Dear Migipedia,
I am disappointed... It has been well known for some time that palm oil causes huge problems. This year in particular is a great example of the problems that palm oil production in Indonesia has caused for the region.
Unfortunately, there are more and more products containing palm oil, which in our opinion makes little sense, except that it is (unfortunately) a cheap raw material. In the past, all products were available without palm oil. But are you looking for a margarine without palm oil? Breakfast cereals without palm oil? Our children love Alnatura flakes, sorry we won't be buying any more. Today I discovered that Vermicelle contains palm oil. Why the hell does it have to contain palm oil?
I'm calling for mandatory labeling of products containing palm oil and for Migros to stop selling palm oil products. We have been avoiding products that contain palm oil for some time now (unfortunately there aren't even any substitutes that are palm oil-free).
What was it like with Generation M?
All replies (178)
Guest
@Faerystorm I'm not flattening anything ... the basic problem is that our population (= the world's population) has increased to such an extent that the only way to feed so many people is by destroying our livelihoods.
Palm oil is not a "sustainable" and "environmentally friendly" source of food ... and I also don't believe that Nutella consists of 30% fat and 30% sugar ... it's more like 49% sugar and 49% fat ... the rest is the cocoa flavor powder. OK, you're right, some water is probably stirred in too! But 30% cocoa and vitamins, that would be really expensive ... is not possible, WE are capitalist pigs after all!!! Water: YES! expensive cocoa: NO!
The most "sustainable" way to feed humanity would probably be with sugar beet ... is nice and sweet, has a lot of fiber (is good for digestion), tastes fine ... and is not particularly healthy (... the best thing is when the spitters croak when they go into the AHV)!
It's quite right that you think the fat and sugar stuff is counterproductive in terms of people's health. But whether this is really the case with regard to the "health" of our planet ... I dare to doubt it ... "Healthy people" live longer and spoil our planet much longer than unhealthy people! You also have to look on the bright side.
The problem with palm oil is that "organic palm oil" serves as an alibi for NON-organic palm oil. Even honest, well-intentioned producers cannot ensure that the palm oil used comes from a "clean" source. There is also another aspect: if you condition people to "palm oil" with BIO palm oil, you will soon run out of BIO palm oil ... and then you have to produce more non-organic palm oil.
I think we could agree that, at least you and I, we don't need palm oil and that we can eat something else.
brainstuff
I really don't need palm oil. Also no meat, no milk, no cheese, no eggs, no animals at all, no convenience products, nothing with any E-numbers or other additives, etc.
I make as much as possible myself. From bouillon powder to spice mixes and mustard to sauerkraut, relish, bread; but also cosmetics, washing powder, etc. Of course, I use local ingredients wherever possible, much of it from my own garden.
I have never claimed that palm oil is sustainable. But it is the most sustainable version of all current options for the high consumption of fats in the food industry. You obviously don't know of a better option either, otherwise you would have mentioned it.
So as long as people don't want to give up Nutella, margarine and the like, palm oil is the least environmentally damaging option for this high consumption of fat.
But before people give up palm oil products for environmental reasons, it would be much more productive to give up animals first. But they don't want to hear that any more than they want to give up Nutella. People are creatures of habit. Take away a macho man's barbecue and he runs amok because he feels the soul of his masculinity is disturbed *lol*
Guest
@tralala We are in complete agreement! For example, when I see the "exhibition" of barbecue equipment here at Migros MMM, which is on display for half the year ...., I ask myself whether there are really that many "simple-minded" people who put such madness in their garden.
But it's hard to enforce extremes. You can't stop the completely excessive consumption of meat with "religious" ideas ... but you have to finally offer people alternatives. It's the same with things like Nutella.
The whole "ready meal" junk is also borderline ... you buy 50g of rice and 30g of meat for 8 francs. And all that in packaging that weighs almost more than the contents.
It doesn't really seem difficult for me to imitate Nutella ... but strangely enough, all the copycats are even worse.
