---
title: "Brands vow to become more socially conscious, plan on removing palm oil from products"
url: https://burnaze.com/article/9d3b5a35-4ce6-41eb-8d02-cddc63a087f5
source: "1851 Franchise"
original_url: https://1851franchise.com/brands-vow-to-become-more-socially-conscious-plan-on-removing-palm-oil-from-products-1564
category: "General"
published: 2015-04-30T20:15:00.000Z
modified: 2026-11-01T04:16:17.855Z
image: https://newimage.1851franchise.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=85,format=webp,width=1280,height=720/story/featureImage/e2b388bb00f0f0f6cda0880c5d3400c76468.jpg
---

# Brands vow to become more socially conscious, plan on removing palm oil from products

**TL;DR:** Food brands like McDonald's, Yum Brands, and Dunkin' Donuts are working to eliminate palm oil from their products, while Chipotle Mexican Grill and PepsiCo are making other changes to be more health and socially conscious. The process of removing palm oil is taking longer than anticipated due to complex supply chains.

*originally published in 1851 Franchise on 2015-04-30. [Read the original](https://1851franchise.com/brands-vow-to-become-more-socially-conscious-plan-on-removing-palm-oil-from-products-1564).*

## Story

Food brands are pushing to eliminate palm oil from their products, but the process is taking longer than anticipated. Due to supply chains, progress toward company goals has been at a standstill.

“Once a company goes into the palm oil supply chain, it gets incredibly complex,” Alexis Bateman, a research associate with the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, told The Wall Street Journal. Companies “can have multiple different products that contain the material and then palm oil can come from several different derivatives—from fruit bunches, from the tree, from the palm kernel.”

Fast-food giant McDonald’s announced this month it will be implementing a “comprehensive” supply chain sustainability program that will reduce deforestation in its beef, poultry, coffee and palm oil sourcing and will also give the company the ability to trace and eliminate combative material from products. Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s chief executive officer, is vowing to make big changes within the company in wake of sagging sales.

The brand is joining Yum Brands Inc. and Dunkin’ Donuts in pledging to use only sustainable palm oil as part of a bigger effort to be more health and socially conscious.

This comes on the heels of Chipotle Mexican Grill vowing to remove all GMO ingredients from its restaurants and PepsiCo removing aspartame from its diet products.

## Entities

- 1851 Franchise (publication)
- General (sector)
- McDonald's (company)
- Yum Brands (company)
- Dunkin' Donuts (company)
- Chipotle Mexican Grill (company)
- PepsiCo (company)
- MIT (company)
- health conscious (topic)
- gmo removal (topic)
- sustainable palm oil (topic)
- supply chain sustainability (topic)

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Originally reported by 1851 Franchise (https://1851franchise.com/brands-vow-to-become-more-socially-conscious-plan-on-removing-palm-oil-from-products-1564). Summarized by Burnaze (https://burnaze.com/article/9d3b5a35-4ce6-41eb-8d02-cddc63a087f5).