"Fast food chain KFC is to stop frying chicken in palm oil.

The company says it is removing the vegetable oil from deep fat friers to gain a "double benefit" by reducing climate change and heart disease.

Used widely as a cooking oil, palm oil employs hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries but has a poor health and environmental record. Forests in Indonesia and Malaysia have been cut down to make way for plantations and the oil is high in artery-clogging saturated fat.

From this month KFC will use high oleic rapeseed oil at its 800 outlets in UK and Ireland, at an estimated cost of £1m a year."

Martin Hickman reports for The Independent April 7, 2011. [2]