An article came across my feeds today suggesting that banning palm oil might have unintended side effects [1]

Basically, a reduction in consumption of palm oil would result in manufacturers switching to soybean oil instead. A lot of soybean oil is grown in South America and contributes to deforestation over there. Banning palm oil simply shifts the environmental damage. Palm oil is also apparently one of the least land intensive oils to grow. Instead of banning specific products, we should work towards sustainable growing instead.

I haven't done any additional research on those claims, but it is food for thought.

[1] https://theconversation.com/palm-oil-boycott-could-actually-...

> I also think that we should just ban palm oil in general. I'm not sure that it has any applications worth the damage to rainforests.

That would be totally misguided.

> While only 5 percent of the world's vegetable oil farmland is used for palm plantations, palm cultivation produces 38 percent of the world's total vegetable oil supply.[82] In terms of oil yield, a palm plantation is 10 times more productive than soya bean and rapeseed cultivation because the palm fruit and kernel both provide usable oil.[82]

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil

Banning palm oil would increase demand for oils which have lower yields leading to an increase in the cleared areas.