"palm oil" news and stories

Using Facebook and Youtube, Greenpeace stared down Nestle, and Nestle blinked.

According to the London Independent newspaper, Nestle -- the giant, Swiss-based food conglomerate that operates in 86 countries around the world and employs hundreds of thousands of people -- had been under virtual fire for three months for its use of palm oil in many of its products, especially KitKat, Aero and Quality Street.

Greenpeace asserted that the palm oil was harvested unethically, at the expense of indigenous forests and the wildlife (like Orangutans) that live in them.

The palm oil controversy was not originally aimed solely at Nestle. Many food companies use it, of course, including Cadbury and Mars, competing confectioners to Nestle. But when certain methods of palm oil farming were exposed as unethical, those companies vowed to stick to sustainable farming practices.

But Nestle dragged its feet, promising only to meet the latest acceptable date of 2015 set by the World Wildlife Fund, reports the Independent, so Greenpeace grew impatient and waged a media campaign that some might term virtual guerrilla warfare (or gorilla warfare, as the case may be).

There are so many things to consider when deciding what food products to purchase that it sometimes overwhelms me. However, some decisions are just too important to ignore - whether or not to use palm oil products is one of them.

According to Wikipedia, palm oil has surpassed soybean oil to become the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. Palm oil is used as a cooking oil, it is found in many processed foods, and it is used in cleaning products, makeup, and even as feedstock for biofuel. The American Palm Oil Council tells us that palm oil is "packed with nutrients that contribute to your daily energy needs. Palm oil provides a valuable source of beta carotene and vitamin E."

On a recent NPR segment of Make Me Care, Rolf Skar, a senior forest campaigner with Greenpeace, reminds us that despite any potential benefits of palm oil, we should think twice before making it our oil of choice. Why?

• According to Skar, clearing out the tropical forests of Indonesia to make palm oil is fueling "the fastest and the worst deforestation rate in the history of humankind."
• The clearing and burning of forests for more and more palm oil facilities releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases. This has helped push Indonesia to become the world's number three emitter of greenhouse gases (the US and China are number one and two).
• Skar also says that as much as 80 percent of the land-clearing in Indonesia is illegal. He states that this leads to shady production facilities and human rights abuses.
• Orangutans and Sumatran white tigers are facing extinction due in part to palm oil production.

No one can make someone else care about something, but Skar sure did a good job convincing me.

For this edition of Midnight Snack I decided to crack open probably some of the strangest stuff I've come across in a long time: Fried Chicken Snack and Hot Chicken Snack. Both of these junk food oddities come to the States from Korea's Nong Shim Co.

First a few words about the packaging. While I've taken this photo vertically with shaky late-night hands to better display the "chicken," the boxes open horizontally not unlike a package of takeout fried chicken. That folks is where the resemblance ends, almost. At least the pieces look like fried chicken drumsticks. Each is about an inch long and has a rough surface resembling breading.

But how do they taste? Sooooo very glad you asked. Even though it bears the words "Fried Chicken Taste" on the package this variety tastes only like fried bird because of its crunch and slightly greasy texture. I prefer the hot variety, which again tastes nothing at all like fried chicken, but rather like a wheat-based version of Andy Capp's Hot Fries. But it's all good, I was down a quart of palm oil anyway.

For those of you who think I'm all about junk food, you're right. But don't worry, future editions of Midnight Snack may feature me eating cold leftovers while standing in front of the fridge.