well for the companies that use it, though.
I'm actually not good at being vegetarian like you are. My heart is almost vegan. And I've been mostly vegetarian for most of my adult life. But I'm not good enough at it to feel healthy completely vegetarian for long. And being vegan didn't work at all for me healthwise. I would be quite happy being vegetarian or vegan, if it was easy and I felt okay that way, though.
I still feel so frustrated and overwhelmed with trying to find a diet that doesn't hurt something somewhere, including myself. I mean, I'm used to sending out gratitude for my food. But now I feel like I have to send out apologies instead.
You wouldn't think that simply eating would be so complicated or hard. And yet it sure seems to be.
Oh, and I didn't know about Nestle. I looked it up out of curiosity. They do sound pretty evil.
It’s easiest to avoid palm oil if you follow a relatively unprocessed, whole foods diet. Palm oil mostly found in packaged convenience foods. I’m on very low carb diet to help control a health issue. I’d be quite surprised to find anything in my kitchen that contains palm oil.
Unfortunately, eating the way I do is a lot more expensive than a diet full of packaged convenience foods.
@@dawntower3011 Yep. Eating healthy, environmentally friendly food is more expensive than one would think. It uses a lot more executive function than I can realistically spare, too. Most days adulting uses all the executive function that I have and there are still things that I'm not able to get done. So, adding in being as careful as I would like about all the ingredients that I want to avoid ends up putting me straight into ferret shock.
I appreciate how the video ends. Life is complicated and most things can't be summed up in a tidy moral. I think a lot of the media these days has lost site of the fact that their primary job is giving us all the pertinent information so we can make informed decisions. The media's job is not to craft a nice story with a 5-point plot structure. Leave that to the fiction writers.
I feel like Adam knows the solution is to end these extortionist corporations that peddle the palm oil so horribly, but he can’t say that or else he’ll never be sponsored ever again
@@veermistartmkwinstagramvee7067 Just human's thing.
1. It get monocultured, no one is looking into localized alternative solution. If some R&D and incentives to the local farmers to do their thing, and there would be some positive impact. But it's too inefficient and resources consuming, thus not an actual alternate to the mass cheap production.
2. It's global capitalization at its best. Palm oil is just one of the examples. As long the government just focus on financial report card, pretty much nothing will change. It is one of those cases that true price is only paid by the workers, the exploited ones, and the slaves. We get the cheaper discount at Walmart.
@@veermistartmkwinstagramvee7067 yeah if you say anything bad about capitalism then google demonetizes your channel for eternity
There is no such thing as ethical consumption :(
@@syn010110, agree.
So we can say that Adam is one of the comrades, now?
Who remembers when it was released early lol
same
So it wasn’t a dream!
Negative someone else re uploaded it
I was there
Me lol
I learned SO MUCH from this video and especially the comments. Wow
Have never commented on your great videos, they are always good! Big thanks. This one was totally enlightening ... never understood the underlying story, now I do! Thank you!
im so so glad that you brought up the human costs of palm oil. i find that not a lot of people are very aware of labor abuses in agriculture, let alone how that intersects with economic standing ESPECIALLY in countries that are former colonies.
it is outdated info though because US and EU ban (sanction) palm oil manufacturer that had "force labour" label so these manufacturer already reformed to avoid sanction.
woke
Ah yes because caring about people and wanting to make sure they aren't abused or exploited is “woke” grow up.
Astronaut 1: "Wait... It's all palm oil?"
Astronaut 2: "Always has been"
Please do a video on the main artificial flavors out there. Love your unbiased and indepth insight!
Great video, I just found your channel and have been binging.
"A very, very small amount" of trans fat is deceptive. Anything with 499mg of trans fat or less per (unreasonably small) serving gets to call itself "trans fat free" because trans fat is measured in grams and rounded.
If they changed the regulation to require trans fat expressed in milligrams instead of grams, a lot of lies would be laid bare.
Partially hydrogenated soybean oil can contain around 40% trans isomers. Liquid soybean oil usually has less than 1% trans and palm oil is usually < 0.5% trans.
