The current global financial crisis has caused people to pay greater attention to their credit rating.  When credit was freely available, some people became careless about how they used it. They didn’t bother to save for what they wanted; they just borrowed with some saddling themselves up to their ears with debt. To them, being in debt was no big deal.

However, in a crisis, that is no longer the case. Having good credit is suddenly very important.

After reading an advertisement for a credit rating service, a close friend of mine who’s a banker remarked: “Credit rating is not something you can buy; its something you have to work for.”

The same principle applies to our credibility.  

Take the case of this natural health website from the UK called “The Healthier Life.” In an effort to bolster their credibility, they set up a “Panel of Experts” drawn from natural medicine practitioners from around the world, such as:

-    Dr Ray Fauré (ND, DO, D.Hom, DD, Ph.D, Psy.D, D.Sc.)
-    Marcus Webb, BSc(Hons) Ost Med, DO, ND, MRN, PGCert (Osteoporosis), MIBiol, CBiolA
-    Connie Meyer (MCPP MNIMH Medical Herbalist Dip.Phyt.UK)
-    Dr Marios Kyriazis (MD, MSc, MIBiol, CBiol, DGM)
-    Martin Hum (PhD, DHD)
-    Nigel Summerley (LLSCH)
-    Paula Bartimeus (DHD)
-    Dr Michael Perring (MB BChir FCP(SA) DPM UKCP Registered Psychotherapist)
-    Robin Shepherd (DO)
-    Dr Allan Spreen (MD)
-    Chanchal Cabrera (MNIMH, AHG)
-    Christina D. Howard (MA, MPhil, FRSM, MBANT, VIA, RWNTR)
-    Michael van Straten (DO, ND, DipAc.)

The Healthier Life declared on their site that it was founded to bring together doctors, scientists and health professionals from across the whole spectrum of modern disciplines.

However, in one fell swoop, The Healthier Life shot themselves in the foot and in the process, destroyed their own credibility with an article that could win an award for editorial and intellectual dishonesty!

The article in question, entitled “Palm Oil: Why is it Wrapped in Such Controversy?” was published on their site on 24th February 2010.

Whilst acknowledging at the outset, that red palm oil, in its natural form had numerous health benefits, including the prevention of cancer, the reduction of cholesterol and the protection against brain cell death, the article then commits the literary version of hara-kiri and manslaughter when it proceeds to paint the oil as 50% saturated fat which “turns to trans-fat when put through a refining process called hydrogenation or partial hydrogenation.” It continued, “Most of the palm oil used in our processed and packaged foods are hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated, so all that natural and powerful goodness has been destroyed…”

The article then goes on to “expose” the well-documented ills of trans fats consumption ranging from coronary heart disease, diabetes, prostrate cancer, liver dysfunction to  obesity. Where the article is utterly unethical and salacious is the way it deviously and insidiously conceals the fact that ANY vegetable oil, and that includes olive oil, canola, corn, soy and sunflower oil, when subjected to hydrogenation or partial hydrogenation, would suffer the same ill effects! It is hydrogenation which is the real culprit.

However, the article assiduously seeks to give the impression that palm oil is the only vegetable oil affected by hydrogenation.

The unkindest cut of all has to be the way that the article hides the fact that palm oil, which is naturally semi-solid (with a longer shelf-life to boot), does not require any hydrogenation, which explains its popularity with and preference by food manufacturers and bakers over shortening made from other hydrogenated vegetable oils! This renders the entire article fundamentally misleading and flawed.

What raises the specter that The Healthier Life is acting as a proxy in a cleverly disguised trade war against palm oil, indeed an instant giveaway that they are in fact acting on behalf of anti-palm oil interests, arises when they advocated in their article: “If the confusion about the possible health benefits and risks of palm oil is not enough to make you question the use of this ingredient in processed food, then hopefully this will:

•  The result is shrinking rainforests through deforestation and the total destruction of animal life in the rainforests
•  As a result animal species like the Indonesian orangutan and elephants are at risk of becoming extinct in the next 10 years.”

Shrinking rainforests through deforestation and the TOTAL destruction of animal life?

It is well known that palm oil occupies LESS than 1% of the world agricultural area and yet produces close to 30% of the world’s edible oil. This is testimony to the crop’s incredible productivity as one hectare of palm oil can yield 4-5metric tons of edible oil which is close to ten times the productivity of its nearest competitors such as soy, canola and sunflower. This extreme efficiency of land use means that palm oil cultivation does NOT require quite as much land as its detractors would want the world to believe.

