BORNEO -- In this age of transfat awareness, the makers of processed foods have been reducing or eliminating that artery-clogging evil, giving us one more reason to indulge. North America's confectioners are achieving this feat with a simple switch to palm oil -- a nongenetically modified food that grows under a tropical sun.
According to the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, palm oil, although less harmful than oils containing transfats, still promotes heart disease. It's also unhealthy for wildlife. More than 80 percent of the world's palm oil is produced in former tropical rainforests on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the only habitat of wild orangutans, Sumatran rhinoceroses, pygmy elephants and an ark's worth of endangered and endemic species. Between 1985 and 1997, these islands lost 60 percent of their rainforest, contributing to what the ordinarily staid World Bank refers to as "a species extinction spasm of planetary proportions." Demand for palm oil is forecast to double by 2020, requiring about 3,000 square kilometers of new land every year -- in part to support our addiction to junk food.
Palm oil wonder
When one thinks of oil-producing regions, Borneo does not immediately spring to mind. The world's third-largest island is divided among three nations: Malaysia, Indonesia and the tiny sultanate of Brunei, which has become rich on old oil money. It is Malaysia, however, that leads the new and emerging oil economy. The hour-long drive from the city of Lahad Datu to the jungle is a monotony of oil palm plantations and trucks laden with ripe palm fruit, the color of corn and rubies.
Not long ago, palm oil appeared to be a dietary and ecological wonder. Native to West Africa, the commercial variety of oil palm yields up to 10 times more oil than other major oil crops. A perennial plant, it fruits throughout the year and has a productive lifespan of 25 years. Palm oil seems tailor made for industrial food processing and baking, because, like butter, it is semisolid at room temperature. It also increases the shelf life of packaged foods without requiring transfat-producing hydrogenation.
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Longtime staple
Palm oil has long been a staple of Asian pantries, and European nations rapidly have adopted its use (along with palm kernel oil) in the manufacture of an astonishing array of processed foods, soaps, shampoos, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, in addition to biodiesel. Until recently, North American producers preferred domestically grown soy, corn and canola oils. All that changed with the new labeling requirements. Suddenly, the world's largest economy developed a taste for palm oil.
Oil palms have been cultivated in Borneo since the 19th century, but it was only after the collapse of the rubber and logging industries in the 1990s that the crop gained real traction. Rising unemployment and continued immigration of workers, particularly from Indonesia, was creating political problems. The growing demand for palm oil was seen as an economic salvation. Grown sustainably, palm oil could be part of a global ecological solution. Grown as a monoculture, however, palm plantations essentially are biological deserts, suitable for only a tiny fraction of Borneo's astounding biodiversity. In Malaysia, fully 62 percent of cultivated land is covered in oil palm plantations.
The industry also destroys habitat by fragmenting the Bornean rainforest. Elephants and other large animals require unhindered access to large areas of forest to locate food and water. The plantations, as large as 250 square kilometers, block migration patterns and isolate populations from one another.
WWF of Malaysia project manager Darrel Webber doesn't vilify the oil palm tree. Its produce, he says, can be both a solid foundation for the economy and ecologically sound. The problem is the headlong rush to clear forests with high conservation value to make room for monoculture.
"Even though palm oil is in great demand, consumers do not want this to be the cause of more environmental damage," he says. "Pressure has brought industry to the table. The NGOs, the demand from global communities . . . something had to be done."
Editor's Note: Payton writes for The Walrus of Toronto.
