Shopping Palm Oil Free on a Budget

Whether you are a college student, raising a family, or just trying to stay on budget, buying earth friendly products can be difficult. While it would be super nice to always shop at trendy stores like Whole Foods and Wegman’s, you really can’t afford to live outside of your means. For me, my budget friendly journey began with a search for palm oil free peanut butter.

On average, I would say that my household goes through 1 standard jar of JIF Peanut Butter every 2 weeks. So, spending $4 on a jar isn’t a really big deal. The jar holds about 16 servings so, that’s like 25 cents a serving, a very reasonable amount to spend on a protein filled snack. When I started looking for a palm oil free peanut butter online, all of the jars that were certified palm oil free were upwards of $7! Plus they only contained 12 servings, so each serving was going to cost me 58 cents! More than double what I am used to paying. The marketed palm oil free products would not be sustainable for my family’s budget.

One of my close friends recommended searching out how to make your own peanut butter. All it really takes is peanuts, sugar, salt, and a blender. Now, I don’t know about you, but I really don’t have time to do that every time I want a quick snack. So, I moved forward thinking I was just going to have to change my snacking habits.

I soon found myself at ALDI, the poor college student’s safe haven for buying cheap produce and meats. As I picked up a bag of apples, I thought about my favorite pairing of peanut butter once again. So, I meandered over to the 1st aisle in this 6 aisle store. Here, they house the ‘junk’ foods and breakfast cereals. Out of curiosity, I start reading the ingredients on the off brand red jar. Low and behold, no palm oil! They use something called rapeseed oil mixed with canola and sunflower oil. I start looking at the other things that I have heard use palm oil. However, their chips, cereals, and granola bars were all palm oil free! So, obviously my shopping cart got a little fuller than expected on that trip.

I need to do a little more digging on the discount grocery store I have know fallen in love with. On their website they had this to say: “Since 2010, ALDI has been a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an industry-wide initiative that promotes the growth and use of sustainable palm oil products. Our goal is for all palm oil, palm kernel oil and any derivatives used in our ALDI exclusive brand food and non-food products to come from RSPO certified sustainable sources by the end of 2018.”

While it has come to be understood that sustainable palm oil isn’t the complete answer to deforestation, this was still awesome to hear. ALDI is actively engaged on this issue, and most of the products I inspected appeared to be palm oil free. So, next time you are thinking that you want to be more green and save money, I highly suggest you check out your neighborhood ALDI. They seem to be going strong on promoting a more sustainable future. Check out their corporate responsibility page for more info: https://corporate.aldi.us/en/corporate-responsibility/supply-chain/sustainable-resources/deforestation/.

(P.S. I brought the palm oil free peanut butter to a sustainability picnic, and everyone loved it, it tastes just like normal peanut butter!)