Can India take the risk of moving away from palm oil in FMCG products?

Palm oil is a miracle ingredient, whose versatility among vegetable oil is unmatched

Palm oil is a miracle ingredient, whose versatility among vegetable oil is unmatched. Palm oil is a treasure trove of potent antioxidants known as tocols, a family of vitamin E antioxidants. Palm oil also gives incredibly high yields. It yields 4-to-10 times more oil per hectare than “Palm Oil Free” alternatives. Translated, using palm oil means using less land, a smaller overall environmental footprint and, contrary to popular belief, less deforestation. And here’s why: being palm oil-free just means that a blend of different vegetable oils such as sunflower, soy, or coconut oil are being used instead, thus creating demand for more land to be cleared and more resources to be consumed. This paradox is being played out on supermarket shelves, fuelled by misinformation and a lack of awareness. Under ideal conditions, high-yield oil palm cultivars can produce more than 25 times as much oil as soy can for the same area of farmland. Thus, ironically, a shift from palm oil would lead to a catastrophic increase in deforestation, as anything we replace it with will need much more land to grow on.

Palm oil is a miracle ingredient, whose versatility among vegetable oil is unmatched. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), palm oil is in close to 50 per cent of the packaged products we find in supermarkets; in everything from pizza, doughnuts and chocolate, to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, lipstick and skin creams because it offers such rich hydration. Derived from the fruit of the palm tree, it is the world’s most land-efficient oil crop and, if managed responsibly, it can also contribute to sustainability. When it comes to alternatives, swapping palm oil for other oils may not necessarily lead to improved health outcomes. For instance, oils high in

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