Identifying palm oil: not as easy as it sounds.

It may not sound difficult - to remove palm oil completely from one's life. But it is. One has to first identify as what it is listed in the ingredients of a product. More often than not (in Australia, at least), palm oil is not labelled as 'palm oil'. Due to the bad publicity that palm oil receives, it is usually not listed as such. Instead, ingredients such as:

• Vegetable oil;
• Vegetable fat;
• Emulsifier E471;
• Sodium laureth sulphate;
• Sodium lauryl sulphate;
• Sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS or NaDS);
• Palmate;
• Palm oil kernel;
• Palmitate;
• Elaeis guineensis;
• Glyceryl stearate;
• Stearic acid;
• Steareth-2;
• Steareth-20;
• Sodium lauryl sulfoacetate;
• Hydrated palm glycerides;
• Sodium isostearoyl lactylaye;
• Cetyl palmitate and octyl palmitate; and
• Anything with palmitate in the name.

May actually be (and in most cases, almost certainly is) palm oil. Generally speaking, if something isn't palm oil (such as oil), it is listed using its real name ('canola oil', not 'vegetable oil', for instance).

Some organisations estimate that up to 40% of all supermarket items contain palm oil (or its derivatives) and that Australians each consume, on average, 10kg annually.

Everything from chocolate to cooking oil, biscuits to washing powder, and soap to fruit juice may contain palm oil. When palm oil is hidden behind so many names, spotting it is not always an easy exercise. This is the challenge.