Yes . You Are Right. Just see how he expertly protected Crisco !
I don't think that's much of a concern, just because there isn't really a route for trans fats to be introduced without partially hydrogenated oils, and those have been banned. If fully hydrogenated or unhydrogenated oils have been adulterated in some way to include trans fats, the fact that they were adulterated and still made it to the shelf is a much bigger concern than the trans fat content.
@@AlanRPaine ñ ml
@@firstnamelastname4216 Yea, people are overblowing how dangerous trans fats actually are.
Sure, if you can you generally wanna avoid them, but the danger is overblown.
I’ve been refreshing my feed since 1 pm on Thursday
same.
i saw the notification and i was sad, i had nothing to watch that day
My family comes from The Gambia, a small country on the west coast of Africa, and one of our staple dishes is a stew made with that raw palm oil. It’s one of those flavours that you just can’t explain to someone without them trying it.
We have been eating it for ages in africa and still alive. Western world live us alone bc we cannot do without palmoil and won't buy your products all the time.
Could you give me a recipe for it (a link)?
@@radoskan look up Liberian red oil cassava leaf soup mmmmmmmm you’ll love it
@@joanabjorklund5419 🤣🤣They are thieves.
While it's true palm oil is a very big market globally, it's not very common in food in the US. Soybean oil is dominant here by a pretty wide margin. Vegetable oil, shortening, margarine, etc are pretty much all soybean oil unless specifically marked as something else, and even much of the time when it is marked as something else. Palm oil is less common than canola oil which in turn is a lot less common than soybean oil in food in the US.
Just looking at the title, I feared that the video will be just: "this is bad", but fortunately it was not!
I still think though that you could say more about the environmental impact, which I feel is often misunderstood. Because, AFAIK, the palm oil is better than the alternatives, and the issue is that a lot of it does not come from plantations, but from cutting natural forests down, and we get a huge carbon footprint from the change of land usage. You talked about it, but IMHO too briefly, although I understand that you can fit only so much into a video.
EDIT: looking through the comments it definitely seems to me that many people have not realized that the alternatives may not be better for the environment
i mean adam did mention at the end that other forms of oil production also have their drawbacks. i do like your point though about how manufacturers will likely keep doing the same old game of exploiting laborers and the environment, just with a more appropriate oil that could even be potentially more harmful than palm oil.
it just goes to show the problem is deeper than just "we need to stop producing palm oil on a mass scale"
@@tokuyou3811 yes, he did, I just feel like it was easy to miss. And that's exactly my point: removing palm oil from production chain may not be the best solution, it is possible that it will just make matters worse
@@ariuss3009 I agree with you - but also there's still something to be said for trying to consume certified sustainable palm oil wherever you can, it provides an incentive for all palm oil producers to do better.
It's like with animal products - if you have access to grass-fed meat, buy it! That way you're encouraging sustainable agriculture to keep going, and providing an incentive to keep away from factory farming.
Also - while it's true that the alternatives to palm oil may be worse, we could still make things better by consuming less in general, as Adam said.
@@rw4025
And how much less is enough?... Corruption has seen both ends of the deal... And upon extinction, what then? Or do mortals even care about the inevitable?
Humans and their morality... It's a good thing they're stuck on Earth. Until then, the Card of Crows is at play.
@@ariuss3009
First... The execution of all farm animals.
Now... The annihilation of all oils.
Humans... Self extinction must be their fate.
The very last part is very important. High definition problems and ethical dilemmas, require complicated thinking and that is only possible when we drop the idea that we are somehow saints based upon our minor decisions but only when it suits us. Any issue related to health, the environment, politics etc can be explored and meaningfully shape our decision making, but we need to be honest and accept the reality of the situation.
Exactly, even though good personal choice are admirable, they hardly can do anything, as either they can achieve only small scale or their are counteracted by other adjustments in the process.
So please do consider what you buy or eat, but don't expect that you high ethical standards really matter to anybody. Maybe handful of people could tell their are guilt free, but the Indonesian rainforests will be gone anyway.
