Its replacement depends on the product you're trying to make. Like, they could not remove the cocoa butter from chocolate, for example.

Which reminds me, someone gave me a bunch of chocolate bars with a large "rainforest alliance" logo on it that had palm oil as the second ingredient. They're inedible.

It’s not a choice between palm oil or butter. You can create a vegan pie easily. Yummie yummie.

If only vegetable oils existed...

I think the problem is that all the global "fat" supply has gone into palm oil since it's low cost and tastes nice, so the scale of it's production make the problem worse...

so even if the alternatives are worse on paper, splitting the production between them could mitigate the damage maybe?

btw I found this quite comprehensive study

You could not eat food with palm oil in it. There's a suggestion.

Nothing I eat has palm oil in it. I don't specifically avoid it, but I do avoid processed foods generally, and palm oil is only in processed food.

Sugar and fat are already two of the three main ingredients I need

I just want to point out that apple pie is a dessert, not a dietary staple. Not shaming you for enjoying an occasional treat, I do more than my share and we definitely need to find things that give us joy in this world... But sugar is not necessary, like at all. It has zero recommended percentage on labels because humans don't require it for complete nutrition.

apple crumble or apple oatmeal? an apple oatmeal bowl would take less than ten mins to make, an apple crumble longer but then you ..could eat half the pan like you want to. .

you can usually only have have 2/3: convenience, budget, quality. Pick two. A homemade apple oatmeal bowl might hit all three markers though.

what I would do, buy: A container of quick oats, a bag of apples, cinnamon, cane sugar.... uh.. Yeah. In a microwave bowl pour a tablespoon of sugar (or less or more whatever, its early), a shake of cinnamon, cut an apple (skin on for fiber) in to cubes right in your hand or on a small plate/cutting board, add it to the bowl, place about a cup of the quick oats on top, fill with water (maybe half a cup? maybe 3/4 cup? or read the oat box find out how much ur to use, its actually been a while since ive made oatmeal and I like mine watery so read the package tbh), Stir, then microwave it for like, two mins and eat the shit.

No it wont be fucking rock your socks off, but its quick easy food that didt cost much. could also just buy regular oats and make this the same, and stick it in the fridge for meal prepped over night oats.

Sounds like products like huel and soylent are just for you! Would be healthier probably.

Agreed. Best to diversify pie intake. Apple, chocolate, blueberry etc.

Apple crumble with vanilla ice is very nice as well.

Some people don't have ovens.

They only way to get good actual butter pies of any kind these days is to make it yourself, for better or worse.

I know. But it's still butter. So technically they still made it with butter. They never made any promises on the box of how much butter there'd be.

They're not going to list all the ingredients on the advertisement on the outside of the box.

That's what the ingredients list is for.

Ahh yes, the pseudo-science group. I'm familiar, it's fun to watch until someone takes them seriously and puts them in power. Then it's scary and hurtful. Please don't hurt people.

The scientists are from Nigeria, one of the largest producers of palm oil, so it could be in their nationalistic interest to dismiss palm oil health concerns to promote their international exports.

That’s a valid point, but it could be that they’re looking at the global reaction to something they’ve consumed locally for thousands of years with consternation and wanted to investigate it.

I'll stick with doing what the mainstream tells me until and unless the mainstream changes.

That feels like it might have sounded different in your head or I’m not understanding what you mean. There have been many examples of an incredibly unhealthy thing being very mainstream (lead, more than once, but also arsenic, radium, and mercury, for some of the most egregious examples, but pharmaceutical history is also full of this), so I don’t know why you would want to default to the mainstream on this if that’s what you did mean.

whether palm olein is a better substitute for soybean oil is a separate question from whether the solid palm oil is a better substitute for butter, which the Nigerian paper just lumps all in the same category

This is also a fair criticism, and I wish there were more research.

one of the largest producers of palm oil,

They produce less than 2% of global production, and are actually importers of palm oil, not exporters. Your 'largest producers' statement is as disingenuous as the packaging you're complaining about.

When they refer the mainstream information, they are referring to non peer reviewed literature. Based on your last paragraph, it seems that you would also prefer to use peer reviewed studies to make conclusions.

I'm not going to entertain the idea that a person's country of origin precludes them from doing meaningful research on a topic. Instead, we should critique the methods and the sources that they used.

You also brought up soybean oil as a concern. I looked that one up too: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900721002057

This article shows that replacing saturated fats in a person's diet with soybean oil leads to the same results as if they had used another unsaturated fat. This is the expected result from such a dietary change. Do you have more information about the health concerns of soybean oil that you could share?

I specifically did not say that deforesting the rainforest was good. Don't put those words on my mouth.

Yes, that's bad enough. OP should have just said that instead of lying about/spreading misinformation on it being bad for your health.

Cattle farming is also a major cause of rainforest deforestation (although beef cattle since that is internationally transportable where dairy is more perishable). Palm oil produces more calories per production acre than dairy, where many acres have to be used to grow the grains used to feed the cattle. The transition is being managed irresponsibly, but once stabilized palm oil should have less environmental impact than butter.