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Beware of Canola Oil

5K views 50 replies 16 participants last post by  allanmcpherson 
#1 ·
#2 ·
There's lots of varieties of rapeseed. Go see the movie Lorenzo's Oil to learn about a medical version of rapeseed oil.

The type used for cooking has been carefully bred for safety. BE sure and read pages 2 and 3 of the urban legends link. They explain the origin of the claims and some important facts.

Phil
 
#6 ·
I sorry, but I really don't understand this preoccupation with things that are supposedly killing us. If I were to follow the recommendations of half these articles that come out, I'd have been dead of starvation years ago. Don't believe the hype!!!! Virtually everything is slowly killing us. I figure it will take most things 70-90 years before it does me in. Besides, living forever has it's drawbacks also.
 
#7 ·
There is no longstanding food that would pass our current scientific requirements for food. Brocolli, wheat are full of carcinogens. And on and on. The requirements for new foods and even "frankenfood" can't be met by classic organic foods or standard industrial food either.

FWIW, rapeseed has a LONG history of use in Asia.

Phil
 
#8 ·
Just about everything we ingest has some low levels of things that if taken in large enough doses and under the right conditions, could be harmful, even foods we consider natural and healthful. These alarmist articles and theories are generally nonsense and are usually proven so. :rolleyes:
 
#9 ·
Don't get me wrong here, I am NOT condoning rapeseed oil. From what I've read in the past, it requires heavy industrial processing to be edible. It used (and may still be for all I know) to be used as a transformer insulator or something....BUT...even Olive Oil needs to sit and have it's water soluble toxic component float to the surface before it can be used, right?

doc
 
#11 ·
Canola upsets my digestive system... plus I stay away from heavily processed oils, they tend to have bad for you things in them. Butter, olive oil, corn oil(yes it is processed but not as much and I haven't found a better one for deep frying, peanut oil tastes nasty to me)... stay away from industrial lubricants!
 
#17 ·
Misinformation about canola oil may stem from the fact that the canola plant was developed through crossbreeding with the rapeseed plant. Rapeseed oil contains very high levels of erucic acid, a compound that in large amounts can be toxic to humans. Canola oil, however, contains very low levels of erucic acid.
In the early 1960s, Canadian plant breeders isolated single lines free of erucic acid
 
#18 · (Edited)
I am not allowed to put up links, but do a search for "gmo canola" and you should be able to find a site called draxe.com

@cheflayne

In the 1970′s, food manufacturers came up with a method to genetically modify the rapeseed plant by seed splitting. This process produced a canola oil with less erucic acid, and higher amounts of oleic acid, which lead to additional concerns with canola oil, like:
  • Blood platelet abnormalities
  • Retards normal growth (why it's illegal to use in infant formulas)
  • Free radical damage
  • Higher cancer risks due to the hydrogenation process
It's also important to understand that this new processed oil goes through many steps, most of which harm the nutritional value and actually change the oil's structure, causing it to become hydrogenated oil.
 
#20 ·
Food hasn't come from nature for millenia. Very little of what we grow or raise to eat can survive on it's own. We altered it all along for our purposes and it's naive in it's own way to call it natural. The soils are amended whether through cultured rot or chemicals. Competition is controlled. I get where you're going with this sentence, but it alone, it doesn't mean much. There's a lot of definitions and discussion to get to what you mean by natural. Our farms and herds have been labs from the start.

Little if any of what we might agree to be natural can meet or pass the safety requirements of GMO foods. It's just been grandfathered in as we've survived on it in the past. Does that mean it's safe? We find naturally-occuring carcinogens in our grains all the time. And in our other healthy foods.