@@Buffalo93
Humans and their illusion of morality. Extinction comes and I am amused. For what is free will when demanded by a God?...
One out of billions and billions of humans. With only a small few in power. Human, it is amusing that this species acts in self righteousness when their own evils contradict their words, or even worst, that their own kin is what they hate.
The death of Earth is inevitable, so do not waste time on pitiful existences. Otherwise, even the most important of human society shall be nothing in the end.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 I'm eating a mango right now do you want some
@JACOB VINSON
True... Just like humans and their politics... Nothing has changed for this species.
@@scarabeedae
The souls of the living is my fruit upon the dying worlds... Humanity is an amusement to "us".
Thank you for educating me Dr.
I live in Canada.
To many people have been giving palm oil an un deserved bad name. Making it hard to find
But it is a very healthy oil especially when combined with coconut oil when out in the summer sun.
Racist anti Black propaganda
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'.
"Idk whats the point of me sharing this anyway"
No I'm honestly glad you did. Problems like these are massively systemic, far beyond any one individual's capabilities. The more you spread this information, the more people can come together to find solutions and make informed decisions.
Betul tu. Sedih kih
dawg, if only unionization wasnt so dangerous
As your neighbour, same problem, except the palm oil industry over here is so tightly intertwined with our country's economic welfare that the government tends to turn a blind eye against the damage caused by these companies to the people and the environment.
Enviromental issue is just one of western lobbyist tactics. Why dont you ask comparative study abt oil palm vs other alternatives? That will be some real tough facts to swallow
Let the record show that just 24 hours ago I left a comment on the “boxed cake mix is great” vid saying the problem with boxed cake mix is the palm oil.
You'll make Adam turn on himself
this was my first thought when I watched that boxed cake episode, uh, Adam mate, did you read all those ingredients?? i'll stick to butter, sugar (a small amount i control, and not corn syrup), egg and flour.
Yea sad is I already know this. Dude I love the channel you have great information that's correct. I've been digging thru the archive
Thank you for the video. Informative as usual.
This is solid substance, with full complexity. I really appreciate your tone: objective and ethically alert but not preachy.
And Full Of Lies...
Hey, I'm from Ecuador! Thanks for the shout-out, Adam and Miss Zuckerman!
Thank you so much. This video is helping me with a project.
This is a very important video to me, thank you.
Everybody flexing about knowing that this seemingly was uploaded before like it's a superpower
Excellent remark Mr. Dick, it indeed would appear they percieve it as nothing short of flabbergasting, whereas it really is just a whimsy coincidence!
@@RubyBliel Hey Peter, you spelled "perceive" incorrectly. Remember, I before E except after C!
It is.
@@goomba5887 didn't know that😅bit now I do😁
true, Mr. Richard!
Gotta say, I like that Adam does a good job of adding a dash ( or sometimes a heathy spoonful ) ofthe bigger picture to his videos. A welcome difference from the usual foodtuber.
In some countries it’s even in the condensed milk! I emailed the companies like “is this normal?” They replied “yup” lol
This was a really good and informative video, as I watched it reminded me of a plant that I have always seen around my area here in my country, it's the Mauritia flexuosa (we call it "moriche palm") and it's also some sort of palm tree but for what I read it's native to South America and we also get oil and other products from it, although I have seen trucks full of the fruit being exported somewhere else, I have never directly seen the product itself.
I'm really glad with the last few remarks there Adam. It puts a welcome bit of nuance in there. Consumption guilt or moral superiority is everywhere, and it's not helping that much I think. We westerners might think we are way better off than most people on this planet (moral superiority right there), but I can easily imagine a laid back person living close to nature without many possessions looking at us with rolling eyes.
