Ban palm oil from the food supply? It’s not so easy! First of all because on the market there is a lack of substitute products, claimed to be better for health, or which do not offer the same technological qualities. Then because the impact on the environment of other crops could be just as harmful. And what if the genuine solution was found in both certified palm oil – CSPO, not very well known – and a voluntary improvement in terms of what is on our plates?

For three or four years now there has been no longer a simple volley of criticisms aimed at palm oil but a genuine barrage of them. The world number 1 vegetable oil (ahead of soya and, above all, rapeseed and sunflower) is in effect being accused of every evil, as much environmental (deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions) as health wise (abundance of saturated fatty acids contributing to cardiovascular diseases) or even in social terms (destabilisation of small peasant concerns, above all in Asia). Justified criticisms? To a large extent, yes. But from there to solving the problems by a pure and simple boycott of the product there is a step which a growing number of actors – including consumer associations – are not necessarily ready to take.

Are there alternatives? With her team, Marianne Sindic, head of the Agrofood Products Quality and Safety Laboratory at the University of Liège’s Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, has thrown herself into the heart of the controversy. ‘In the framework of the European Interreg IV project ‘Nutrisens’, we got down to a study situated at the crossroads of several disciplines (technology, nutrition, socio-economics, food security, sensory quality, etc.). It in fact involved responding to the questions posed by agrofood businesses – often quite abruptly – faced with the demands of distributors wanting to significantly reduce the use of palm oil or even do without it altogether. Was such a shift realistic on a technical level? Were the environmental benefits real? Who, in the end, wanted what in this domain? Were consumers being correctly informed? So many questions we tried to provide answers to.’ ⁽¹⁾

More nuanced attitudes

The Laboratory’s researchers looked into the alternatives offered by manufacturers, but also the impressions the distributors and consumers had. ‘At the highest peak of the media storm unleashed by palm oil, in other words around 2009-2010, the demands mass retailers were making of their suppliers were pretty radical,’ recallse Sophie Delacharlerie, the study’s co-ordinator: ‘they aimed at the total eradication of palm oil. But, today, more nuanced attitudes are coming to the fore.’ This reversal can be easily explained: the technological constraints linked to substituting palm oil are enormous. One cannot, in effect, replace this fat by other fats and at the same time ensure that the finished products have an organoleptic quality – flavour, odour, texture, appearance, etc. – perfectly identical to current products. Because if palm oil has hauled itself up to such a level of success over so many years (its production has increased tenfold in thirty years) it is not by chance! The oil palm in effect offers not only a yield ten times higher than that of rapeseed (in other words an average of 4 tons per hectare, rising to 6 and even 8). It also enables an almost ideal oil to be obtained because besides having good stability on oxidation (it is thus preserved very well) and good plasticity, it is also very polyvalent, serving both as cooking oil and frying oil but also as a convenient ingredient with a thousand applications: the bakery and confectionary sectors, sandwich spreads , ready made meals, etc. 

(1) See for example ‘Polémique autour de l'huile de palme: Instantanés d'un secteur en crise.’ Available on ORBi: http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/bitstream/2268/131277/1/IAA-HuiledePalme.S.Delacharlerie.pdf