Iceland's Palm Oil advert which came out just before Christmas was endlessly shared on social media, and was presumably good publicity for the frozen food chain. It introduced people to the Rang-tan in the girl's bedroom, who was concerned about the impact of palm oil production in their home - linking to the threats facing Orang Utans from Palm Oil production.
You can see the video here.
Iceland said that they would remove palm oil from all their branded products.
Are all of Iceland's products now free from palm oil though?
And if we are starting in on the idea of sustainability and environmental impact then should we perhaps also look more closely at a wider range of products that we buy, and other ingredients beyond palm oil which also have an environmental impact, such as beef for example.
The Palm Oil quiz here on the National Geographic website accompanies an article which explores what the oil involves. There have also been some excellent recent articles in the Geographical magazine on the production of palm oil, and the different projects aiming to certify it.
There was also a story more recently which cast a different spin on the plans that Iceland had to remove palm oil from all their own branded products.
It appears that instead of removing the oil, they fulfilled their promise by removing the Iceland brand from the packaging instead?
As the article says:
Unable to meet the deadline, it then dropped its name from 17 palm products.
Iceland blamed technical issues, adding it did not want to "mislead consumers".
The retailer said it was pushing its manufacturers "hard" to remove palm oil from the items that had previously been own-brand, but now had no branding.
It added that it "was not possible to remove palm oil at a manufacturing level in these products by 31 December 2018", adding that it had been "transparent".
Remember that there are environmental consequences in producing beef and other products.
All of our food has some sort of impact, whether it is the water that is used to produce it, or the way that it depletes the soil or changes its structure by requiring a fine seed bed (crops such as sugar beet need this).
This article tries to unpick what is a complex story. You should be able to read it, but you are limited to how many articles you can read from this source.
What's clear is that Iceland is trying to do the right thing, but this is not always easy...
You can see the video here.
Iceland said that they would remove palm oil from all their branded products.
Are all of Iceland's products now free from palm oil though?
And if we are starting in on the idea of sustainability and environmental impact then should we perhaps also look more closely at a wider range of products that we buy, and other ingredients beyond palm oil which also have an environmental impact, such as beef for example.
The Palm Oil quiz here on the National Geographic website accompanies an article which explores what the oil involves. There have also been some excellent recent articles in the Geographical magazine on the production of palm oil, and the different projects aiming to certify it.
There was also a story more recently which cast a different spin on the plans that Iceland had to remove palm oil from all their own branded products.
It appears that instead of removing the oil, they fulfilled their promise by removing the Iceland brand from the packaging instead?
As the article says:
Unable to meet the deadline, it then dropped its name from 17 palm products.
Iceland blamed technical issues, adding it did not want to "mislead consumers".
The retailer said it was pushing its manufacturers "hard" to remove palm oil from the items that had previously been own-brand, but now had no branding.
It added that it "was not possible to remove palm oil at a manufacturing level in these products by 31 December 2018", adding that it had been "transparent".
Remember that there are environmental consequences in producing beef and other products.
All of our food has some sort of impact, whether it is the water that is used to produce it, or the way that it depletes the soil or changes its structure by requiring a fine seed bed (crops such as sugar beet need this).
This article tries to unpick what is a complex story. You should be able to read it, but you are limited to how many articles you can read from this source.
What's clear is that Iceland is trying to do the right thing, but this is not always easy...
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