If only I had a penny for every alternative name palm oil can be listed under…

When you go into the supermarket and read product labels (which you obviously do all the time) and find no ‘palm oil’ among the hundreds of ingredients, you may think you’re on to a winner… but don’t be fooled.

As of December 2014, an EU law came into effect stating that all products using vegetable oil must explicitly state the type of vegetable oil used (palm oil is just one of many vegetable oils, amongst sunflower oil, corn oil etc). Whilst this was a breakthrough, many manufacturers are able to get around this by listing palm oil and its derivatives behind an alternative name, in which they can appear under hundreds of names.

When I mention palm oil derivatives, all this really means is that palm oil can be split into different fractions (a…