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Comment by clSTophEjUdRanu | Hacker News Reader

Why is it on me, the consumer, to worry about unethical palm oil sourcing?

It is not on you. There is this idea, especially in the US, that government is bad and it should never regulate anything, and that consumers are responsible of everything bad happening in the world. The reality is, it's very easy to hide unethical parts of your business from consumers, so unless the consumer does an extraordinary job, they're going to make unethical decisions, anyway. It really is government's job to regulate industries so that they're not detrimental to the society.

In other words it's on you, but via the mechanisms of cooperation through democracy to enact government actions.

Yes and no. I unfortunately need to speak US-specific because this is where I live; but at least in the US people have almost no degree of freedom when it comes to electoral democracy since there are 2 parties and oftentimes the ballots are as simple as "blue or red" and then what ends up being passed in congress/senate is not close to what people want. It's really irresponsible to push all the responsibility to the people when they have very little way of affecting how their government passes laws.

Who else could it be on? You're describing ~all of the population.

If you and enough other people seek out X on the market and it's something that can feasibly be delivered at a price point you can afford, then X will be produced. Fairly basic economics.

For a commodity, something where two units are essentially indistinguishable, it's really the role of governments, and probably more of the responsibility is with the producing government. It's impractical for consumers to vet commodity suppliers.

It's on everyone. But our political and economic systems don't encourage the producers to care about the ethics of their products unless the consumers care.

Because lawmakers, trading blocks and international societies have failed to do a good enough job about it.

It's not on you exclusively, but, as a consumer, you have purchasing power. If you don't like the coffee your local shop serves you, you stop going there, right?

As long as everyone cops out, businesses will continue down this path of profit over sustainability. It's a fulfilling prophecy to think that things will improve as long as people decline to take action.

um, because you buy it, you're a typical price-sensitive non-1%er and companies produce it in response to your demand?

how the hell do you not buy palm oil?

This. It's almost impossible to source anything without it.

Buy whole fresh foods instead of prepared food.

Buy less candy and cookies.

all this got me curious and looked it up. here are a few things that often contain palm oil: bread, margarine, some cheese, ice cream, soap & shampoo, chocolate, pre-made pizza etc.

looks to me like you might want to go back to making everything yourself or know every single brand around...

What breads and cheeses contain palm oil? Don't buy them, bread should have salt water yeast flour and cheese definitely should not have oil. Don't buy margarine either, prefer butter, olive oil, or vegetable oil.

There are loads of kinds of chocolate, including very affordable labels, that do not contain palm oil. Oil is an additive chocolate to cut down on the actual chocolate ingredients. Real chocolate shouldn't have it. Chocolate flavored candy has it.

You don't have to make everything from scratch you just have to avoid the worst of the worst processed junk.

Unfortunately it will require you to become very familiar with what you put in your body. Blindly consuming, especially food, in 2020 is a bad idea for the health of yourself and the community. This is a pretty difficult task, but I also think it's insane to trust corporations in this day and age to have your health as a priority when sourcing ingredients.

The only really safe bet is to avoid purchasing pre-made items, and make your own sauces/treats/cakes etc. We cook all our own meals at home, but buy shampoo + cookies + cakes + chocolate bars (as normal people do). We try to stick to brands we _know_ don't have any palm oil, but I'd wager that almost all our produce doesn't have any in it.

Except I just checked and my peanut butter (whole earth) _does_ contain it, even though I thought it didn't... You might have a point.

I have been checking every time for several years now.

If, for instance, the jar that says "peanut butter" on the front does not say "Ingredients: peanuts" on the side, I put it back on the shelf and pick up the next one.

You can't trust brands any more, and it makes shopping an arduous and time-wasting chore. Not to mention the stupid little games manufacturers play with the ingredient list for obfuscation's sake, like adding three distinct kinds of sugar so "sugar" doesn't show up as the first ingredient. Or adding 12 different kinds of filler to a crab cake, so that "crab" shows up as the first ingredient.

If you're looking for an alternative to your known goods on occasion (not at home, store stopped stocking it or even just not necessarily knowing that peanut butter can be made from just peanuts), it's easy to get stuck looking for options.

It's easy to be dismissive of the problem and say "just get X", buy you need to know that exists, but you can make the argument for cookies, chips, sauces, dips, soaps...

Before checking every time, I only read the ingredient list occasionally, usually at home when eating it. I started to notice things, like this progression:

Ingredients: peanuts.

Ingredients: peanuts, peanut oil, salt.

Ingredients: peanuts, hydrogenated vegetable oil (one or more of: peanut oil, palm oil, rapeseed oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil), salt.

The company might run up against a supply problem, where they have to choose between a bad batch of peanuts or nothing at all, and they choose to remain in business by "remediating" that bad batch. But maybe their sales actually go up, so instead of going back to basics, they keep doing the same thing, but with cheaper oil. I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. You can make more money by trying to eat Jif's or Skippy's lunch than by catering to purity snobs.

Repeat similar scenarios for other brands of other products, every year, across the whole grocery store. Products try to stay competitive by masking inferior base ingredients with added fat, salt, and sugar, then go on to game the ingredients list, to obfuscate the fact that they replaced expensive ingredients with cheaper ones, while simultaneously reducing the package weight and upping the unit price. Those oil palm farmers don't need to worry; peak capitalism has their back. Palm oil use will continue to increase, because the marginal cost of production currently makes it the cheapest of all plant-based oils, at least until oil-algae farming technology matures.

It isn't hard. Fresh fruit and vegetables don't even have labels because it isn't needed. Meats, and eggs, spices, flour, sugar, oils, and all the other staples might have a label but I don't need to read the fine print to know what is inside because the answer is always the same: whatever is on big print on front.

When buying processed food it is impossible though. Just learn to cook and you will typically have much healthier meals. It takes more time, but there isn't an other reasonable option to be healthy in first world society.

I don't have any palm oil products either.

I make a point of _not_ buying palm oil, by reading the ingredients list as I'm shopping and sticking to brands I know behave. When reading this thread, I went and checked my cupboard only to find out that my peanut butter [0] contains palm oil. Turns out only _some_ of the peanut butter made by that company has no palm oil [1], and while I would normally buy the 100% peanut, I stuck to the same brand when it wasn't available and ended up with Palm Oil.

[0] https://shop.wholeearthfoods.com/products/whole-earth-origin... [1] https://shop.wholeearthfoods.com/products/whole-earth-100-nu...

but why just outright avoid them? I try to pay the premium for company that source palm oil responsibly, because most alimentary products with palm oil substitutes are not so good for your health or taste weird or aren't as pleasant (i.e. spreads)

How do you know that the company sources their palm oil responsibly? And what does that really mean? I'd rather avoid products which may have been produced by clearcutting Orangutan habitat than take a chance that the "responsibly sourced" labeling on a Palm Oil product actually means what I think it does.

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