Your Pantry

Have you looked in your cupboards recently? When I say looked, I mean really looked. Any idea what is in even 10% of the food you've got in there? Along with their salt, sugar, food colours and e-numbers most of these foods will probably be tainted with the death of orangutans.

Now I agree, that sounds a bit extreme, but palm oil is becoming more widely used as an every day ingredient in every day food. The worst thing is that companies are not obliged to specify their products contain it. Palm oil can simply be labelled generically as vegetable oil or vegetable fat.

Looking through my cupboards I was suprised at how few products specify their vegetable oil. True some so label sunflower oil, but most is the generic vegetable oil. The only company I have found so far to specifically list palm oil as an ingredient is Waitrose. Logging onto their website they are also one of the few companies who publically state their policy on palm oil www.waitrose.com/food/foodissuesandpolicies/palmoil.aspx It looks like though they are using palm oil in a few products they are trying to source it correctly. I'll be interested to see how they respond to my letter regarding this and what evidence they can provide of their actions.

I urge every one to take just a few moments to look at the ingredients in their cupboards. By doing this I'm sure you'll realise how big a problem this is and is becoming. We need to act now to stop this. It can be done. Consumers really can affect a change in the big companies as was recently seen in New Zealand http://shar.es/Qabj where Cadbury finally caved in and reversed their decision to replace cocoa butter with palm oil.

Now let's get it happening here!