Palm oil in products often obscured by many names

you may have heard of palm oil it's the miracle crop grown primarily in malaysia and indonesia and it's used in everything from beauty products to snack foods but it also has darker side and it's not just the damage it does to the environment and animals recent ap investigation of palm oil plantations uncovered troubling allegations from over hundred current and former workers these claims include rape slavery and child labor if you go to most stores all over the world chances are you'll pick up product containing palm oil but you might not be able to tell reading ingredient labels often won't help that's because you'll find mysterious scientific sounding names instead and for palm oil and its derivatives there are more than 200 of them here's one guess what that is the scientific name for the palm oil tree so how can you recognize products using palm oil for starters look for ingredients listed with the word palm although ingredients can be made from other oils there's still chance they could be derived from palm oil here are some examples many companies say they use sustainably produced palm oil but some activists claim even those supply chains can be problematic meanwhile the world's appetite for palm oil shows no sign of slowing you