There's more information on canola oil he

http://www.cyberparent.com/nutrition/canola.htm


I'm always interested in why alarmists will latch onto one product to be
scared of while ignoring another. I'm no closer to an absolute answer,
but I have some ideas.


One has to do with genetic modification. It conjures up images of Dr.
Frankenstein's monster, and I have to admit that I find something creepy
in that too. Problem is that none of the websites I looked at were
clear on the difference between genetic modification through gene
splicing and gene combining in the laboratory, a new technique possible
only after the discovery of DNA and how it relates to life on earth
(hats off and a moment of silence for Dr. Francis Crick, 1916-2004), and
artificial selection which has been going on for centuries. I've never
heard anyone objecting to the practice of choosing seeds from the
healthiest most productive plants or putting the pollen from one plant
with qualities you want in the flower of another to make a hybrid. If
you think about it, that's genetic modification too though we call it
artificial selection or hybridization, words that sound more benign.


So I think part of alarmists' problem with canola oil is that they think
it has been genetically modified. I wonder why they're not afraid of
Saint Bernards which have been hybridized and artificially selected too,
but there's no understanding why one product is picked out as a target
for fear over another. Even the name "canola" has been put together
from various sources like Frankenstein's monster.


Then there's the problem with big corporations. The New Age alarmist
community has a fear of anything huge, anything advertised, anything
that comes from a company of a certain size. I find it most amusing
when a company like Spectrum Oils which has sold almost exclusively to
health food stores gets targeted, but there it is.


It has been pointed out over and over, but I'll do it once more for the
heck of it, something may be "natural" but toxic while something created
in a lab might be life supporting. In the original diatribe against
canola oil, we read: "What will happen is the oils will oxidize. This
is normal and each will take on a bit of bad smell. This is rancidity
and is ok." As anyone who has ever gotten sick to their stomach after
eating rancid oil will tell you, there is nothing ok about rancidity.
Sure it is a natural process of oxidation, but the symptoms of vomiting
and diarrhea are horrible. I'll spare you the details of the time it
happened to me, but trust me on this one, it wasn't pretty. That's the
reason I've never bought cold pressed unprocessed oils again. Whatever
they do to the stuff in the supermarket, they do something that means an
oil can be kept at room temperature without going rancid. That's good
enough for me. Give me the processed stuff any day.


I'm not sure why an oil thickening and hardening as it oxidizes is bad
news for a consumable product. What does that mean in terms of
chemistry? Nothing is said about the effect of consuming the product,
especially in its non-oxidized state. For that reason, I'm not
interested in reproducing the experiment. I wouldn't know what my
results meant.


Anyway, have you noticed that people with their eyes closed can't see in
the dark either?


--Lia