Can you explain your thought process behind consumption guilt not being helpful? I totally agree with you on moral superiority, it just seems like consumption guilt is the only way to sustainability
@@westganton i think what op means is that, consumption guilt doesnt help if it merely leads to a switch to an equally/more harmful alternative just to alleviate a problem ingredient or method. For example, decrying that beef is bad for the environment and switching to vegan alternatives isnt necessarily more sustainable or have less environmental impact. On the whole, food wastage in general has a far more harmful impact since there is a tendency for overconsumption/overavailability on groceries or commercial pantries since demand can be unpredictable, hence leading to pressures in production to produce more, for cheaper, since end user prices tend to be fixed
Its as adam remarked in the end. It takes a thoughtful approach to commit to change that is beneficial to all, not a matter of cancelling something or adding penalties on things we dont like. It's about sitting down and having a conversation, and not yelling over each other, which the temperature seems to be at a lot these days.
@@charpkun I agree with everything you said. Financial cost needs to not be the only driver for these trends.
Ultimately, the responsibility falls on us as consumers to understand the cost of our consumption and change it as needed, causing industries to respond to our demand in turn, but for the sake of future generations we need to consider our path forward more carefully, especially as technology amplifies our environmental impact.
This seems to be where institutions come into play, but we lack any with public long-term quality of life as the primary goal, where greed and corruption have no place.
It's naive to think you could fight giant greedy corporations acting globally, from within your private little kitchen. It may give you some satisfaction, some peace of mind, to be aware of your consumption, but in the large scheme of things it means nothing. Going green like that is akin to some medieval christian buying absolution...
We need the lawmakers to step in with large taxes, and even exert international pressure to combat these criminals!
@@westganton Charles Cheung gave an excellent reply. With regards to beef: Grazing herds in the North African countries have been key to environmental sustainability in that region (think thousands of years). Not long ago they were replaced with farms and crops, with devastating effects to the environment. Lots of vegetation in these countries is gone as a direct result of that switch, leaving barren ground behind. There are more places like this on earth (Australia also) where grazing cattle is considered by some to be much more natural and eco-friendly than switching over to non-meat alternatives.
Food is a complex topic, and I am no expert. But I've heard enough from people who studied this to understand there's no golden bullet. Consumption guilt pushes people away from one form of consumption (maybe harmful) into another (also maybe harmful), leaving no room for desperately needed nuance.
i really appreciate you covering this as a malaysian who literally lives in front of a palm oil plantation. i expected the book to cover how companies+colonisers pressure poor folk to rent out their land to plant palm oil and give measly money in return for it, but i suppose i could email the author about that!
this was covered in the video, perhaps you missed it.
8:32 in this video from the author
Don't you think the same things happen to other oil plantation, but they only just keep on attacking us? The Caucasian wiped the native American off from the land to mine gold and grow crops, shouldn't they band their own products first before they condemn other countries?
Red Palm oil Is a traditional oil , It has been used in cooking for 5,000 years or more, ancient Egyptians used it, it was considered a sacred oil. Real palm oil TODAY is produced in just two places, Africa and Northeastern Brazil . Palm oil is being slandered for centuries just like coconut oil, by whites , because the poor soil of Europe is not suitable for both, and both were produced by Africans, and coconut oil by dark asians too, more than 500 years ago this demonization started, but now with internet white "environmentalists" doing racist demonization again, at same time propaganda, this will be more known, especially by black people who lost their culture, Red palm oil is healthy and full of vitamins (not the refined one), and it doesn't become toxic or carcinogenic at high temperature, like all European and North American oils. Olive oil is good, to consume without cooking, but not for cooking, good fats \ oils for high temperature: coconut oil, lard, Red palm oil (real palm oil), butter. Sunflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil , and all other oils from Europe and North America are all bad, toxic and carcinogenic, which is why Europeans, Australia and North America have the highest rates of cancer.
In Malaysia coloniser's companies were the first to cut forest trees to plant rubber trees. Now the rubber platations grow oil palm trees instead.
Gonna read that book. Thanks for the service.
This is such an important topic Adam. Your videos are always well-researched. I have been a soapmaker for 6 years, and from the very beginning I made the decision to never use palm oil. Palm oil companies claim to be fair trade, ect., but unless I could personally travel to meet the people growing the oil being used in my products, I would never be comfortable using it.
congrats youve been brainwashed.
