Palm oil free attempt

I’ve blogged about lots of palm oil related issues so far. But I haven’t tried to do yet what I set out to do. Can I go palm oil free for a week?

Here’s the deal – I’m a working man in his thirties, and my family consists just of me and my wife (and dogs/cat …) I can cook, but I am busy and work every day, so I have a mix of fresh and convenience foods every week. Probably fairly representative of a shopping budget at least for a couple without children.

So did I go palm oil free? The worst thing is, I can’t say yes but I can’t say no. All I can say is “probably not”.

Let’s start with the good bits …

Bread – by buying all fresh and bakery made from Sainsbury’s. I have avoided palm oil as contained in Hovis, Warburtons and other major packaged breads. At least, I assume I have

Snacks – you would think that crisps are palm oil candidates but Walkers “Baked” range are free from palm oil. And switching from sausage rolls to gorgeous vegetable samosas has ruled out another palm oil source

Fresh food – to reiterate, fresh meat and vegetables are always going to be palm oil free when processed meals may well not be

Chicken kievs(!) – a small category here, but recently I tweeted about the palm oil content in Sainsbury’s diet Chicken Kievs. It seems that the new flavour, cheese and ham, is palm oil free though!

Cereal – though palm oil is present in many cereals, as far as I can tell it is not present in simple non-sweet basic cereals such as Weetabix, Bran Flakes or Oat Flakes.

Sauces – watch out for these, as highly processed foodstuffs there are a lot containing palm oil. But the tomato based sauces I bought for my pasta are apparently palm oil free.

Yoghurt – though I’m not sure this can be said for all yoghurt, it seems Muller Light is palm oil free.

And the bad bits …

Pizza – it seems that all the pizzas on offer, fresh or frozen, all contain palm oil as an ingredient in the base. Now I *think* Domino’s is palm oil free as mentioned in an earlier post. So for my pizza fix it may need to be a more expensive takeout

Margarine – this week I didn’t need to buy any. But I’m really struggling to find a palm oil free brand. Any suggestions?

Pasta – I love to buy fresh filled pasta, but found to my horror this week that the tortelloni at Sainsbury’s contains palm oil, disaster!

Cereal – the other person on my shopping list prefers a sweet, more processed cereal, and there is mention of vegetable oil in the ingredients. Palm oil? Probably, yes. Kellogg’s, for it is you, please have the decency to at least tell me.

Tortillas – the only pre-packaged bread product I bought, for my weekly fajita fix. The ingredients did mention a vegetable oil again.

Garlic bread – the butter in all the pre-packaged garlic bread I could find all contained palm oil. The only version that doesn’t contains cheese rather than butter.

Washing powder – is there palm oil in my washing powder, or shampoo for that matter? I have no idea – they are both made by huge parent brands who are found on my black list. The labelling for either product gives no clues at all.

It’s clear that going palm oil free takes a lot of research, label reading and guesswork. We need information more readliy available to cut down on all of these elements.

Another reason I was able to reduce palm oil consumption in this week’s trolley was because there were very few treats in there. Chocolate, Jaffa Cakes, muffins, could all have upped the likelihood of palm oil content. But if I do want muffins I know to go right here …

Magog Muffins – for informative well-written site promoting palm oil free muffins

I think a palm oil week will be possible but requiring a certain amount of sacrifice …