There are some "Subito and Pronto" pastas with a bunch of chemicals in them ... that you can "soak" in a few minutes ... why? It's total nonsense that you can't wait 12 minutes for "real" pasta to "cook".
Above all, I'm a "logistician" ... and as such, I think it's necessary to teach people how "processes" should work. If people learned, for example, that cooking pasta for 12 minutes doesn't waste any more time than "subito-pronto", "soaking" crap for 4 minutes, then people would stop buying the expensive crap with the additives. And it's the same with meat ... we finally need ALTERNATIVES ... not veggie sausages ... that look like sausages and "taste" like something bizarre.
brainstuff
Unfortunately, there are so many "simple-minded people" who dutifully follow advertising.
Veganism has nothing to do with religion. I am totally non-religious. I made the switch for ethical reasons. (World hunger, nature conservation, animal welfare, air pollution, water pollution, soil poisoning, destruction of forests, antibiotics in groundwater, etc.) However, I was then rewarded with improved health, which of course pleased me :-)
I can make a spread in 2 minutes with the Vitamix that makes Nutella taste like cardboard.
But why do you want a substitute for Nutella but not for sausages? It helps many people make the switch. Fortunately, I never needed the stuff myself, as I never liked eating animals anyway. So nothing to do with veggie sausages etc. But as I said, it helps many people make the switch. (Not least with the masculinity ritual called "barbecuing".) Instead of veggie sausages, I would recommend seitan. With gluten from the health food store, you can mix it up in 5 minutes and just have to cook it. You can even freeze it. Then you have something to suit your own taste. If you need it, you can make it in sausage form or schnitzel form or roast form or whatever.
subito-pronto or whatever they're all called were actually intended for snacks at work and on the go. When you don't have a stove or pan with you, but can take a thermos jug of hot water with you. I tried 2-3 of the first ones when they came onto the market ages ago. Horrible. Even veggie sausages taste better *lol*
Not everyone necessarily has to stop eating animals completely. Only this totally excessive consumption needs to be restricted. In Switzerland, the milk lobby has done a great job. Switzerland is the world leader in the consumption of dairy products. In some households, they make up over a third of the basic diet. Or the other wise guys who need meat with every meal because otherwise it's not a proper meal (mostly machos for whom meat is part of the definition of their masculinity). I won't say anything about the health consequences. Nobody wants to hear or believe them anyway.
But the world would be helped if all this were reduced. Nobody has to give up meat completely if they think they can't live without it.
I hope for the retort meat. Real meat tastes the same. But no animals had to suffer for it and all the waste of resources and destruction of the environment is eliminated. Initial taste tests have even convinced gourmets. But at the moment it is still far too expensive for mass production. Twenty thousand for a schnitzel or so. But that will come. Most of the important innovations were almost unaffordable at the beginning.
After all, Leonardo Da Vinci and Albert Einstein were vegans. I think somewhere in the distant future, people will look back on our time and consider it one of the most barbaric. Because never in the history of mankind have more lives been tortured and killed than now. Billions of deaths year after year.
Guest
@Faerystorm I agree with you there too. I'm probably a bit more "unreligious" than you ... I even classify many "behaviors" as "religious".
F. K. Weber once said that he wouldn't eat meat because it was a "religion" for him, but simply because it made him feel better.
If you imitate Nutella in the form of a "chocolate cream", you are not imitating Nutella, you are making a different chocolate cream.
If you make "sausages" from a heap of fat, flavorings, colorings ... then it's like converting "chocolate cream" to meat ... you take sausage, sugar it and stir in brown coloring ... then you put it in a Nutella-like jar and sell it as "non-vegetarian chocolate cream".
I just think it's pointless to serve tofu in the form of fried chicken to people who don't want to eat fried chicken, so that at least there's no visual difference.
It's also the case that when someone puts a "sausage" on your plate, you expect it to taste like a sausage ... and in order to achieve this, the (supposedly) vegetarian fat mash you're being served has to be "thundered up" somehow, with flavors and what I don't know what kind of filth.
From my point of view, this kind of thing is somehow "dishonest". I want real spinach and not "spinach lasagne" that's trying to fool me.
