I know some five years back when I was more lib, there was talk and articles on how palm oil harvesting was using slave labor and people were killing orangutans and stuff. It’s basically resulted in me avoiding stuff with palm oil, which tends to include some of the fancier snacks at times and convenience foods as well.
But it wasn’t until recently I found myself wondering, is palm oil really on par with the shit that goes on with chocolate? Or is this on some level the usual anti-Asian sentiment I see in so much Western media, possibly taking some bad instances and extrapolating it to countries and peoples’ as a whole?
P.S. sorry for the run-on sentences. I actually shaved it down a bit. Anyway, may disappear for a few hours, but this has been weighing on me a bit.
Thanks for the writeup. I’m getting flashbacks to the quinoa craze of 2016 or so. This chunk of new knowledge is both relieving and horrifying in new ways.
The whole quinoa thing is similar but not entirely equal because it’s a case of a food that’s been part of local foodways forever, getting “discovered” by global north people and suddenly making it more advantageous to export your staple crop and rely on imports of international commodities, forever damaging the local food system and the exchanges within.
Food gentrification, pretty much.