Thank you thank you thank you! As a fellow Malaysian, yes I do recognise the devastating effect of deforestation on our forests for palm oil plantation, but many don’t realise the palm oil yield much more oil as compared to olive, soy, coconut or sunflower oil. In other words, palm oil has high sustainability.
The whole notion of boycotting palm oil by the EU is just a political notion to surpress ASEAN in terms of trade. Such hypocritical when they decide to ship their unrecyclable wastes to countries like Indonesia Vietnam and Thailand.
Malaysian palm oil plantation are also done at least as responsibly as other oil plantations if not more. Malaysian government even give subsidies for the people living in rural areas for example land, seeds, fertilizers and places to live for them to able to make a living out of palm oil. Our palm oil industry is just caught in between bad practitioners so we're getting a bad reputation as well because of other countries.
Dengki ke
true, i feel FELDA is no different from American homesteading, except in case of American homesteading, they don't have rainforest with orangutan to worry about.
However, we do need to care about our Bangladeshi and other worker considering they also play a part in our industry.
Valid criticism but lying about sustainability and suppression in the same paragraphs doesn’t do you any favours
@@luianderson7360 Each kernel of the palm oil fruit yields 50% of the oil content. Palm oil can be harvested 12 months of the year. Each tree can produce 10 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches per hectare.
It takes 5 kilograms of olives to produce 1 litre of oil; and a mature plant can only yield 15-20 kilograms of olives annually.
It is obvious that the palm oil yields more oil content and has a greater sustainability that other plant based oil sources.
Why don’t you provide some statistical and scientific context? Your blatant comment barking about how I lie, but can’t seem to produce any literature evidence does not do you any favour too.
this is actually something i wondered SO MUCH!! can't believe i'm so early to the video. now, on to watching. thanks in advance!!!
Legends saw it earlier than you did since he leaked it last week
There so much information packed into these videos. I love it!!
Your conclusion is one that I've come to with almost all of these environmental/health concerns. It always ends up that there is no perfect solution and the answer is to always consume less. It's really fascinating. Every good purchase you make is still indirectly supporting something else that's bad.
The solution is not to consume less, the solution is to solve the root cause of the problem. That would probably make palm oil more expensive, so people would naturally consume less, but the other way around makes little sense to me
@@ZotyLisu the problem with that is to consume less palm oils means that you will need more of the other kind of oils (so called heart healthy oils) because they are cheaper. And like this video, nobody's talking about how dangerous these other oils are to our health. Just look at the average American, and there is plenty of science and research to back it up. So do you worry about some farmers that you never met and try to save them or do you try to do what is best for your children and your health. It's a choice, you can't have it both ways. The real crime is how they keep it a secret how dangerous all the other oils are and continue to sell that poison to people in the name of profits and worse our government allows it.
@@ZotyLisu Interesting, I don't think I fully understand what you mean, could you elaborate?
the problem is corporations. and capitalism by extension.
The problem is the top 0.01% of humanity use as much resources and cause as much environmental destruction as the lower 50% of humanity, and that does *NOT* include their multinational corporations that are responsible for net 75% of climate change related pollution and resource use.
Palm oil, the orangey and thicc version, is very important for the northeastern brasilian cuisine. We call it "azeite de dendê" ("azeite" meaning oil in portuguese and "dendê" coming from "ndende", witch means "palm" in kimbundu).
It is very important for the african-brasilian culture. It is widelly used in candomblé, as part of some rituals.
One of the most known foods that has the oil in the recipe is acarajé, a great dish from the state of Bahia.
Red Palm oil Is a traditional oil , It has been used in cooking for 5,000 years or more, ancient Egyptians used it, it was considered a sacred oil. Real palm oil TODAY is produced in just two places, Africa and Northeastern Brazil . Palm oil is being slandered for centuries just like coconut oil, by whites , because the poor soil of Europe is not suitable for both, and both were produced by Africans, and coconut oil by dark asians too, more than 500 years ago this demonization started, but now with internet white "environmentalists" doing racist demonization again, at same time propaganda, this will be more known, especially by black people who lost their culture, Red palm oil is healthy and full of vitamins (not the refined one), and it doesn't become toxic or carcinogenic at high temperature, like all European and North American oils. Olive oil is good, to consume without cooking, but not for cooking, good fats \ oils for high temperature: coconut oil, lard, Red palm oil (real palm oil), butter. Sunflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil , and all other oils from Europe and North America are all bad, toxic and carcinogenic, which is why Europeans, Australia and North America have the highest rates of cancer
I was here on THURSDAY half way through! My wait has ended!