This philosophy also includes what you say about the idea that many "matchos" think they are particularly "manly" when they eat "sausages". For me, this kind of thing belongs in the corner of thinking that all "manly" men must necessarily be drunk. I don't see any connection between my "masculinity" and any product.
For me, these "quick soups" are mainly a problem of organization ... and also the fact that I think it's completely stupid when people are too fixated to adapt their daily routine to the necessities. For example, if I have a job where I can't eat a really warm "lunch", then I just eat later ... I'm not going to start eating some weird, half-warm "soup" made from flavorings.
I also hope for "retort meat" (which I do NOT classify as "artificial meat") ... but above all I hope that vegetarian dishes will finally be developed that are not trimmed for "meat". Because I don't want "imitation" meat, in the style of "black pudding made from fat and beetroot"
I also completely agree with you that it is a mess that billions of "living" people are killed every year. This also leads to "life" becoming increasingly worthless ... First a worm is killed, then a chicken, then a cow ... and then you end up killing your neighbors.
brainstuff
I wish nobody needed to define themselves by a product. The world would be a much better place.
Now that the thread has degenerated somewhat ...
Yes, Migros can also do without palm oil, as you have proven yourselves, for example with this: https: //migipedia.migros.ch/de/valflora-soft
I am also of the opinion that there are foods that do not require any additional fats or oils.
Why do vermicelles have to contain palm oil? The internet is full of recipes for vermicelles and NO oil or fat needs to be added to ANY of them. Chestnuts, milk, vanilla pods, sugar, a little kirsch and you're done! Before comments like "Well, do it yourself then" come up, if I'm not at home during the day and want to eat a vermicella on the go, it's just not practical.
Nutella is never in our house anyway, nor are any other Ferrero products (children's chocolate and similar sugar nonsense).
Oh dear, oh dear... ?️
What did we discover again? Palm oil in spaetzli? Please, dear Migros, how creative can you get and use palm oil in more and more foods?
In the meantime, we prefer to buy our spaetzli at Aldi, because they can do it without palm oil and the taste is no worse.
1.
I think it would be good if Migros would harmonize its product descriptions and label palm oil as such and not simply write vegetable fat or similar.
2.
Migros should strive to offer palm oil-free products wherever possible, or to avoid palm oil in new products from the outset.
3.
Sustainable palm oil is more of a "fig leaf" as Greenpeace describes it. Indonesia is now the 3rd largest CO2 emitter in terms of area - thanks to palm oil plantations.
What the fires did to Indonesia last year can be read here, for example:
Indonesia's Forests: Under Fire
It is doubtful that RSPO-certified palm oil is produced sustainably without the loss of forests.
Guest
Hello@spot4u
Thanks for your message and sorry for the little delay. I asked for details and the person responsible and I were not available at the same time. I was able to find out the following about the current status regarding palm oil:
Migros has continuously revised practically the entire pre-packaged food range since 2014 due to the changed food ordinance on the declaration of palm oil and adapted the declaration.Products that were produced before 01.01.2016 may still be declared and sold according to the old law until the end of their shelf life. Unfortunately, this is the case for some Migros products. As these items meet the legal requirements and are of impeccable quality, we sell these products as it would make no ecological sense to throw them away.
Migros is not aiming to do away with palm oil altogether: palm oil performs better in life cycle assessments than other oils, as long as the plantations are established exclusively on previously cleared and unused fallow land. Switching to other oils cannot be a permanent solution; the criticized environmental problems would merely be transferred to the other oils. The only sensible way forward is therefore the sustainable cultivation of oil palms. This is why Migros has switched its palm oil to sustainable sources and checks this annually.
Migros sources the vast majority of its palm oil for food from Cambodia and is working with Greenpeace to ensure that the RSPO guidelines are tightened. At the same time, Migros has the plantations from which it sources palm oil inspected by an independent organization for further criteria (e.g. no cultivation on peat soils).
I hope I have been able to help you with this.
Best wishes and have a nice day, despite the rainy weather
Karin