In asia, humans have been eating rape again for thousands of years. Oil is a more modern use of the plant
I am not allowed to put up links, but do a search for "gmo canola" and you should be able to find a site called draxe.com

@cheflayne

In the 1970′s, food manufacturers came up with a method to genetically modify the rapeseed plant by seed splitting. This process produced a canola oil with less erucic acid, and higher amounts of oleic acid, which lead to additional concerns with canola oil, like:
  • Blood platelet abnormalities
  • Retards normal growth (why it's illegal to use in infant formulas)
  • Free radical damage
  • Higher cancer risks due to the hydrogenation process
It's also important to understand that this new processed oil goes through many steps, most of which harm the nutritional value and actually change the oil's structure, causing it to become hydrogenated oil.
Yes, I'm aware of the origins of modern Canola. But there are some claims here that are, well, nonsense. Canola oil is legal to use in infant formula. The radical damage claim is not well supported and the hydrogenation claim is just oddball. This partial hydrogenation claim, I can find nothing as a reliable source on that. The sites that mention it do not source the information, which is odd and suspect, and same with the free radicals.
another search you might want to try:

GMO Poison - Ticking Time Bomb [Full Documentary]
Documentaries, while interesting, are rarely fair, unbiased or complete. The title alone tells me all I need to know.

You're welcome to not eat canola oil, or any GMO foods for any reason or feeling you like. Lots of people don't like canola because it tastes fishy. I think it smells a little strange if its not very fresh and so I prefer other oils for my daily cooking. If I'm doing a lot of frying, I like Canola better than some other inexpensive oils.
 
#22 ·
Food hasn't come from nature for millenia. Very little of what we grow or raise to eat can survive on it's own. We altered it all along for our purposes and it's naive in it's own way to call it natural. The soils are amended whether through cultured rot or chemicals. Competition is controlled. I get where you're going with this sentence, but it alone, it doesn't mean much. There's a lot of definitions and discussion to get to what you mean by natural. Our farms and herds have been labs from the start.

Little if any of what we might agree to be natural can meet or pass the safety requirements of GMO foods. It's just been grandfathered in as we've survived on it in the past. Does that mean it's safe? We find naturally-occuring carcinogens in our grains all the time. And in our other healthy foods.

In asia, humans have been eating rape again for thousands of years. Oil is a more modern use of the plant

Yes, I'm aware of the origins of modern Canola. But there are some claims here that are, well, nonsense. Canola oil is legal to use in infant formula. The radical damage claim is not well supported and the hydrogenation claim is just oddball. This partial hydrogenation claim, I can find nothing as a reliable source on that. The sites that mention it do not source the information, which is odd and suspect, and same with the free radicals.

Documentaries, while interesting, are rarely fair, unbiased or complete. The title alone tells me all I need to know.

You're welcome to not eat canola oil, or any GMO foods for any reason or feeling you like. Lots of people don't like canola because it tastes fishy. I think it smells a little strange if its not very fresh and so I prefer other oils for my daily cooking. If I'm doing a lot of frying, I like Canola better than some other inexpensive oils.
 
#23 ·
Genes are 4 protiens. We eat them all in all our food. As far as the genes go, they're simply not toxic. What the genes produce can be toxic. But we do know what the genes produce and know it to be safe to the current understanding of that term.

No, my claim about food testing safety is about what the food contains. Testing for allergens, toxins. This is what GMO foods have to pass that your brocolli or wheat does not.
 
#25 ·
@phatch

Basically, there's been no research on GMO products on humans. Have you ever heard of any other product meant for human consumption that has never been tested?

Theoretically, the specific substitution at DNA level may allow the detoxification of gluten peptides without affecting the baking properties, but this procedure have some intrinsic problems since several nucleotide mutations might be necessary to eliminate T cell reactivity, gluten peptides are encoded by many different genes on distinct chromosomes and the final viability of such genetically modified wheat is unknown. Further difficulties are due to the presence of different epitopes by age, children being sensitive to an enormous number of epitopes in contrast to adult patients [45,49], and to the possibility that the removal of known epitopes could reveal alternative epitopes like what happens for avenin [59].

I cannot post links to this article, but is is from the national institute of health's website.
 
#26 ·
I'd be interested in your source for the genetic material in the bloodstream. Because it can mean many things from individual protiens to fragments to whole gene segments. And it happens with everything we eat. I'd like to see exactly what they say. I no more want brocolli genes in my DNA than the "antifreeze" genes added to increase frost resistance. But they don't dangerously transfer any more commonly either. 

As a generalized response, this rarely matters as these things have no matching protein uptake mechanism in our cells, nor a transcriptive path into our own genes. 
 
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