I'm lucky I was able to watch the full thing
I think this video will disappear again in March 31 2022
@@white_boy_billy6201 I watched half of it, the kid wanted to sleep, when I was back, reloaded for no reason and .... waaat ;/
@@idoarditi3249 We have some time left!
A great video that displays how "voting with your dollar" isn't necessarily feasible.
Indeed. World conquest where I run the world, however...
I’m amazed that people had figured out how to extract oil from these trees thousands of years ago.
The ironic thing is that palm oil, while bad, is often far better than any alternatives due to the high yield.
exactly, alternative such as corn oil or canola oil will be much more bad to the environment as compared to palm oil if you consider the yield
Yes the yield
So it's really more a problem of the unethical sourcing and consumption than the plant itself
I don't think you know the definition of irony.
I stopped buying palm oil foods when I discovered the plight of the orangutans. They are my favorite animal on earth. It’s so wrong what is happening to them, the poor sweet things.
Love the message at the end condemning righteous boycotting that gets balanced out by silent consumption of things that are as bad or even worse and ends up achieving nothing.
Right on, Adam!
Of course, the majority of the people who are aware of these problems and care about them, _do_ genuinely change their lifestyles and do more than condemn and boycot. The majority of environmental activists are not self righteous, it's only that (as with any group) the ones that scream the loudest stand out and they are the most unreasonable and lack nuance the most.
@@ikbintom Most "environmental activists" I've met have been the most insufferable type of douchebags.
@@ikbintom Red Palm oil Is a traditional oil , It has been used in cooking for 5,000 years or more, ancient Egyptians used it, it was considered a sacred oil. Real palm oil TODAY is produced in just two places, Africa and Northeastern Brazil . Palm oil is being slandered for centuries just like coconut oil, by whites , because the poor soil of Europe is not suitable for both, and both were produced by Africans, and coconut oil by dark asians too, more than 500 years ago this demonization started, but now with internet white "environmentalists" doing racist demonization again, at same time propaganda, this will be more known, especially by black people who lost their culture, Red palm oil is healthy and full of vitamins (not the refined one), and it doesn't become toxic or carcinogenic at high temperature, like all European and North American oils. Olive oil is good, to consume without cooking, but not for cooking, good fats \ oils for high temperature: coconut oil, lard, Red palm oil (real palm oil), butter. Sunflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil , and all other oils from Europe and North America are all bad, toxic and carcinogenic, which is why Europeans, Australia and North America have the highest rates of cancer.
These videos are addicting because every time I've researched these topics in the past none of it was in ghe same place. It was like trying to figure things out in the 90s even though we have internet.
Thanks, Adam. It's been years now since I refuse to buy any product containing Palm Oil. Sometimes it's inconvenient, but hey, that's nothing compared to what those workers suffer.
Hey Adam. Great video. I'm happy to see you featured The Omnivores Dilemma, probably one of my favorite books, and certainly one of my favorite books about food (alongside Kitchen Confidential). I have always felt it amazing that these books specifically about food can have a wider impact on our lives. I think your channel is much in that vein, using food as a vehicle to make your viewers think about our lives more deeply. Thanks!
I really like these kinds of videos. Delving into topics that may be controversial. I get that as a content creator it is dangerous territory and can respect why it isn't done often. It is really nice to see awareness spread though. A lot of people don't understand the true cost of the food on their plates.
12:45 starts with showing a nestlé product .. oof .. one of the most infamous abusive food producing enterprises in the world .. (in this particular case .. nestlé is buying up water supply lines, make them unaffordable/not work and sell bottled water which .. effectively is a lot more expensive)
Your channel is awesome dude!
