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​Iceland To Offer Customers Palm Oil-Free Christmas

​Iceland To Offer Customers Palm Oil-Free Christmas

Growing demand for palm oil - which is used in food products, cosmetics and biodiesel - has been devastating rainforests

Jess Hardiman

Jess Hardiman

As the Christmas period rolls around, it's easy to get caught up in all of the hysteria that comes with it - it becomes a garish, tinsel-strewn haze of present-buying, Christmas cake-baking and office partying.

Fun times, for sure, but but with all that on the agenda, many of your other priorities also slip. The idea of a decent night's sleep becomes a distant memory as you receive an invite to the 50th do of the season, and you've splashed far more than you dare think about on limited edition Christmas sandwiches and pumpkin spice lattes, just because you can.

We're guessing you don't think about things like palm oil consumption, either, do you? Well, one supermarket has decided to think about that for you, as Iceland offers its customers a completely palm oil-free Christmas this year.

Iceland

Back in April, Iceland became the first UK supermarket to pledge to remove palm oil from all of its own-label products.

This notion has now been applied to its Christmas range, which includes luxury mince pies, vegetarian centrepieces and desserts - with recipes having been reworked to ensure that the removal of palm oil has had 'no effect' on the quality or taste.

The 2018 Christmas range features over 100 food lines that don't use palm oil as an ingredient, such as the supermarket's Salted Caramel Christmas Tree Cheesecake, Luxury Jumbo Coated Wild Red Shrimp Selection and Luxury Black Forest Layered Pavlova.

Iceland

Neil Nugent, Head Chef at Iceland, said: "This year we have worked hard to develop recipes that don't include palm oil for the Christmas range, collaborating across our product development team and with trusted suppliers to ensure that our food is of the highest quality and delivers the best possible taste.

"We're proud to be leading the way and developing our seasonal offering in line with our commitment to give customers the option of Christmas foods without palm oil as an ingredient."

As well as the redeveloped foods, Iceland will also have launched over 200 new lines without palm oil by the beginning of 2019 - having found that 35 percent of consumers were unaware of what palm oil actually is in a study conducted earlier this year, despite it being found in more than half of all supermarket products.

Growing demand for palm oil - which is used in food products, cosmetics and biodiesel - has been devastating rainforests across South-East Asia. In Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, palm oil and wood pulp plantations are the biggest driver of deforestation, meaning many species are being threatened with extinction.

And it's not just Iceland shoppers that will be able to get in on the action, either. Upmarket retailer Selfridge's has also been so impressed by the stunt that it's decided to start stocking Iceland's mince pies.

Revealing that the company has hopes to soon be completely palm oil-free, a spokesperson for Selfridges said: "We're completely committed to being completely palm-oil-free by Christmas 2019, so these delicious palm-oil-free mince pies by Iceland offer a little taste of what's to come.

"For us, there's no point palming off the inevtiable - together we must end deforestation."

Featured Image Credit: Iceland

Topics: Food, Christmas, News, UK