Sanitarium shares with our consumers concerns for ensuring both community and environmental health. In 2006 we moved our sourcing of palm products to member organisations of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to ensure we were acting responsibly and helping to preserve the natural habitat of some of the world’s most endangered species.

Additionally, we are actively seeking alternative ingredient solutions to reduce the use of palm-oil in a small range of products where palm-oil offers product stability and longer, fresher shelf life.

Which Sanitarium products contain Palm Oil?

In breakfast cereals with toasted oats, a small amount of palm oil helps to reduce the early onset of rancidity or loss of eating quality over time, naturally keeping the cereal fresher for longer. Sanitarium has an active project to ensure the removal of the small amount of palm oil used in the oat based crumble component of Weet-Bix Bites Golden Crumble.  

Sanitarium has successfully completed a number of projects to remove the small amount of palm oil used in a small number of our products. These include:

• Peanut Butter - we have reformulated our peanut butter range and removed palm oil content and successfully ensured it had no impact on product quality or taste.
• We then removed palm oil from our Granola Clusters and Light 'n' Tasty range.
• And we are also pleased to assure customers that where it was used, palm oil has now been removed from all products across the Vegie Delights range.

Why use palm oil?

Because of the relatively high content of saturated fat in palm-oil, it is very stable over long periods of time, so there are reasons why palm oil is commonly used in foods.

From a nutritional perspective palm oil is high in saturated fat, therefore we try to prioritise the use of poly and monounsaturated fats in our products rather than saturated fats.

If Sanitarium uses palm oil as an ingredient it is used only in small amounts where a functional purpose is served. We are actively searching for technically feasible alternatives.

Testing sustainable sourcing

We are aware of concerns raised about the effectiveness of the RSPO audit process. We monitor the RSPO audit reports in relation to the plantations utilised. The RSPO audits are evidence based and publicly available, and should over time result in improved practices. For more information go to: www.rspo.org

We believe RSPO sourcing is the best available option in the interim while we look for alternative sources of oil that more closely meet our nutritional requirements.

Sanitarium’s commitment to a healthy world

Our philosophy to honour, preserve and care for our world as an entrusted gift, requiring thoughtful stewardship, leads to our commitment of supporting environmentally responsible farming. This commitment is demonstrated through our approach to procurement, product design and re-development of products. Our commitment to a healthy world is also demonstrated in our philosophy of truly nourishing food where we aim to offer simple combinations of nature’s whole plant foods to nourish body, mind, heart and spirit.

We take seriously the decisions we make around the foods we offer consumers and aim to balance the environmental impacts and the sustainability of communities where we source food ingredients recognising the inter-connected relationship these considerations have for the health of people and our planet.