Saturday 31 August 2013

Fast food companies still continue to use palm oil


While travelling abroad maybe we have seen some of the world's most popular fast food restaurants with slogans at the entrance. In recent years there have been serious accusations against these multinational companies that get a monopoly in some strategic points of the world and dominate the market by excluding others.  It is known, they serve unhealthy food, considering that palm oil is a key ingredient in many fast food dishes such as deep-fried potatoes.
For instance, the world's leading baked goods chains, "Dunkin' Domuts", provide a kind of dessert which are usually deep-fried from a flour dough. Those cakes are fried in palm oil which contains an unhealthy composition of  saturated fat. As a deduction, too much saturated fats can increase the amount of cholesterol in the blood, which can increase the risk of coronary heart desease. Actually, "Dunkin' Domuts" decision makers know that frying with palm oil is cheaper but unhealthy. But they don't care!
The most important pizza restaurant in the world, which is called "Pizza Hut" and has over 34,000 restaurants in 100 countries, also uses that unhealthy oil above mentioned for their pizzas. And the same goes for "KFC", the world's most popular chicken fast food restaurants, which serve deep-fried food and still use palm oil. In 2002, Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell formed "Tricon", which later become "Yum": it is the largest food company in the world.
In addition, using palm oil is also unethical and in this perspective these multinationals companies are adding a gruesome side of  "forest destruction" with every meal: sucking out palm oil for these fast food monsters slays tropical rain forest and gives a wide contribution to the extinction of some animal species, such as sumatran tiger, asian rinoceros and pygmy elephant. Please, take a few minutes of your time to see the following website that reveals the truth about the palm industry and it's effect on the wildlife, environment and people of East Asia:  http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/ .
It is encouraging to hear that, since the second decade of the twentyfirst century, awareness among people about the unhealthy meals served by these restaurants chain has been increasing sharply. I really hope palm oil usage in food industry products will face change soon.