France just ruined Nutella for everybody

GlobalPost
Jars of Nutella are displayed on a shelf in San Francisco, California, on Aug. 18, 2014.

How far would you go to save the environment?

For example, would you be prepared to give up Nutella? Forever?

It’s a tough call, but that’s exactly what French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal wants fans of the highly addictive chocolate-hazelnut spread to do.

"We have to replant a lot of trees because there is massive deforestation that also leads to global warming. We should stop eating Nutella, for example, because it's made with palm oil," Royal told French television network Canal+.

It's not hard to guess what this kid would think about that. 

 

She suggested Italian chocolate giant Ferrero Group, which makes Nutella, should at least find a substitute for palm oil.

But if Royal is really concerned about the environmental impact of palm, then perhaps she should think about expanding her boycott — to cooking oil, shampoo, ice cream, margarine, lipstick ... the list goes on for a quite a bit.

Palm oil is a highly versatile ingredient and is used in a mind-boggling range of everyday products.

The oil is extracted from the fruit of oil palm trees, which are native to West Africa but, thanks to international migration over the centuries, are now found in tropical parts of the Asia Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The problem is that owing to the huge — and growing — demand for palm oil, tens of millions of acres of forest have been cut down to make way for large-scale plantations, which environmental activist groups say are having “disastrous impacts on people and the environment.”

 

“Large areas of tropical forests and other ecosystems with high conservation values have been cleared to make room for vast monoculture oil palm plantations — destroying critical habitat for many endangered species, including rhinos, elephants and tigers,” WWF said on its website.

“In some cases, the expansion of plantations has lead to the eviction of forest-dwelling peoples.”

Ferrero Group has gone on the defensive. It issued a statement saying it was committed to responsible sourcing of palm oil, the Agence France-Presse reported. And they appear to mean it. Ferrero announced earlier this year it had reached its target of using palm fruit oil that was “100 percent certified as sustainable.”

But if we stop eating Nutella for the sake of the environment (not to mention our waistlines) then there are a quite a number of other snacks we should think about giving up as well.

Almonds, for example. In recent months there have been calls for a boycott of almonds grown in California, which is in the grip of a severe drought. It takes a lot of water to grow almonds — an oft-cited statistic is about one gallon for every nut — and almond growers have been blamed for the agricultural state’s water problems.

 

Another product is beef. For years activists have been urging consumers to give up or at least cut down their consumption of the red meat due to the environmental impact of raising cattle for steaks, burgers and stews.  A recent study showed red meat production used 28 times more land, 11 times more water and resulted in five times more greenhouse gas emissions than other meat such as pork or chicken.

The list of foods that harm the environment seems never-ending. Nutella is just one more thing to think about avoiding the next time you go to the supermarket. 

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