Earth Balance is not vegan

I have been dreading writing this post.  Each time I sit down to work on it, I get really anxious and worried: I don’t want to come across as attacking people who are otherwise doing good work, I don’t want to pretend that I am a perfect consumer (an oxymoron in itself!), and I definitely don’t want to alienate the four people on the planet who still actually listen to what I have to say.  But every time I subsequently close the browser window and don’t get the thoughts out of my head, I feel a different, worse kind of anxiety: the knowledge that well-meaning, vegan-identified people are spending their money on products that are incredibly harmful to animals and the planet — the exact reasons that we, as vegans, have stopped buying animal-based goods.

“Orangutans are literally dying for cookies.” So begins a report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, published in 2008 and chronicling the myriad ways in which palm oil is troubling.  When this and another similar report were released, Michael Brune of the Rainforest Action Network wrote a really concise and informative article on the Huffington Post about the problems with palm oil: deforestation, loss of habitat for rainforest animals (both human and non-human), climate change.  But even before that, as an apprentice at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute way back in 2006, I had heard about the loss of Orangutan habitat due to the production of palm oil.  If you want to help primates, my teachers there said, don’t buy palm oil.  Having been so educated and moved by the lives of the chimpanzees at the institute, I knew this was something that I’d try my best to avoid.

But once I left the safe confines of CHCI, my promise to avoid palm oil was virtually forgotten.  Truthfully, it seemed a bigger challenge to me than avoiding meat, dairy, leather, and the ilk: nearly 50 percent of consumer goods contain some sort of palm oil, no doubt many of them considered “vegan.”  Furthermore, I wasn’t prepared for the teeming masses of Earth Balance-lovin’ vegans unwittingly singing the praises of this problematic product.  It seems like nearly every magazine, recipe, and restaurant trying to sell me something vegan is celebrating palm oil.  Who am I to rain on everyone’s parade?

I decided recently to go outside of my comfort zone yet again and remove Earth Balance and palm oil from my diet to the best of my ability (possibly spurred by a re-reading of the book “Next of Kin”).  Just as I used to say that I couldn’t give up dairy because I liked the taste too much, I have to get over my unwillingness to give up a delicious but palm oil-laden vegan treat.  But now I have also had to deal with these squiggly feelings of not knowing how to address my concerns with fellow animal advocates.  I don’t want to be the vegan police, and I certainly don’t want to be prescribing a solution that is too utopian to be feasible for the average person to attain.

So what is the solution?  As usual, I’m not sure.  Most of the vegan restaurants and bakeries I’ve encountered have been huge proponents of Earth Balance and other palm oil-based margarine products because it closely replicates cow’s milk butter when used in recipes, especially baked goods.  When I made the decision to stop buying Earth Balance, it meant a serious change in the types of foods I cooked at home: no more toast with “butter” for breakfast, fewer cupcakes and pastries made from scratch, etc.  And I’m still struggling to not order these things when I go to restaurants: I’m a sucker for a cupcake, and it isn’t until after I’ve eaten that I worry about the ingredients I may have just consumed, “vegan” though they may have been.  It’s a difficult change and no doubt one that people are reluctant to make.

I acknowledge that calling out Earth Balance and palm oil for its harmful impact on humans, animals, and the planet is unfair; palm oil is just one of hundreds of problematic “vegan” foods we consume.  If we’re going to eliminate palm oil from our diets, shouldn’t we also be evaluating coffee?  Chocolate?  Tropical fruits?  At what point do we say that we’re “vegan enough,” since in today’s global economy, it’s a huge challenge to find a food or a product in general that doesn’t harm someone somewhere?  I completely agree.  Again, I’m in no position to tell others what to do, since I, too, am guilty of making these bad choices — just last night I bought mango juice, which probably traveled thousands of miles to get to me after having been grown by people making significantly less than a living wage.  I’d like to think, however, that if we allow ourselves to dialog about these issues — and not just assume that if something doesn’t list an animal product on the label that it’s “cruelty-free” — then maybe those choices will give us as much pause as the choice to purchase meat or dairy once did.  Maybe then we can push ourselves even further beyond what we thought we could do and create a world that is even more peaceful, respectful, and just than we imagined possible.