Here is a handy SHORT CUT on how to detect palm oil in the ingredient list of a product in your home. If an ingredient has the combination of following letters within its name then it will most likely be from palm oil OR at best need further investigation in various ways which we will elaborate on later.  

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Cap • Capry • CBE ( Cocoa butter equivalent) • CBS (Cocoa butter substitute) • Cear  •  Cetear • Cetera • Cetyl •  Elae • Elaeis • Ethyl • Fatty acids  • Gly • Laur • Myrs • Ole • Palm • Peg •   Poly • Sis • Stear • Veg oil 

                                        

To explain further, the photo below is a photo of the back of a product label. I have highlighted in yellow some of the letter combinations to show you which ingredients I would check further if I was trying to investigate whether this product contained palm oil or palm oil derivatives. The ones highlighted in blue are ingredients I would also check on further as they can be derived from many sources including palm oil.  

 

Of those 14 ingredients we investigate further to find the source we know that 9 will be definitely palm oil derived from experience. The others would need further investigating eg the glyceryl stearate.

 

When we first started investigating palm oil derived ingredients many years ago there were few alternate palm oil free derivatives for specific ingredients, in this case the glyceryl stearate. However in today's current derivative market we know there is at least one glyceryl stearate which is palm oil free, all the other glyceryl stearates are palm derived.

 

So we as a certification trademark would proceed to check further down the supply chain to see who supplied and who manufactured this ingredient so that we could find the original documents and find evidential proof that this was or was not derived from palm oil.

 

You as a consumer may find it difficult to get the information you need to see. Most suppliers intentionally or not don't give you documents which will give you the information you need to see or they have been amended and certain information removed and written on their letterhead so that you don't know where they bought it from.

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We never accept 'palm oil free' statements from any company, supplier or manufacturer as these are just here-say and not evidence and often are incorrect.  So as a consumer you can only go so far but you only need to find just one palm oil derivative in a product to realise it isn't palm oil free and if you are looking for a palm oil free                                                                                  product then you have your answer. ............the product is not palm oil free.