“There’s more obesity, including childhood obesity,” says Dr. Anoop Misra, who chairs India’s National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation. These days, she and her colleagues see some 60 obese patients every day. “We counsel them. Ninety percent of the time, we discuss about oils. Bad oil, good oil. Palm oil is not a very good oil.”
So reports Jocelyn Zuckerman in FERN’s latest story, published with The Nation. While much of the writing about palm oil – including by Zuckerman – has focused on deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, this piece addresses the health impact of the glut of cooking oil. From 1980 to 2015, global production of palm oil increased more than twelvefold. India ranks as the world’s leading importer of the oil, which is 50 percent saturated fat, pouring it into snacks, fast food, and people’s deep-fat fryers.
Multinationals like PepsiCo, Nestlé, McDonald’s and Domino’s play a role in the fast-growing market, too, injecting large quantities of the cheap oil into India’s national diet. As Zuckerman writes: “Like the tobacco and soda industries before them, the world’s junk-food and fast-food purveyors appear to be pushing these products on the developing world despite being fully aware of the health risks they pose.”
“This is an equity issue,” said Saskia Heijnen, who oversees the “Our Planet, Our Health” program at the London-based Wellcome Trust. “The people who can afford it can buy products with less palm oil or no palm oil, whereas the people who can’t are stuck with it.” And stuck with the health consequences, too.
This is the type of reporting FERN readers support. Another way of supporting us is to come to our events. We’ve got a major one in Brooklyn, on October 1, that will explore issues of gender equity and access in the restaurant industry.
We’ll hear about the ways #MeToo intersects with race, gender, class and identity politics, from panelists including author Ruth Reichl, chef Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy, bartender and activist Ashtin Berry, and Alana McMillan of JaynesBeard. Women chefs from four NYC restaurants that are part of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group will be preparing hors d’oeuvres. Tickets are still available! We hope you’ll join us.
Finally, FERN’s editor-at-large, George Black, worked with Jocelyn on the India story. Not coincidentally, he has a book out about India we hope you check out: “On the Ganges: Encounters with Saints and Sinners on India’s Mythic River.”