40% of all products we can buy in a supermarket have palm oil in them. Its in margarine, biscuits, bread and doughnuts. Its in our packaged food, ready meals and tinned products and its in our toothpaste, soap, moisturising creams and lipstick. If you want to avoid palm oil, try reading the list of ingredients on all the products you throw in your weekly shopping trolley and I’ll guarantee your bill will be considerably less.

Palm oil isn’t the problem, its where palm oil is grown that’s the problem. Deformation of our tropical forests has to stop and this is why we have charitable organizations like 'The Roundtable For Sustainable Palm Oil' working closely with environmentalists and include restrictions like, the none cutting down of new forestry to produce palm oil. Sustainable palm oil is becoming the norm, at least here in the UK and its ok to buy and consume TRSPO because they are not clearing forests or harming our wildlife anywhere in its process.

I was just chatting to a Sainsburys cashier and he was saying they've all been warned about new £5 note forgeries.

:joker: that was quick!

I know, I laughed too :hee:

The human race at it's current population levels cannot be sustained without harming animals, whether that's killing them to eat them or destroying their habitats to be able to feed ourselves. I won't argue that veganism is obviously far less harmful to animals than the alternative... but a world in which 7 billion humans exist is going to hurt animals. Even if every last human being goes vegan. 7 billion humans cannot exist on any diet, plant based or otherwise, without large scale agriculture. Large scale agriculture is devastating to most other forms of life in their natural state. The problem is not our diet... it is our very existence... and therein lies the fundamental flaw in veganism.

tl;dr: If palm oil isn't vegan, nothing is vegan.

So to be truly vegan you have to stand in the middle of a field and wait for the wind to blow some food into your hands?.....ok.

I try never to buy anything with palm oil in it, because of the environmental impact. That and the fact that it's one of the worst oils for humans to consume. However I am cheered by the amount of people on this site who care about the environment.

No easter eggs for you then.

So its okay then?

I'm not uninformed. Like I said, I'm not trying to say that veganism isn't LESS harmful than non-veganism, there's also a major additional environmental impact involved in the meat industry. All I'm saying is that if the goal of being vegan is to cause zero harm to any living thing, then it is an unattainable goal. 7 billion humans can't live on earth and cause no harm. It simply is not possible.

yes

And this is better than before?

Yes because I'm not a hypocrite. I'm not going to get hot under the collar for a few sustainable hectors of palm oil when I'm still eating doughnuts or crusty cobs from Tescos bakery. If I was vetoing everything in my shopping trolley for palm oil (which would take all day) only then would I have the right to stand up and shout about it being used in £20 notes.

I dont understand your logic, sound like youre saying this to me - "I do this terrible thing often, therefore its a good replacement for a less terrible thing that I never do"

this whole issue was a waste of time anyway

Not at all. I've explained about sustainable palm oil. I've told you about the Roundtable and its work within the environment and you are still coming back at me with, "is this ok?" and I'm saying yes, it is okay because if I can buy products that are environmentally friendly then its a problem being sorted.

We could say the same about beef. We know that cows give off more CO2 emissions that than cars and that CO2 emissions are damaging our planet but do I stop eating beef... should we all stop eating beef?

I'm just trying to understand your point. You're the only person I've talked to that believes this is a better ingredient. I get the impression that you think this way simply because it is a common ingredient? I don't think that makes much sense to many people. Youre fine with replacing half a cow with 60,000 squared metres of forest because its common. Thats bizarre to me.

What's uninformed in that post.. If you farm you need land which has to be cleared, and that land will be the natural habitat of something won't it? If you are going to give such a patronising reply how about suggesting something educated as a response?

How much woodland and forestry is cleared to create arable and meadow land? Every cow needs 1.5 acres of grazing land but cows don’t only eat grass so we need more deforestation to create crops to feed those animals. Livestock production is one of the major causes of the worlds most pressing environmental problems, so are we saying that using tallow is okay because we were going to eat the cow anyway... its a common ingredient?

As for charities like The Roundtable, such organizations are ensuring continuity of supply. Unlike forests that were chopped back to make grazing and agricultural land, these forests are carefully managed and conserved through coppicing.

Its a case of, your damned if you do and damned if you don't.

She is assuming that I am saying they would need additional farmland to replace the livestock portion of diet - a traditional "vegan defense" because it's false (it takes more land to feed the livestock than to grow food for humans). Her mistake was in not realising that that wasn't my point at all... I wasn't saying that we would need more farmland and would have to destroy animal habitat to do so... I was pointing out that large-scale agriculture already covers VAST swathes of the planet (and almost all of non-urban Britain) and so it is 100% a fact that animals have been, and still are, harmed by astronomical human food crops. There is no such thing as living an "existence that doesn't harm animals in any way"... it is simply impossible. I can appreciate people wanting to be vegan to cause the least harm possible but anyone who wants to cause ZERO harm frankly needs to build a ship and leave the planet. Or die, I suppose.

To reiterate though... ... ... 7 billion humans can't live harmlessly on earth, no matter what we eat. Just can't. I personally think I'm better than a vegan... ... ... I don't want humans to stop eating animal products... I want 95%+ of us to die out and leave the planet to thrive :joker:.

Oh bugger off, I hate coins as it is. :fist: