basically what the other guy said. I also did formal education in agriculture and sustainability, and palm oil was the modern go-to commodity to demonstrate the across-the-board modern agricultural production systems that undermine communities, exploit labor, steal from indigenous, and degrade environmental resources.

most globally traded agricultural commodities are like this due to the logic of capital embracing export monoculture systems, but palm oil is among the newest to be suddenly “in everything”. in my head, I call everything of this type+kind “plantation agriculture”, because the features are strikingly similar to the old rubber plantations and other heinous colonial systems, though many modern monocrop systems use automation/mechanization (where they can) to obscure the exploitation more than the older chattel/corvee systems if there isn’t an existing pool of workers with murky legal status. or they just use forced prison labor.

there are very few items in any american’s kitchen or worn on their person that weren’t made via wanton environmental destruction and horrific exploitation, not to mention swelling the warchests of the most brutal capital formations on earth to expand their domination of indigenous and hinterland communities furthur.

to learn this fully is to see something dark and cruel in nearly every meal or article of clothing, things that should be nourishing to us and bring us comfort. even home cooked meals and homemade items from loved ones, made with care and affection.

and we all have different strategies for dealing and coping with the knowledge of what nature and humankind suffer to grow us the things we need.