Sustainable Zucchini Bread

One of my passions is wildlife conservation. In 2013, I attended my very first wildlife conservation conference with the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN). While there, I learned about a sneaky and destructive ingredient that is used in everything from soap to cookies. It's name is palm oil!

Palm oil is mostly grown in Southeast Asia. Unsustainable farming practices is steadily transforming tropical forests into desert wasteland, with no efforts to reclaim the degraded land. Wildlife and humans alike are threatened by the production of this product because of slash and burn air pollution and acidic waste water pollution. 

photo courtesy of Dr. Jim Sanderson

I embarked on a quest to avoid palm oil. I even had to give up my favorite flavor of ice cream! One day I was baking zucchini bread (a family favorite) and I happened to glimpse the ingredients label on my shortening. Sure enough it contained palm oil. I thought for sure I was going to have to give up this recipe too. Or maybe not; perhaps I could alter my recipe to make sustainable zucchini bread. So the experiment began.

My recipe started out looking something like this

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 2 2/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup water
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups grated zucchini
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cloves
• 3 tsp vanilla

Instead of using 2/3 cup shortening I used 1/3 cup coconut oil and 1/3 cup butter. Seventy minutes later, the bread finally came out of the of and my family sampled my creation. To my utter delight, my zucchini bread was unanimously declared the best zucchini bread yet. Success! True to form, this loaf disappeared faster than ever before.