 Palm oil is a fat that is half-saturated and semi-solid at

room temperature.

 It can fry like lard, bake like butter, melt like chocolate
and whip like cream – at a fraction of the cost.

 It can also extend the shelf-life of products like

industrially produced cake and bread. But its USP is
that it has for a long time been significantly cheaper
and hugely more productive than any other oil crop.

 Palm oil first became cheaper than soybean oil – its

main rival – in 1974 when there was a poor soybean
harvest in the US and Brazil, and has extended its
advantage since then.

 Soybean oil production has resulted in deforestation in

Brazil and the oil takes nearly ten times more land to
produce, gram for gram.

 Zuckerman reckons that half the products for sale

in US supermarkets contain palm oil in some form.
Many of them are cleaning and laundry products or
toiletries: anything from toothpaste to lipstick.

 Palm oil doesn’t usually advertise its presence but tends

to appear in beauty products in the form of derivatives
with such prefixes as palm-, stear-, laur- or glyc

 The rise of diabetes and obesity in India and Mexico,

among other places, correlates with the huge increase of
saturated palm oil in the diet, in the form of processed
foods as well as in the cheapest cooking oils bought by
people who can’t afford any other fat.

 In countries like the US and the UK, where there is an

increasing awareness of the environmental and health
impacts of palm oil, multinational food companies are
 removing it from many of their products, but they’re
using more of it in Asia and South America.

 The Cheetos sold in the US are fried in sunflower, corn

and canola oils, but the ones sold in India are fried in
palm oil and contain more than five grams of saturated
fat per serving.

 For the first time since the 19th century, the flow of

palm oil around the world has slowed down. As
Indonesia has banned the export of palm oil in the wake
of Ukraine wars to control inflation.

 But it is going to affect all other countries as Indonesia

is largest supplier of palm oil to the world i.e. 56%. It
could help the 2nd largest global supplier Malaysia 31%.
However, it isn’t clear that Malaysia will be able to
capitalise, given that palm oil yields there were down 3
per cent in 2020-21 because of an acute labour
shortage caused by the pandemic.

Link -https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n12/bee-wilson/the-
irreplaceable