Ever wondered where canola oil comes from? Not the canola plant that’s for sure. It doesn’t exist. Or it didn’t exist until fairly recently I should say.
I have an entire chapter in my upcoming book UNJUNK which is all about deceptive labeling and ingredients to avoid.
Knowing how to shop is an important part of getting your family healthier because today, we eat what we buy and bring home from the supermarket.
And canola oil is one of those foods deceptively marketed as heart healthy, when in fact it is one of THE WORST oils to consume!
They basically use high heat, high pressure and a chemical solvent called “hexane” to extract the oil – a cheap gasoline byproduct that is a serious occupational hazard and toxic air pollutant.
They then de-wax, deodorize and bleach the oil to remove the flavor and color, resulting in a heavily processed and very rancid product by the time it is bottled.
And almost all canola worldwide is genetically modified today so it’s laced with pesticides & herbicides.
Still sounding heart healthy to you?
To answer the “where does it come from” question…
It comes from the rapeseed plant, which was mainly used during WWII as a lubricant for steam engines.
In the 70’s, agronomists found a way to breed rapeseed plants that were less bitter and had lower erucic acid (a type of fat that damages the heart) to pass it as food fit for human consumption.
“Canola” was finally registered as “Canadian Oil, Low Acidic” by a Canadian company in 1978. Then brilliant marketing convinced consumers worldwide that something we were never meant to eat was a health food.
The same goes for corn, soybean, cotton, sunflower and safflower oils.
Now you might wonder “what is the best cooking oil to use instead?”.
Hopefully the following will helps clarify that question.
Oils that are higher in saturated fats that have the chemical structure to withstand heat and not morph and become a source of free radicals in the body.
Use things like coconut oil, grass-fed butter, ghee, etc from the image above. And for cold use, I usually stick to organic extra virgin olive oil.
Somehow over the past 50 years, the edible oil industry has convinced people into believing that vegetable oils are somehow better and more “heart healthy” when in fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth!
Not only are these very unstable to heat, but they’re SOOO heavily processed!
They basically use high heat, high pressure and a chemical solvent to extract the oils, and then de-wax, deodorize and use bleach to remove the flavor or color.
And the solvent that they use to extract the oil is often hexane! A cheap byproduct from gasoline production. I don’t know about you, but no thanks for me.
And to add insult to injury, much of these oils come from crops that are heavily sprayed with agri-chemicals and very often from genetically modified seeds. (O.M.G. right?)
Nothing about this process is even remotely close to what nature intended for us.
Buuut, as long as the big edible oil industry remains friends with the big biotech industry, we’ll continue seeing “research studies” that come out every now and again with claims that saturated fats will kill us!
Be informed my friends.
Let’s go back to what our great, great, great grand-parents ate and we’ll all be just fine.
But now we know Better. Ditch vegetable oils, read product ingredients, and please help spread the word!
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