I’ve always preferred products that have a short readable ingredient list, and happily those are usually the brands that are palm free too.

For non-dairy milks, I think Eden and Pacific are probably all free of palm. I can’t remember if I looked at all of their varieties, but anything I’ve looked at from either of them have been palm-free. And Manitoba Harvest has a palm free hemp milk too.

The same pattern is true of soaps and other household things also, with the short and readable ingredient list.

I can’t remember for the frozen desserts, I don’t get those often.

http://is.gd/5AvBo

I would guess, if tasty, the powdered “butter” could be added to cake frostings and then use well-sourced shortening for the “butter”?

There’s also this one, but, tbh, it doesn’t look so good. bad picture, maybe??

http://is.gd/5AvTI

Dreena Burton’s cookie recipes have always been EB free (or most of them are) and I’ve always loved her cookie recipes, so in that sense I didn’t need a replacement. There are lots of other cookie recipes out there that don’t use EB.

For things like toast or waffles, I just skip it. I have pb or almond butter on my toast, I can make a maple glaze kind of thing for the waffles or just use maple syrup.

Frosting gets a bit tricky, but there are a few recipes out there for EB free frosting (I think there’s one in Babycakes and I’d have to look around for the one or two others I’ve seen). They rely on coconut oil (or coconut butter? can’t remember), which I think is mostly okay, but I’d still be careful about sourcing it.

I can’t think of other times that EB would specifically be called for, but if I’ve missed something, let me know! There are other vegan spreads, though the only one I can think of is Spectrum’s. I don’t think it is as tasty (based on what I’ve heard others say, I don’t think I’ve ever tried it myself), but should be worth trying if you want to have a vegan buttery spread on hand.

Based on what I’ve found so far, I believe that coconut is a pretty good alternative, if one is careful in sourcing it.

There are programs on a village and low-tech level that look like they purely benefit the local people, the women in particular: http://www.wwfpacific.org.fj/where_we_work/solomons/what_we_do/kekoro_womens_project.cfm

It isn’t specified whether there’s any coconut cultivation necessary though.

Coconut oil has allowed Bouganville to survive despite a 7+ year blockade against them in a little known and very bloody war in the pacific: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1192286025577999101

But that doesn’t say much about our consumption of it!

Based on this article, it is clear that large scale production of coconut oil can have many of the same negative aspects as of the palm oil: http://www.fao.org/docrep/T0719E/t0719e04.htm

The production of coconuts on a commercial scale will help alleviate the critical shortage of edible oils. Coconut oil is the staple of the rural population but because of lethal yellowing, the government has had to import large quantities of edible oils using scarce exchange reserves.

The processing of both bananas and coconuts will produce substantial volumes of effluent. The bananas that cannot be exported or sold in local markets will be fed to pigs whose effluent waste will be dumped unprocessed into the nearby river. Coconut oil extraction will produce by-products that have no current use and will be dumped into the environment.

The environment will be altered radically by the installation of a tropical fruit production industry. The vegetation will be clear cut not only between the plots in the formerly cropped valley, but also on the hills and mountainsides. The flora will be destroyed and the fauna will retreat into the already ecologically severely affected mountainsides’ many of which have been cleared as coffee production has moved to cover the higher elevations.

There is some fair trade coconut oil available, though again the information on the environmental aspect is fairly scarce. I found a company that has developed affordable technology for villagers to extract coconut oil: http://www.kokonutpacific.com.au/

They bring up some points about coconut oil that do make it seem like purchasing coconut oil from these types of groups is getting coconut oil from existing trees, resources that are already there and available for the local people, rather than clearing areas to plant the trees for big commercial enterprises.

So…my conclusion is that coconut oil is likely a good choice with sustainable environmentally and socially friendly options available. But, as with anything, not all coconut oil comes from responsible or ethical companies or people.