Spicy Oatmeal Stew

 My morning oatmeal has evolved into an oatmeal stew. 

Ingredients

2 large spoonfuls of Oatmeal 

Fresh ginger chopped 

Chopped fresh carrot

Salt

Sugar 

2 teaspoons of cooked chopped kale 

A few drops of balsamic vinegar 

Water to right consistency  (I've made oatmeal so long that I feel the correct water to oatmeal ratio when I stir it.)

Microwave 

Add

1/2 banana sliced

Teaspoon olive oil

One drop of ghost pepper stirred into 2 ounces of milk 

One tablespoon organic peanut butter. 

The only ingredient is peanuts. You need to stir peanut butter that's only made with peanuts. Palm oil is added to regular peanut butter to halt oil separation. Regular peanut butter is Crisco, palm oil, peanut butter, sugar and a ton of other stuff.

Tiny amount of fresh garlic. 

I haven't needed statins for cholesterol since I began having a breakfast of oatmeal every day decades ago.

***

"Flavor

Zero. Zilch. Nada. Palm oil is specifically chosen by nut butter manufacturers for its neutral flavor. It is simply added as a low-cost way to halt natural oil separation and as a filler to boost margins. From the FDA: “Where peanut butter must be at least 90% peanuts, peanut spread is less than 90% peanuts (usually around 60%).” That leaves a lot of percentage points for hydrogenated oils and/or palm oil.

History

Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the palm fruit, which grows on the African oil palm tree. Oil palms originated in West Africa and they tend to flourish wherever it’s hot and humid. They were brought to Southeast Asia at the beginning of the 20th century, and production expanded with the British industrial revolution, which created more demand for the cheap, edible oil. In 1910, 250,000 tons of palm oil were exported annually from Southeast Asia. Today, it’s close to 70,000,000 tons, and 85% of the world’s palm oil is produced and exported from Indonesia and Malaysia. Thanks in large part to a growing demand for “no stir” nut butters, worldwide demand for palm oil is expected to double again by 2050 to 240 million tons. New plantations are being developed and existing ones are being expanded in Indonesia, Malaysia, and other Asian countries, as well as in Africa and Latin America.

Unfortunately, little regard is being given to sustainability in palm oil production, and this expansion comes at the expense of tropical forest – which forms critical habitat for a large number of endangered species.

Production = Environmental Tragedy

Conditions around palm oil production are far from pretty. In fact, the situation is ugly and getting worse. The palm oil industry is linked to major issues such as deforestation, habitat degradation, climate change, animal cruelty, and indigenous rights abuses in the countries where it is produced, as the land and forests must be cleared for the development of the oil palm plantations. According to the World Wildlife Fund, an area the equivalent size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour to make way for palm oil production. This large-scale deforestation is pushing many species to extinction, and findings show that if nothing changes species like the orangutan could become extinct in the wild within the next 5-10 years, and Sumatran tigers in less than 3 years. Currently, a third of all mammal species in Indonesia are considered critically endangered because of this unsustainable development rapidly encroaching on their habitat."

MORE AT:

Just Say No to Palm Oil

June 10, 2016