Iceland facing furious shopper boycott after bringing back 'banned' ingredient

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Furious shoppers are calling for people to boycott supermarket chain Iceland after it announced it would restart using an ingredient it had previously banned from all of its food.

The retail chain said that it is with 'regret' it will be using Palm Oil in some own-brand products due to price demands - despite running an entire Christmas advert campaign on the devastating effects of palm oil in 2018.

In a blog on the Iceland site, its CEO, Richard Walker, wrote: "When Iceland removed palm oil as an ingredient from all its own label products in 2018, to take a stand against tropical deforestation, we greatly increased our reliance on sunflower oil.

Now that it has suddenly become totally unobtainable, we are working closely with our suppliers to find alternatives. In many cases we can substitute rapeseed oil, but there are some recipes where the only viable substitute for sunflower oil – either because of its processing properties or taste issues – turns out to be … palm oil. READ MORE: Women are using a 14p item everyone has in their kitchen to get 'flawless streak-free' fake tan "I say this with huge regret, but the only alternative to using palm oil under the current circumstances would simply be to clear our freezers and shelves of a wide range of staples including frozen chips and other potato products. "So we have agreed to use certified sustainable palm oil – as a last resort and as a strictly temporary measure – in a limited range of Iceland own label products that will begin to appear in our stores from June.