Should I boycott palm oil?

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You will have heard of palm oil... but do you really know why? Possibly the things that come to mind are orangutans, deforestation. Perhaps you know that most of it is grown in Malaysia and Indonesia? Maybe you were aware of the frozen food specialist Iceland's very public decision to avoid using it in it’s own brand products?

In this programme Sheila Dillon delves into the complicated world of palm oil. She hears how the fat made from the fruit of the oil palm has become the world's most used vegetable oil. She speaks to environmentalists, and food producers about the environmental and social impacts the growth of the industry is having worldwide. And hears why avoiding palm oil completely might not be the simple solution that it sounds.

We're making this programme, because so many of you have written to us asking whether you should avoid palm oil, so we help to shed some light.

Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Clare Salisbury

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the
0:03.8	podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.
0:08.6	It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.
0:15.3	What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism
0:19.8	and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.
0:23.7	And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject
0:28.4	you might not even have thought you were interested in.
0:30.2	Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,
0:36.1	you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.
0:39.7	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:45.0	Hello and thanks for downloading this podcast from The Food Program.
0:50.0	Before we get into this week's episode, I'd like to point you in the direction of another program
0:54.2	we made a few years ago, which you might like to listen to before you start this one.
0:58.8	Search for the Food Programme, Palm Oil, on BBC Sounds, and don't forget to come straight back here afterwards.
1:06.0	What are your top three biscuits?
1:08.0	You don't understand I grew up with a grandmother who thought that you would probably end up in reform school if you bought made
1:14.4	biscuits. But actually my three top biscuits are...
1:18.7	Degestives, MacVitties Degestges, I'm afraid to say, I'm brand conscious with dark chocolate,
1:28.0	I don't like the low chocolate. Custard creams, I have a great fondness for and ginger biscuits.
1:37.0	All of which in some form or another contain the ingredient at the core of this episode.
1:43.6	We try and make the food program sound appetizing.
1:46.2	As you listen, we want you to think about the tastes of the foods you love.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.