This explains why Malaysia, which had hitherto been the world’s largest producer of palm oil for more than a century, could still retain 56% forest cover. Bearing in mind that Malaysia is a small country and juxtaposing this against the 11% existing forest cover in the UK, from which The Healthier Life hails, one could be inclined and justified to dismiss any allegations of deforestation from UK based NGOs and websites as totally hypocritical!

Indonesia has set aside 25% of its lands for forest conservation to match the 25% forest cover prevailing in Europe.  If 25% forest conservation is acceptable for Europe, why is it so objectionable to the green groups for a developing country like Indonesia, which is one of the world’s most densely populated, with hundreds of millions of mouths to feed, to adopt the same standard?

Indonesia, which has often been accused of massive deforestation is particularly hard done by, as the facts do not support the wild allegations made by green groups which are  totally baseless and made with no any intelligible analysis of the facts and
realities on the ground. A much favored approach by these green groups is to use satellite imagery or to take aerial photographs of a specific logging area and tout these as irrefutable proof of widespread deforestation – the implication is then deviously drawn by these green groups that the entire rainforest system is being decimated by palm oil cultivation.

Let’s examine the facts. Despite the hype, palm oil trees in Indonesia covers only 7 million hectares or a mere 6 percent of the country’s total forest area.(i) Typical of the misinformation currently being spread on palm oil, and the hyperbole employed in the pursuit of their agenda by green groups, The Healthier Life would be hard pressed to justify their wild claim of “total destruction of animal life in the rainforests”.

If The Healthier Life had cared to take a holistic and macro view of the palm oil industry, instead of subscribing to and adding to the hype and falsehoods perpetuated by people who have a vested interest to stop the growth of the world’s cheapest cooking oil, they’d have seen the sheer incongruity behind the accusations.  

It is almost facetious for The Healthier Life to claim that animal species like the Indonesian orangutan and elephants are at risk of becoming extinct in the next 10 years.”

So outlandish have the claims on orang utan extinction by green groups been (with each one wilder than the next) that one, the Rainforest Action Network, had been forced to retract and remove from their website the allegation the orang utan would become extinct by 2011!  Instead of subscribing to and contributing to the hype by quoting the anecdotal evidence of environmental campaigners, one would have expected The Healthier Life to look to peer reviewed sources that would offer a more balanced, authoritative and scientifically tested view of the issue.

A scientific paper published in July 2007 in Current Biology by Erik Meijaard and Serge Wich called “Putting orang utan population trends into perspective”(ii) does just that. In their research, Meijaard a senior ecologist with The Nature Conservancy and Wich,  report that “some 40,000–50,000 Bornean orangutans remain” together with some “7,000–7,500 Sumatran orang utans”.

They pointed out: “Our forest cover monitoring indicates that by 2005, the rate of loss of orangutan habitat in East Kalimantan Province had declined to less than 0.6% per year, from 2% per year between 1996 and 2002. The main reason for this decline was the development of forest management programs, including protected areas, co-managed by local communities and local government, and the improvement of timber concession management.”

“In addition, field surveys of illegal logging, another major threat to orangutan habitat, indicate that the Indonesian Government has since 2005 managed to reduce this in East and West Kalimantan.”

“In most Sumatran orangutan habitat, forest loss was around 1–1.5% per year between 1985 and 2001 (adapted from total forest loss data in), but in recent years this has slowed down to about 0.4%/year (based on SPOT imagery analysis: M. Griffiths, pers. comm.) in the Leuser Ecosystem where 76% of the Sumatran orangutans occur,” they continued.

In the view of Deforestation Watch, green groups and health advocacy outfits such as The Healthier Life also appear incapable of acknowledging that the palm oil industry has made credible efforts to contribute to orang utan conservancy.  Rather than mere empty sloganeering, as environmental campaigners are often inclined to offer, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council had recently launched a RM 20 Million (US$6 Million) Orang Utan and Wildlife Conservation Fund. Orang utan conservation centers have also been established in Indonesia including those at Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas have been set up and they include the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah as well as at the Bukit Merah Orang Utan Island. What about the new population of orangutans discovered recently in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia — perhaps as many as 2,000 — which destroys the contention that the apes are near extinction.