Hi Adam! Just wanna say huge fan and I've been cooking your recipes and they're so good!
As mentioned, unfortunately the solution can't really be just use less palm oil. There needs to be oil in these goods, and if companies think that palm oil has become too unsavory with the consumer or it has been outlawed in major markets, they'll switch to a more expensive, less eco-friendly, less suitable oil for their products. I doubt the labor rights and conditions of workers for such oils will be better; if anything, to offset increased relative costs they could be worse.
There doesn't have to be oil in food. It's a refined, unhealthy product.
@@sofia_c_1 I don't think this is a good way of looking at it, if only because, like Adam mentioned, there is active effort going on to improve conditions in the palm oil industry. Doing something like that is a slow process and if a big switch happens, that might mean having to start all over again with another industry that suddenly explodes.
Let's say the labor rights in every regions are different.
You might be using capitalist mindset, either you are concious or not.
Let's say a skilled worker with a machine can harvest 100 kgs in an hour.
And for argument sake, let's say the price of the worker is $0.10/kg which means $10/hour.
The company must pay $10/hour but invest some in machinary.
It means that 1 worker will get all the money.
But with rurals labour, they must pay more people with lowered cost so it will be profitable.
Let's say without machinary, the company can pay out $20/hour.
But they need 20 people to achieve simillar efficiency, so it means, every person get $1/hour.
"$1/hour? It is insane! How come people live with $1/hour???"
You must know the socio-economic of the regions.
The price of a meal is $0.54 - $0.84 or technically free with their own farms and nature resources.
How come can it be so cheap? They literally have their own farms with chickens, goats, buffalo, cows.
But it doesn't need to be tend everyday, with palm oil farm, they can get extra incomes.
People always say it is our fault... let's just say, Europeans (especially Netherlands) were doing slavery in Indonesia, means no educations, and working from childhood.
The term eco-friendly is useless to people who is struggling to fulfill their basic necessities
@@fidelkva4810 I think the consumers will say otherwise when you try to remove it from your product.
"Why is this product worse than before?!"
@@WanderTheNomad true
Love your videos. Very imformative.
I love these videos so much. Thank you
As someone from a poor country, I get a little nervous when this sort of subject is talked about by a first world communicator. While those environmental and work-conditions concerns are valid (and really nice actually) for people in rich countries to have, it is very hard to get a good understanding of certain issue without being around it. Even when some kind of produce from the third world has labor and deforestation issues, many times it is also very important for the local economies of said poor countries, and the demonization of these products sometimes ends up doing more harm than good to the overall conditions of people's lives in those poor countries. I do not speak about the palm oil topic in particular because it is not something we particularly deal with in my country.
Regardless, Adam's presentation on this issue was very wise and I really appreciate his insightful and cautious approach to the subject.
As someone from the first world, I really appreciate comments like this, as well as all those from Malaysians or Indonesians. It makes me realize how often we start discussing the morality of events in a developing nation without even pausing to ask someone from that country what their perspective is.
@@atrius4665 Can their perspective even be valid if it didn't come from US ivy league college?
I agree, when Malaysians planted cocoa, everyone is as poor as f*ck. When oil palm becomes popular, everyone is lifted dramatically. To the foreign laborers, the Malaysia minimum wage is a luxurious blessing. They are contended with even 5 times or less money. So you cannot judge income by US standard. During cocoa times, it's negative income. Oil palm is literally god-sent. Everyone has a smartphone watching RUclips now.
Right, and in the developing world, its normal to have poor wages and working conditions. It doesnt matter which crop or which job,
Humans mold the environment to their fitting in order to survive and prosper. This is a fact of our existence for millenia. Humans exploit their surroundings and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
Not doing that means we're back around the same level of the food chain of predators like big cats, bears, and wolves, and we're just like any other animal desperately trying to survive.
A legitimate concern is over exploitation until those resources cease to exist. But there are many cases where that is not happening, and people are losing their minds over normal utilization of resources.
