Canola Oil: It’s NOT Bad for You!

I have no vested interest in selling canola oil to anyone.  Frankly, we make more money selling selling almost every other kind of oil… I just get frustrated when health misinformation proliferates.  So here we are.   

Canola History: Cultural and Agricultural

First, there was the rapeseed (from the Latin rapum, meaning “turnip,” to which the rapeseed plant is closely related).  People in Europe, India, and Asia have cultivated rapeseed for thousands of years. It’s a hardy plant, with high yields, especially suited to the colder climates of the Northern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, rapeseed has a naturally bitter flavor, due mostly to a compound called erucic acid.  So rapeseed was mostly used to feed livestock, fuel oil lamps, and lubricate machinery. On top of that, even if people were inclined to look past the bitterness, research in the 1960s began to implicate erucic acid in heart disease (but not in people; in dogs and rats).  Even though there was no evidence of harm in humans (and even though it was rarely used as a food), regulators jumped in to keep erucic acid out of the human diet. Rapeseed oil became illegal in the US for human consumption – alongside its close cousin, mustard oil, for the same reasons.   

In retrospect, that may have been a bad choice.  Recent research suggests erucic acid is actually good for us. You can read a more about erucic acid pros and cons here. (And on a personal note, I love cooking with mustard oil).

The thing is, rapeseed is hardy in Northern climates.  It would clearly be a boon to farmers, if there was a market for it. So in the 1970s, botanists in Canada bred a new rapeseed cultivar with lower levels of erucic acid.  (To be clear, they bred it the old-fashioned way. This was a non-GMO process!) This new oilseed plant had the same hardiness, the same high yields, needed the same low inputs, but much lower erucic acid, and it tasted neutral.  Win-win.   

Canola History: Market Acceptance

Next step was getting people to trust this newfangled creation.  Turns out, names matter. And not everyone is fluent in Botanical Latin. So the marketing people finally addressed the elephant in the room, and rechristened this new cultivar “Canola” (from “Canada Oil Low Acid.”)      

This all happened in the mid- to late-1970s.  Meaning canola entered the market just as Public Health was entering a period of intensely dogmatic black-and-white thinking about fats and oils.  In short: we were told saturated fats were BAD, and unsaturated fats were GOOD.  All of which made highly polyunsaturated Canola oil very, very, very good indeed! At least that’s how it was marketed. And then the press and the health authorities took it and ran with it.  

BUT – saturated fats are not all bad, and unsaturated fats are not all good.  And the thing is — and here’s my personal psycho-socio-political analysis; take it for what it’s worth — when some presumed authority overstates their case, people tend to push back with an equal and opposite overstatement of their own. It’s a natural human tendency: we want to swing the pendulum back, HARD.  As I see it, that’s what’s happened with canola.  It’s why some people say canola oil is toxic, a genetically modified carcinogen that bespoils the precious bodily fluids of America’s youth.  

Again, the psychosocial analysis is mine, and mine alone. But let’s take a closer look at the science.  

Canola Truth

Some people say canola is genetically modified.  Yes, a new strain of GMO canola was developed in the 1990s, to withstand toxic herbicides. But organic canola is not genetically modified.  Period.    

Some people say canola oil is extracted from the seed using the toxic solvent, hexane.  Much non-organic canola oil is; by law (and by practice) organic canola oil is not.  Period. 

Some people say canola is full of unstable polyunsaturated fats that can go rancid, become trans-fats, and feed inflammation.  I agree!  Canola oil does not store as well as a more saturated fat like coconut or olive oil, or fats that are still rich in naturally occurring antioxidants like sesame unrefined sesame oil. It does not stand up well at the intersection of very high heat and exposure to oxygen, like for hours in a frier. Still, that’s no reason fresh, clean canola doesn’t have a place in salad dressing, or to cook at lower temperatures for shorter periods of time.    

Some people say canola oil is bad for the heart.  I’m frankly having a hard time understanding this.  It has been so extensively researched, so consistently shown to be beneficial…  It may not be quite as beneficial as extra virgin olive oil.  But it’s no slouch. Again, the science is very strong here.

Some people say canola oil will give you cancer.  There is perhaps a tiny glimmer of truth in there. Again, it oxidizes more easily than other oils.  Oxidized foods — foods that have been damaged in a certain way by heat, oxygen, and time — can become carcinogenic to a certain degree.  And again, this can be resolved by consuming fresh (i.e. non-rancid) canola, and not leaving it in the fryer all day.  

Some people say canola oil is somehow bad from the environment. I don’t even know where to start here. Recent, complex Scope-3-level analysis of seed-to-bottle lifecycle has actually shown a lower carbon footprint for canola oil than most other oils — depending on where it’s grown. The colder, and more northerly the climate, the better. .

To my mind, the three real arguments against canola oil are: 

1. It doesn’t taste like anything.  (I suppose that’s a con and a pro, depending on your approach to food). 
2. It doesn’t have any special health properties, like olive oil, sesame oil, and coconut oil. 
3. It doesn’t stay fresh as long as some other fats.   

But to shy away from it by default is just silly.