♪
[Charlsie]
catching up with some furry friends.
Look-- oh, my gosh. Look at the baby!
Look at him go.
Sekali and newborn baby, Wali.
These two make up
the less than 15,000 Sumantran orangutans
left on the planet.
As demand for a popular ingredient
has a massive impact on their habitat.
Have you guys ever heard of something called palm oil?
-Have you heard? -No.
It's in all my peanut butters,
and I-- I can't find any peanut butter without it.
Palm oil. You ever heard of it?
Um, it's in lots of foods that we eat.
[dramatic instrumental]
[Charlsie]
of the oil palm tree.
It's the most consumed vegetable oil in the world.
It's also the most controversial.
Growers have been clear cutting rainforests
to make room for the lucrative crop.
Nearly a third of the rainforest lost
in Indonesia over the last 20 years
can be tied to palm oil.
And that's been decimating
orangutan's homes in the process.
[suspenseful instrumental]
But is it possible to avoid something so prolific?
Are we surrounded by palm oil?
We are in a hotbed of palm oil right here.
[Charlsie]
Adria Vasil, to find out.
Do you think most people understand
how common palm oil is?
Oh, I think they have no idea.
Palm oil is in about 50% of food products,
particularly, processed foods.
[Charlsie]
is no problem.
Canadian labelling laws are clear.
It has to be there.
At least when it comes to food,
it will be-- it is mandatory for them to say
that palm oil is an ingredient,
but, you know, you have to know to look for it,
and when you start looking,
you realize that it is everywhere.
[Charlsie]
-Palm oil. -Ah, he found it!
Can you find the palm oil in that one?
-Yeah, modified palm oil. -Yeah, okay, pretty easy.
-Yeah. -Right?
But we want to know,
could we be buying products
with palm oil in them without even knowing it?
Could be in your floor cleaner?
-A hundred percent. -Could be in your toothpaste?
That's right, it is.
Okay, could be in your deodorant?
[Adria] It most definitely is.
[Charlsie]
Hmm, and as you're looking for the palm oil
on those products, tell me about it.
-Easy to find? Hard to find? -Very hard.
Very hard, I wouldn't think
that there was palm oil in any of these.
What do you think?
A lot of really big words, isn't it, guys?
-[boy] Yeah. -Yeah.
Can you see palm oil on any of those?
-[boy] Nope. -[girl] Hmm...
-Don't see it on there. -Yeah, I don't see it.
[Charlsie]
because it doesn't have to be labeled that way.
By the time palm oil ends up in many non-food products,
it's been heavily broken down.
These ingredients are known as derivatives,
and there are hundreds of them.
I mean, really, any of the products
that you stand in the shower
and apply to your body every day,
could contain palm oil, and you would have no idea.
I want you to put a checkmark beside the ones
that you think could be palm oil.
All right, so, those are the ones
-you think could be palm oil? -Yeah.
What if I told you guys
all of those things could be palm oil?
Huh.
I wouldn't have thought that glycerin--
I-- I-- I didn't know that.
It can be in toothpaste, it can be in deodorant,
shampoo, lotion, sunscreen, cleaning products.
I think that it's-- it's sad, because maybe if people knew,
they would do better to protect,
and use less palm oil.
You should know what you're, like, putting on your body
and on, like, your skin.
It's-- it's something that needs to be
more clearly defined, for sure.
[Charlsie]
surrounding palm oil,
why do so many manufacturers prefer it?
-This is the lab. -[Charlsie] Okay.
[Dérick] This is where we do our research on palm oil.
[Charlsie]
at Toronto Metropolitan University,
shows us what makes palm oil so special.
Is this it?
So, this is an example of palm oil
that has been cleaned up, so it no longer is orange.
Oh, that feels--
Almost like an ointment.
-Like Vaseline or something. -Yeah.
[Charlsie]
of what makes your skincare so smooth.
Oh, wow!
This food scientist says,
it's also what keeps your peanut butter
from separating,
and it's what gives your sandwich cookie stuffing
that signature texture.
So, that's the texture you want for use in a lot of foods.
-[Charlsie] Okay. -Lot of processed foods.
You don't want something that's going to be rock hard
like a brick.
You don't want something that's going to be liquid.
You want something that's kind of halfway.
So, this is the secret sauce of the palm oil right here.
[Dérick] Exactly.
[Charlsie] Other oils don't perform like this.
There are other fats
that certainly perform like this,
but from a cost effectiveness perspective,
palm oil is very difficult to beat.
-AKA, it's the cheapest. -It's the cheapest. Yeah.
If you are coming to the store,
expecting to walk through here,
and just make informed choices
by looking at the ingredients,
and staying away from palm, good luck.
[Charlsie]
have ingredients derived from palm oil.
It's not clear on the labels,
so we go straight to the companies.
The parent companies of these products
confirm they have derivatives of palm oil.
The parent companies of these products say,
they use palm oil derivatives,
but don't say if it's in the product we asked about.
All add, they're committed
to using sustainable palm oil.
Beiersdorf, Sensodyne and Unilever add,
they follow regulatory requirements.
The parent companies of these products don't respond.
I do think that we need the same kind of transparency
in all consumer goods that we see in food.
Health Canada could require labels
to be more transparent when it comes to palm oil,
but tell us, there are no plans to do that.
Meantime, these animal lovers
are still hoping for change.
Makes it hard for consumers to know
what they're buying, when it's not clear.
It makes it hard to make ethical choices,
and so having this information at hand
would be really helpful to make the right choices
for our family.
Before consuming anything,
I would love to know, like, what it includes, what it has,
even if it's, like, something bad for the planet
and for one of the species that's living among us.
♪