Copyright theage
We all know the oil virtue hierarchy, right? There is the “good” (extra virgin olive), the “bad” (palm) and those in the murky middle (canola, coconut, soybean). In an editorial published in Cell Reports Sustainability, a group of conservationists challenges the idea that palm oil is necessarily less sustainable or worse than any other oil. Palm oil is the world’s most widely consumed vegetable oil, followed by soybean, canola, sunflower, coconut, and cottonseed, olive and sesame. In Australia, it’s slightly different – canola is the most commonly consumed oil and about half of us avoid products with palm oil. In fact, labels claiming a product “contains no palm oil” is a powerful marketing tool that capitalises on perceptions of which oils are “clean”, “healthy” or even “environmentally friendly”.
