Day 158- Canola oil - what the heck is this really?

We know what olive oil, coconut oil, sesame seed oil all are, but what the heck is canola oil? Pick up a majority of "health food" labels and this is the oil that you will see being used. But do you even know what canola oil is or where it came from?

Canola oil is marketed as a monounsaturated fat, just like olive oil. At one time olive oil was in such high demand, that the manufactures could not keep up and the price to use it in processed foods was too expensive. Thus came this new oil on the market...rapeseed.

Rapeseed had already been seen in many other parts of the world, like China and Japan, and had become accepted because it contained 60% monounsaturated fatty acids, just slightly less than olive oil's 70%. The problem with this new found oil was that 2/3 of the monounsaturated fatty acids in rapeseed oil was made from erucic acid. Erucic acid had been associated with Keshan's disease, which is characterized by fibrotic lesions of the heart.

Sounds awesome, right?

Luckily, that wasn't gonna fly as a good alternative to olive oil. So what the manufactures did was to create a technique to genetic manipulate the rapeseed that allowed them to split the seed. This process produced a monounsaturated oil low in erucic acid and high in oleic acid. They named this new oil LEAR, which stood for Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed.

Never heard of LEAR?

That's because LEAR oil never caught on. So in 1978 they decided to give this oil a makeover and rename it. They finally agreed on the name "canola" which is basically for "Canadian oil," since this is where rapeseed is produced. Even with the new name change, canola oil did not become widespread until the 1990s. After much time, money, and energy their marketing finally paid off. The focus audience for canola oil? The health minded, educated population. Canola oil was marketed to health food stores and healthy cookbooks due to the high amount of monounsaturated and omega-3 fatty acids.

What we really want to know is, is canola oil healthy?

"Rapeseed has been used as a source of oil since ancient times because it is easily extracted from the seed. Interestingly, the seeds were first cooked before the oil is extracted. In China and India, rapeseed oil was provided by thousands of peddlers operating small stone presses that press out the oil at low temperatures. What the merchant then sells to the housewife is absolutely fresh.

Modern oil processing is a different thing entirely. The oil is removed by a combination of high temperature mechanical pressing and solvent extraction. Traces of the solvent (usually hexane) remain in the oil, even after considerable refining. Like all modern vegetable oils, canola oil goes through the process of caustic refining, bleaching and degumming--all of which involve high temperatures or chemicals of questionable safety. And because canola oil is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which easily become rancid and foul-smelling when subjected to oxygen and high temperatures, it must be deodorized. The standard deodorization process removes a large portion of the omega-3 fatty acids by turning them into trans fatty acids. Although the Canadian government lists the trans content of canola at a minimal 0.2 percent, research at the University of Florida at Gainesville, found trans levels as high as 4.6 percent in commercial liquid oil. The consumer has no clue about the presence of trans fatty acids in canola oil because they are not listed on the label.

A large portion of canola oil used in processed food has been hardened through the hydrogenation process, which introduces levels of trans fatty acids into the final product as high as 40 percent. In fact, canola oil hydrogenates beautifully, better than corn oil or soybean oil, because modern hydrogenation methods hydrogenate omega-3 fatty acids preferentially and canola oil is very high in omega-3s. Higher levels of trans mean longer shelf life for processed foods, a crisper texture in cookies and crackers--and more dangers of chronic disease for the consumer." - Weston Price: The Great Con-ola

I have said it once and I will say it again, "everything in moderation!" The real problem that comes with canola oil is when people eat just a majority of monounsaturated fatty acids.

* "A 1998 study indicates that diets with adequate saturated fats help the body convert omega-3 fatty acids into the long-chain versions EPA and DHA, which is what the body wants to do with most of the 18-carbon omega-3s. Conversion is reduced by 40-50 percent in diets lacking in saturated fats and high in omega-6 fatty acids from commercial vegetable oils (particularly soybean oil). In the animal studies on canola oil, dietary saturated fats mitigated the harmful effects of omega-3s."

The worst part about canola oil is that it has become rancid during the manufacturing process and has formed trans-fatty acids. The rapeseed plant is also one of the top genetically modified foods on the market today. Think about it, when you buy olive oil at the supermarket, you look for it to state that it is "cold-pressed"; canola oil doesn't give you that option. So what would I do? Although I try to stay away from processed foods, I still get my fair share, and most of those foods use canola oil. That small amount of canola oil in my diet is all I care to include, actually it's probably a lot more than I would like to include. You will never find a bottle of canola oil in my house, instead I prefer to use coconut, olive, sesame, almond, grapeseed, etc.

To learn more about canola oil, read "The Great Con-ola," on the Weston Price website; which is where I got most of the information for this blog.

Pura Vida!

Alica Ryan, NTP

*H Gerster. Can adults adequately convert alpha-linolenic acid (18:3n-3) to eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (22:6n-3)? International Journal of Vitamin and Nutrition Research1998;68(3):159-73.