Palm Oil: Cheap and Sneaky Ingredient Wrecking Your Body and the Planet

Palm Oil: Cheap and Sneaky Ingredient Wrecking Your Body and the Planet

Let’s just call it like it is—palm oil is in everything, and most of us don’t even realize it. From your “healthy” granola bars to your supposedly nourishing shampoo, palm oil has snuck its way into damn near every aisle of the grocery store. Why? Because it’s cheap, shelf-stable, and easy for manufacturers to hide behind terms like "vegetable oil" or "sodium lauryl sulfate."

But while Big Food and Big Beauty love palm oil, your body sure as hell doesn’t. And neither does the planet.

 

 

How the Hell is Palm Oil Made?

Palm oil comes from the fruit of the oil palm tree. The production process is basically:

  1. Sterilize the fruit at high temperatures.

  2. Strip it from the bunch using mechanical thresher machines.

  3. Press and extract the oil, then refine, bleach, and deodorize it into a clear, odorless fat.

It’s this ultra-processing that removes any original nutrient content and leaves behind a highly saturated fat that your body doesn’t love and your arteries hate.

 

 

Where Palm Oil is Hiding (Hint: It’s F*cking Everywhere)

Palm oil is the master of disguise. You’ll find it in:

🧴 Personal Care Products

  • Shampoo & Conditioner

  • Soap

  • Lotion

  • Toothpaste

  • Makeup (especially lipstick and mascara)

🥨 Packaged & Processed Foods

  • Crackers & Cookies

  • Ice Cream & Non-Dairy Creamers

  • Margarine & Peanut Butter

  • Instant Noodles

  • Bread

  • Baby Formula

🧼 Household Products

  • Detergents

  • Cleaning sprays

  • Air fresheners

Often listed under aliases like:

  • Palm kernel oil

  • Palmitate

  • Glyceryl stearate

  • Sodium laureth sulfate

  • Stearic acid

Basically, if it has a creamy texture, a long shelf life, or comes in a plastic-looking package with smiling cartoon animals—it probably contains palm oil.

 

 

How Palm Oil Affects Your Health

🫀 Raises Bad Cholesterol (LDL): Palm oil is high in saturated fats. Studies have shown it can increase LDL cholesterol, which contributes to clogged arteries and heart disease.

👶 Disrupts Infant Development: Yes, it’s in baby formula. Research has linked palm oil in infant formula to reduced calcium absorption, lower bone density, and harder poop. Not ideal for your growing human. (PMC)

🔥 Increases Inflammation: Palm oil promotes the production of pro-inflammatory compounds in the body, which are linked to metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.

⚠️ May Be Contaminated with Carcinogens: When palm oil is processed at high heat, it can form 3-MCPD and glycidyl esters, which are potentially carcinogenic. The EU actually regulates this. The U.S.? Not so much.

 

 

The Environmental Fallout: Because It’s Not Just About Your Cholesterol

Palm oil doesn’t just screw up your body—it’s obliterating the planet while it's at it. Here’s the ugly truth:

🌴 Deforestation on a Massive Scale: To grow palm oil plantations, corporations bulldoze rainforests—most notably in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and parts of Central and West Africa. The destruction targets the Leuser Ecosystem, Borneo’s tropical rainforests, and the Congo Basin, some of the most biodiverse and carbon-rich forests left on Earth.

🐘 Wiping Out Wildlife: These forests are home to critically endangered orangutans, Sumatran tigers, pygmy elephants, and rhinoceros. Palm oil expansion is pushing these species closer to extinction. These aren’t just animals—they’re part of entire ecosystems being burned and flattened.

🌫️ Accelerating Climate Change: Burning peatlands and rainforests to clear land for plantations releases millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That bag of cookies? Might as well come with a CO2 label next to the calories.

💦 Polluting Waterways: Wastewater from palm oil mills contains fertilizers, pesticides, and heavy metals that leach into rivers and local water supplies, poisoning communities and aquatic ecosystems.

Meanwhile, the U.S. still doesn’t require sustainable sourcing or meaningful labeling. Because again—profits first, people and planet dead last.

Palm oil doesn’t just screw up your body—it’s obliterating the planet while it's at it. Here’s the ugly truth:

🌴 Deforestation on a Massive Scale: To grow palm oil plantations, corporations bulldoze rainforests. That means cutting down ancient, carbon-storing ecosystems and replacing them with monoculture hellscapes.

🐘 Wiping Out Wildlife: Orangutans, elephants, rhinos, and tigers are losing their homes—and their lives—thanks to palm oil expansion. If you care even one bit about animals, this shit should piss you off.

🌫️ Accelerating Climate Change: Burning forests to clear land releases massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. So yeah, that cookie with palm oil? It’s got a side of carbon emissions.

💦 Polluting Waterways: Waste from palm oil mills leaks into rivers, killing aquatic life and poisoning local communities.

Meanwhile, the U.S. still doesn’t require sustainable sourcing or meaningful labeling. Because again—profits first, people and planet dead last.

 

 

But What About “Ethical” Palm Oil?

We know what some of you are thinking: “But my product says it uses sustainable palm oil, so it’s probably fine, right?” Eh. Let’s talk about it.

🌱 RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) is the certification that’s supposed to indicate palm oil is produced ethically. But here’s the deal: RSPO has been repeatedly called out for weak enforcement, loopholes, and shady oversight. Companies can be certified while still causing deforestation and exploiting workers.

🔍 Many “sustainable” plantations still displace Indigenous communities, destroy biodiversity, and pollute waterways—they just do it with a greenwashed label slapped on top.

🧪 Even “ethical” palm oil still undergoes the same ultra-refining process, removing any trace of nutrients and possibly forming carcinogenic byproducts. So even if the environmental damage was minimized (big IF), your body’s still not loving it.

The truth is, the industry isn’t transparent enough to ensure that the palm oil in your face wash or snack bar came from a truly ethical source. And while sustainable palm oil sounds like a step in the right direction, it’s mostly just PR polish on a broken system.

If you wouldn’t trust Big Oil to handle climate change, maybe don’t trust Big Palm to clean up their own mess either.

The European Union heavily regulates palm oil due to health and environmental concerns:

  • They’ve restricted 3-MCPD content in foods.

  • Palm oil must be clearly labeled—no hiding under “vegetable oil.”

  • Some European brands have completely phased it out and switched to sunflower, olive, or coconut oils.

Meanwhile, the U.S. still lets manufacturers play hide-and-seek with ingredient lists. Unless you’re reading labels like it’s your job, you’d never know what you’re consuming.

 

 

How to Avoid Palm Oil (Without Losing Your Mind)

  • 🧼 Switch to small-batch or natural skincare brands that don’t use palm oil derivatives.

  • 🍪 Avoid overly processed snacks and baked goods—especially the cheap stuff.

  • 👶 Choose baby formula without palm oil (they do exist, but they’re harder to find—because of course they are).

  • 📱 Use apps like Yuka or CodeCheck to scan products for hidden palm oil ingredients.

 

 

The Bottom Line

Palm oil is cheap and convenient—for manufacturers. But for your health and the planet? It’s a flaming dumpster fire.

It clogs your arteries, slows your baby’s development, inflames your system, and trashes entire rainforests. And yet the U.S. continues to pretend it’s NBD while the EU tries to clean it up.

So yeah, it’s time to wake up, read the labels, and put your dollars behind brands that actually give a shit. Because a longer shelf life isn’t worth a shorter one for you.

 

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