Worrying impact of common ingredient in $2 snack loved by Aussies

Yahoo

a day ago

Instant noodles are a popular snack food in Australia and around the world, with approximately 100 billion serves consumed each year. But experts are warning about one key ingredient that is not only bad for your body, its production is having a disturbing impact on the planet.
A staggering 10 to 20 per cent of the volume of most instant noodles brands is palm oil, which is used in the process of flash-frying. To satisfy our hunger for this single ingredient, over the last 60 years, old-growth forests across South East Asia and the Pacific have been bulldozed and burned at an unprecedented rate to make way for plantations to grow the crop.
The product, which is often disguised on ingredients lists as vegetable oil or palm kernel, has also been linked to human rights and worker abuses, as well as air pollution. Around 50 per cent of packaged foods and 70 per cent of cosmetics and soaps are estimated to contain it, but instant noodles contain more palm oil by weight than any other product on the market.
In Australia, they're particularly popular with students and anyone else struggling with the cost of living, and brands like NongShim are so cheap, you can buy a pack for less than $2 at Coles or Woolworths.
Sustainability experts aren't trying to stop people buying them, they're just trying to change the way they're produced. And they think consumer pressure is important.
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Are forests still being destroyed for palm oil?
Greenpeace's team in Indonesia argues that instant noodles 'have their place' but the palm oil production industry 'needs to do much better.'
'Clearing for oil palm plantations has been the largest single cause of deforestation in Indonesia since the turn of the century,' its global head of Indonesia's forest campaign, Kiki Taufik, told Yahoo News from Jakarta.
Greenpeace analysis shows how problematic its production is, with illegal oil palm plantations in Indonesia occupying 183,687 hectares of land previously mapped as orangutan habitat, and 148,839 hectares of Sumatran tiger habitat. Over 30 per cent of Borneo's forest was destroyed between the early 1970s and the mid-2010s, with palm oil production a major driver.
Deforestation for palm oil production is believed to have peaked in the late 2000s. And while that's good news, a major front of concern is rapidly emerging.
'A worrying new deforestation hotspot is West Papua — the island of New Guinea has the greatest plant diversity in the world and plays a major role in protecting the global climate. Companies are grabbing Indigenous Peoples' forest land there, not only for palm oil, but also for sugar plantations,' Taufik said.
What consumers don't realise is that if they take a flight from say, Singapore to Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta, they will see a green cover before you're landing, and that's not forest, it's monoculture crops. If you replace tropical forest with monoculture, the biggest ones who suffer is the wildlife.Kamal Seth, WWF
Are all instant noodle brands the same?
The world's top five manufacturers of instant noodles are Nissin from Japan, Indofood from Indonesia, Master Kong from Taiwan, Nestle from Switzerland, and Otoki and NongShim from South Korea.
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is concerned that only two of these brands, Nissin and Nestle, are 'transparently reporting' what percentage of palm oil in their instant noodles is certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a group it helped set up to reduce the environmental harm caused by farming of the product, and help consumers avoid products linked to recent deforestation.
WWF Singapore's Kamal Seth, the organisation's global palm oil lead, argues that using RSPO-certified oil would cost shoppers very little.
'As an example, let's say a cup noodle costs one dollar, the price would become one dollar and one cent at the consumer level,' he told Yahoo.
'The issue is that consumers are not even aware that their instant noodles contain palm oil. If they were made aware, they would be willing to pay one cent extra, provided the company is telling them they're buying sustainably.'
While the RSPO certification scheme has been plagued by multiple controversies about its effectiveness, both Greenpeace and WWF argue it's the 'best option' right now, and consumers should look for it on packaging.
'Besides RSPO, there is no other global independent mechanism that is more credible… We continue to back it because we want RSPO to become even more effective than what it is right now,' Seth said.
Other names for palm oil
Here are just five ingredients that are often derived from palm oil, although there are dozens more.
Glyceryl
Sodium laureth sulphate
Stearic acid
Palm fruit oil
Palmate
Who eats the most instant noodles?
Seth doesn't think demand for instant noodles will decrease because they are affordable, and important to the food security of millions of people.
Seth's focus is on reforming the sustainability of production in the world's largest instant noodle markets which are in China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and India.
And increasingly, he doesn't think the middle-class populations of these countries would mind paying slightly more for an assurance that their noodles aren't destroying the habitat of tigers, elephants, orangutans and rhinos.
Noodle companies respond to palm oil concerns
Responding to questions from Yahoo, Nestle said in 2024, 100 per cent of its palm oil was RSPO-certified, or from 'equivalent' sources.
'For more than 10 years, we have been using a combination of tools, including supply chain mapping, certification, satellite monitoring and on-the-ground assessments, to assess and address deforestation risks in our supply chains and improve our understanding of human rights and land rights risks,' it said.
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Indofood, which makes the popular Indomie brand, said it takes its 'environmental responsibilities very seriously' and that its palm oil is accredited by Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), a mandatory accreditation scheme introduced by the government. It was keen to note changes in its production, claiming that 89 per cent of its oil palm estates were certified as sustainable under the ISPO scheme.
It said it was committed to no degradation of forest deemed to have High Conservation Value — home to threatened species, Indigenous populations, or riparian zones — and it was not destroying primary forests, also known as old-growth forests. To prevent this from occurring, it places warning signs and boundary pits around them and conducts patrols.
Nissin, Master Kong, Otoki and NongShim did not immediately respond to questions from Yahoo.
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