It isn't hard. Fresh fruit and vegetables don't even have labels because it isn't needed. Meats, and eggs, spices, flour, sugar, oils, and all the other staples might have a label but I don't need to read the fine print to know what is inside because the answer is always the same: whatever is on big print on front.
When buying processed food it is impossible though. Just learn to cook and you will typically have much healthier meals. It takes more time, but there isn't an other reasonable option to be healthy in first world society.
The only really safe bet is to avoid purchasing pre-made items, and make your own sauces/treats/cakes etc. We cook all our own meals at home, but buy shampoo + cookies + cakes + chocolate bars (as normal people do). We try to stick to brands we _know_ don't have any palm oil, but I'd wager that almost all our produce doesn't have any in it.
Except I just checked and my peanut butter (whole earth) _does_ contain it, even though I thought it didn't... You might have a point.
I have been checking every time for several years now.
If, for instance, the jar that says "peanut butter" on the front does not say "Ingredients: peanuts" on the side, I put it back on the shelf and pick up the next one.
You can't trust brands any more, and it makes shopping an arduous and time-wasting chore. Not to mention the stupid little games manufacturers play with the ingredient list for obfuscation's sake, like adding three distinct kinds of sugar so "sugar" doesn't show up as the first ingredient. Or adding 12 different kinds of filler to a crab cake, so that "crab" shows up as the first ingredient.
If you're looking for an alternative to your known goods on occasion (not at home, store stopped stocking it or even just not necessarily knowing that peanut butter can be made from just peanuts), it's easy to get stuck looking for options.
It's easy to be dismissive of the problem and say "just get X", buy you need to know that exists, but you can make the argument for cookies, chips, sauces, dips, soaps...
Before checking every time, I only read the ingredient list occasionally, usually at home when eating it. I started to notice things, like this progression:
Ingredients: peanuts.
Ingredients: peanuts, peanut oil, salt.
Ingredients: peanuts, hydrogenated vegetable oil (one or more of: peanut oil, palm oil, rapeseed oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil), salt.
The company might run up against a supply problem, where they have to choose between a bad batch of peanuts or nothing at all, and they choose to remain in business by "remediating" that bad batch. But maybe their sales actually go up, so instead of going back to basics, they keep doing the same thing, but with cheaper oil. I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. You can make more money by trying to eat Jif's or Skippy's lunch than by catering to purity snobs.
Repeat similar scenarios for other brands of other products, every year, across the whole grocery store. Products try to stay competitive by masking inferior base ingredients with added fat, salt, and sugar, then go on to game the ingredients list, to obfuscate the fact that they replaced expensive ingredients with cheaper ones, while simultaneously reducing the package weight and upping the unit price. Those oil palm farmers don't need to worry; peak capitalism has their back. Palm oil use will continue to increase, because the marginal cost of production currently makes it the cheapest of all plant-based oils, at least until oil-algae farming technology matures.
all this got me curious and looked it up. here are a few things that often contain palm oil: bread, margarine, some cheese, ice cream, soap & shampoo, chocolate, pre-made pizza etc.
looks to me like you might want to go back to making everything yourself or know every single brand around...
What breads and cheeses contain palm oil? Don't buy them, bread should have salt water yeast flour and cheese definitely should not have oil. Don't buy margarine either, prefer butter, olive oil, or vegetable oil.
There are loads of kinds of chocolate, including very affordable labels, that do not contain palm oil. Oil is an additive chocolate to cut down on the actual chocolate ingredients. Real chocolate shouldn't have it. Chocolate flavored candy has it.
You don't have to make everything from scratch you just have to avoid the worst of the worst processed junk.
Unfortunately it will require you to become very familiar with what you put in your body. Blindly consuming, especially food, in 2020 is a bad idea for the health of yourself and the community. This is a pretty difficult task, but I also think it's insane to trust corporations in this day and age to have your health as a priority when sourcing ingredients.
When buying processed food it is impossible though. Just learn to cook and you will typically have much healthier meals. It takes more time, but there isn't an other reasonable option to be healthy in first world society.