THE first supermarket in Spain has stopped selling palm oil amid global controversy surrounding what is a staple food in many African and Asian countries.
Palm oil production has caused mass deforestation in tropical jungles in south-east Asia and Africa, costing huge amounts of flora and fauna and potentially increasing the 'greenhouse effect', given that rain forests – along with oceans – provide most of the world's oxygen and swallow up millions of tonnes of toxic carbon dioxide.
Also, palm oil is far from healthy, given that its saturated fat content is over 50%.
And multi-national companies which retail palm oil are guilty of keeping native harvesters in slave-like conditions on poverty wages, making a gigantic mark-up for their own profits and violating international human rights laws.
Greenpeace, SumOfUs, Avaaz and other global charities and pressure groups have been campaigning hard for years against the palm oil industry, and now, one supermarket chain in Spain has stopped selling it.
SuperSano – which, as the name translated ('SuperHealthy') suggests, retails only good-quality nutritional produce and saves customers time and effort reading ingredients labels and calorie-counting information on groceries when trying to decide which to buy.
Based mostly in the Valencia region, SuperSano organic supermarkets' branches are found in Valencia, at number 105 of the C/ Jesús; in Alicante, at number 14 of the C/ Ángel Lozano; and in Elche and Altea (both in the province of Alicante) at number 4 of the C/ Reina Victoria and number 9 of the C/ Pont de Montcau.
Other branches of SuperSano can be found in the provinces of Murcia, Madrid, Albacete (Castilla-La Mancha) and Zaragoza (Aragón).
Ceasing sales of palm oil has not just meant withdrawing bottles from shelves, however: SuperSano has had to stop retailing numerous items of bread, cakes, pastries and other manufactured produce which contain the ingredient.