That was the video that was accidentally put on public last Thursday.
This is NOT a reupload.
true notification squad knows!
Precisely. I’m one of these people.
@@TheSlavChef yup
@@DaveDVideoMaker I didn't catch it didn't get a noti even though I have the bell on.
I dunno why that’s the case.
Cooking at home where possible - seems to solve a multitude of problems. To make things shelf stable and over processing in general tends to be bad for our health and keeping things simple might help. Thanks for this excellent video. I try to stay informed and am ashamed to say somehow I had missed this one. Hard to believe given the scale. Someone once said that there are things that only governments can solve....maybe even all of them......
RUclips recommended this 9 month old video to me today. Also, today crude palm oil prices reached a record high at roughly usd2000/ton.
do you think Adam listens to Audible on his RayCons while cleaning up the dishes from his Hello Fresh meal and enjoying a glass of wine from Bright Cellars
While making a website with Squarespace and scanning his receipts with Fetch and Honey
Only about 2-3 of the common youtube sponsors are useful services, the rest are either scams or useless subscription stuff
Ultra sponsorship
lol ,I admit the video topic was making me so SAD, but THIS comment really made me giggle.Thanks dude
all while wearing some fresh native deodorant
Thanks for another great video. I only knew a little about why palm oil was a problem so thank you for presenting this in such a great way. And I so appreciate your journalistic approach by presenting the information and its problems and how it's not always an easy fix.
I'm actually from Ghana and I do use palm oil regularly but never knew that it has this kind of stigma in the world. In Ghana it
s grown naturally
From Asia, two of my local workers used to work in palm extraction. Both got injured 🤕 and know 1 other who got injured. Still would go work there if the the price of oil goes Up. Thanks Joe
I’m loving the direction this channel has taken. Thank you Adam, I’m learning more every day.
Great video Adam! Small correction, orangutans are actually our third closest living relative, after chimpanzees/bonobos and gorillas.
That's fourth, or more accurately fifth, because there are two species of gorilla.
@@baldieman64 I said third because I was going by genus, as Adam said "orangutan," which is a genus
In my country almost every chip bag or other kinds of snacks changed out palm oil for sunseed oil for over 10 years ago... That applies for almost every other food product that is not domestically produced... This is i norway btw
Admirable progress👍
Looking at a couple ingredient labels here in Canada, there's lots of canola but no palm oil. Some subsidies and tax penalty could probably fix this problem real fast.
Regulation probably could help. I also looked at some Canadian product labels and found palm oil and palm kernel oil in margarine and soap, but it can be used to make so many other ingredients that might not include the word “palm”.
Canola also has some problems but I can’t say it’s worse.
Good thing Canola oil grown in Canada isn't being farmed on stolen land like palm oil. Oh... wait.
@@blackmber canola much much much worse from a health standpoint. Also requires 5x as much land to produce the same amount of oil so it's not good from an environmental standpoint either. But I guess there's some environmental advantage in Canada due to the fact that it can be more locally grown
You can virtue signal & demand daddy government start slapping more regulations on stuff, or you can realize that the people working in Palm oil would rather have a crappy job than no job at all & not try to force your ethics on other countries.
Just some food for thought.
@@pewpew9193The problem is that people like you that are against "daddy government" don't realise that there already is a much worse daddy government for the meat, diary and oil industries. The diary industy not only recieves crazy subsidies and tax breaks, it also lobbied the govt to write laws to actively hurt and possible competitors, like for a long time there was a law against developing better, more butter-like margarine just so the dairy industry could sell butter. It's happening right now with plant milks that are not allowed to use the term "milk" because the farmers worry that it would be too much of a competition. Free market my ass. But the second anyone suggests tax breaks and subsidies for anything else, it's a problem.Where do you think that the whole keto bullshit comes from? Farmers and meat/diary industries are lobbying the govt and then trying to sell it as saving us from other industries lobbying us. And people still fall for this shit. If you really want small govt and free market then no tax breaks or subsidies for ANYONE. Let other industries compete with the big dairy on a fair ground and we'll see how long they hold up.