Jezebel: palm oil

Every Time You Eat A Doughnut, An Orangutan Dies

Dodai — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:20:00 EDT

The adorable apes you see at left may be homeless because of your junk food habit or your hair conditioner. The problem? Palm oil. As Glenn Hurowitz explains in the Los Angeles Times, palm oil "comes from the disappearing, ultra-carbon-rich rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, of which a whopping 25,000 square miles have been cleared and burned to make way for palm oil plantations. The burning releases enough carbon dioxide into the air to rank Indonesia as the No. 3 such polluter in the world. It also destroys the last remaining habitat for orangutans." We've previously posted about palm oil in Oreos (dammit!) and Girl Scout cookies (crap!), but, Hurowitz reports, it can also be found in many other foods: Entenmann's chocolate-covered doughnuts, Chewy Chips Ahoy!, Orville Redenbacher's popcorn, Hershey's Kisses "Hugs," and Twix. Oh, well, that stuff isn't healthy anyway, right?

Well there's also palm oil in Kashi breakfast bars and Whole Foods water crackers. Not to mention cosmetics like Burt's Bees soap and Clairol Herbal Essences Rainforest Flowers. So like, when you think you're buying some kind of natural, earthy hair stuff, you're actually killing the earth?

I went on a treasure hunt around my apartment to see if I had any killer products containing palm oil. No dice, maybe because my fridge is empty. And my conditioner is full of chemicals with no "natural" ingredients. Yay! Also, apparently Lever 2000 soap is palm-oil free. But then I started thinking: I eat meat and wear leather and sometimes I let people at the deli give me a plastic bag. I don't know what the solution is but I already know I'm part of the problem. But if Glenn Hurowitz, an environmental journalist, didn't realize his (wife's) conditioner had palm oil, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Clean Hair Or Clean Air? [LA Times]

Earlier: Scout's Honor
Eat It

Two 12-year old Girl Scouts from Ann Arbor,...

Jennifer — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:30:00 EDT

Two 12-year old Girl Scouts from Ann Arbor, MI, Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, have refused to go door to door shilling cookies this year upon learning that Tagalongs, Thin Mints and other Troop-approved sugary confections are made using palm oil, which, due to harvesting methods, is not only incredibly damaging to the environment but to Indonesian orangutans. Says Vorva, "We've seen pictures of orangutans set afire and beaten. You really want to reach out and do all you can to help save them." [UPI]

Keith Richards For Louis Vuitton: Old And Leathery

Jennifer — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:30:00 EST

Keith Richards for Louis Vuitton = Awesome. [WWD, sub req'd]
Amy Winehouse played a Fendi party in Paris and talked about her mumps onstage before offering some gratitude to, like, someone: "Thanks for asking me to play. Whoever asked me to play." [WWD, sub req'd]
Meta Kate Olsen came dressed as Karl Lagerfeld for the Chanel show Friday. [WWD, 4th item]
Miss J (Alexander of Top Model) to WaPo fashion critic Robin Givhan on a Nina Ricci model: "She has that hungry walk. She's mad because she's so hungry!" [Off the Runway]
Formerly anorexic model Crystal Renn on why a girl's gotta eat: "How can you be happy if you're working out for five hours a day? People want to hire happy models. You need fat to think!" Um, modeling requires thought? [Telegraph]
Who is the man who would wear Juicy Couture cologne? [BellaSugar]

Sayeth Heidi Klum: "Victoria's Secret should do men's underwear, Seal would love that. Bloomers are just not cool, boxers are all right, but there are so many sexier things we could do for guys." Like, just get 'em naked? [Times of India]
Expensive shit alert! The $110,000 purse, only at Bergdorf Goodman. [Chic Report]
And on that note, Steve & Barry's (home of Sarah Jessica Parker's "Bitten" line) just received an $197 million loan from GE. [WWD, sub req'd]
Agyness Deyn is England's best-dressed celeb. [Telegraph]
Anna Wintour did not attend the Lanvin show in Paris on Friday. But French TV personality Mlle Agnes did...costumed as Wintour: "Getting through security was mighty speedy." [WWD, 2nd item]
The perm is back! [Telegraph]
Sean "Diddy" Combs: Helping people every day! Or at least designing scarves to benefit Dress for Success. [WWD, 2nd item]
Donna Karan: Helping people every day! Or at least having a garage sale of her old shit in the name of charity. [WWD, sub req'd]
Helena Christensen: Helping people every day! Or at least auctioning stamps with her kid's pic on them on eBay for charity. [Sassybella]
Faced with the coming recession, women are cutting back on their spending habits before men are. [MediaPost]
Yay for Lush for no longer using palm oil, since it's wicked bad for the environment. [Guardian]