Here’s how much forest we’ll have to destroy to feed our growing junk food addiction

A key ingredient in junk food is vegetable oil, and 60 percent of edible vegetable oil is produced from oil palm and soybeans — crops that are currently associated with massive deforestation in Southeast Asia and South America, respectively.
A team of researchers from Princeton University, Adelaide University in Australia, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore estimated the amount of land — and the potential amount of forests — required to produce the palm and soybean oil used in junk foods.
We will need an estimated 17.1 million metric tons of vegetable oil for junk food production by 2050, which would require something like an additional 5 million to 9.3 million hectares (12.3 million to 23 million acres) of soybean land and about 0.5 to 1.3 million hectares (1.2 million to 3.2 million acres) of additional oil palm land, the team determined.

Junk food consumption is on the rise around the world, even though processed foods that are low in essential nutrients and high in salt, refined carbohydrates, and fat aren’t necessarily part of a healthy diet.

And as it turns out, junk food like cookies, ice cream, and potato chips isn’t very good for forests, either.

A key ingredient in junk food is vegetable oil, and 60 percent of edible vegetable oil is produced from oil palm and soybeans — crops that are currently associated with massive deforestation in Southeast Asia and South America, respectively, as well as the loss of biodiversity and release of sequestered carbon that comes with that forest destruction.

“Often when agricultural development occurs at the expense of tropical forests, food security is used as a reason to support such development,” Princeton University’s Janice Lee, the lead author of a study published earlier this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, told Mongabay. “However, food security encompasses more than just food availability and must take into consideration food nutrition.”

Lee and a team of researchers from Princeton, Adelaide University in Australia, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore estimated the amount of land — and the potential amount of forests — required to produce the palm and soybean oil used in junk foods, “which have little or no nutritional value to people,” as Lee noted.

“Therefore, our findings highlight a problem in our global food system, where land is used in a manner that is damaging to the environment and is not contributing to the nutritional needs of people,” she added.

Using consumption data from market research firm Euromonitor International and crop yield data from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, the researchers were able to quantify the amount of land required to produce palm and soybean oil for junk food. They were also able to determine the mean contribution of palm oil (29.9 percent) and soybean oil (33.7 percent) to global domestic consumption of vegetable oils from 2000 to 2015 based on statistics from the US Department of Agriculture–Foreign Agricultural Service.

From there, the team estimated that from 2000 to 2014 the amount of land required for palm oil production for processed junk food ranged from about 163,500 to 413,400 hectares (404,000 to one million acres), while soybean oil production required between 1.6 and 3.0 million hectares (4 million to 7.4 million acres).

We will need an estimated 17.1 million metric tons of vegetable oil for junk food production by 2050, which would require something like an additional 5 million to 9.3 million hectares (12.3 million to 23 million acres) of soybean land and about 0.5 to 1.3 million hectares (1.2 million to 3.2 million acres) of additional oil palm land, Lee and team determined.

“Using historical trends as a guide, we believe that much of this oil palm and soybean expansion will occur at the expense of tropical rainforests, unless strict land-use regulations and market initiatives are implemented to avoid tropical deforestation,” the researchers write in the study.

As land for agriculture is becoming increasingly more scarce, the researchers called for greater action and cross-disciplinary collaboration on the way land is being used to meet society’s nutritional needs.

Lee said that we should be taking a much harder look at our consumption patterns and habits, the processes and mechanisms that make it so easy to access junk foods, and how we can reduce consumption of unhealthy junk foods.

“It is important to note that we should try to avoid tropical deforestation for any form of agricultural development,” Lee said. Specifically, she said we should be looking for ways to concentrate agricultural developments on lands with low carbon and biodiversity values, as well as ways to intensify yields on existing cropland.

“Careful land use planning for agricultural development as well as removing the barriers to planning land use efficiently are some important steps at the government level to avoid junking tropical forests for junk foods,” according to Lee. “An interdisciplinary approach to understanding food security is also important as it was only by having more dialogue with agronomists and nutritionists that we started thinking about the land use implications of our diets and food choices.”

Past studies have suggested that, if we close crop yield gaps and increase agricultural resource efficiency, it is possible to meet the nutritional requirements of the growing global population without destroying tropical forests.

“History, however, points to continued deforestation for vegetable oils,” Lee and her co-authors write. “Thus, if some tropical forests eventually become converted to cropland, it will be particularly egregious if that deforestation takes place for the sake of junk food, which has poor nutritional value for people.”