Substances That Scare Me, Part II: Canola Oil

·         It’s cheap (VERY). It has been used as a machine lubricant and as fuel in diesel fuel. It has been used as a pesticide and has been registered with the EPA as such. The plant it comes from from has caused fibrotic heart tissue and blindness and death in cows. Two studies with baby pigs resulted in dead piglets.

·         And… if you eat food prepared by someone else (as in restaurant or processed food), IT IS MOST LIKELY IN YOUR FOOD as well as in the ingredient list for most of the recipes in “healthy” cookbooks!

·         It’s used in a great deal of restaurants. It’s in most processed foods. (Note: Processed is usually defined as more than one ingredient in the product.) IT’S IN DOG FOOD (even vegan ones!)

 That can’t be true! Can it? Maybe this happens in other countries, but not in America.  Can an industry that makes food addictive by adding enormous quantities of salt, sugar and fat, loads it with cheese (now believed to have an opioid-like substance that is addictive), cheapens ingredients to increase the profit margin, adds chemical taste enhancers to fool the taste buds, be so thoughtless regarding the health of the American consumer? Certainly the American Food and Drug Administration would be vigilant in keeping the American consumer safe from all dangerous ingredients!

 This year (2017) I hit the 40-year mark as a vegan, and I am alarmed to find out what is “sold” to the American public as “safe” or even “healthy”. And then, who do you trust? Personally, I read every ingredient list… and that still does not safeguard me against all that is unhealthy.

If you do an internet search for “Canola Oil”, you may not find anything negative about it until the fourth or fifth  page. Those first pages are filled with positive propaganda and “official reports” about Canola Oil. Worse yet, it is advertised as a healthy alternative and a way to reduce weight and belly fat.  (Did you know that there are entire companies that for a fee do nothing more than push negative search entries about your company, or product several pages down the line, so most people will never see them?)

 A little bit further down the search entry “line”, you will find entries such as “Canola Oil Report” or “The Dangers of Canola Oil” or “The Facts about Canola Oil”, that tell a much different  story. From these articles you begin to understand how the expression “follow the money” plays a big part in understanding why you must be personally responsible for your own health. 

Canola oil is one of Canada’s chief export products. According to Dr. Rich Easterling, and other sources, the Canadian Government paid $50 million dollars to the U.S. Federal Food and Drug Administration to have canola oil recognized as GRAS. (Generally Regarded As Safe). “Animal studies showed fatty degeneration of the heart, kidneys, and endocrine glands. When canola oil was withheld, the deposits were shown to dissolve. The scar tissue, however remained on all the vital organs.” Chapter 20, "Erucic Acid: Toxic or Beneficial?" Location 2775, Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, Udo Erasmus.

You will learn that there is no such thing as a Canola plant. Canola oil comes from a hybridized form of the rapeseed plant. Now, over 80% of canola oil comes from genetically altered rapeseed.  It cannot be labeled, certified, or called organic.₁ And yet, all the time I see bottles of “organic Canola oil” as well as products that contain Canola oil labeled as “organic” on the health store shelves.

"Food produces have learned from years of experience that if they present a poor quality food as healthy, it will become a best seller. That is the situation with canola oil. The truth is that canola oil is not a healthy oil. In fact, it is one of the unhealthiest oils you could ever eat and you should avoid anything and everything that contains it." (Dr. Bruce Fife, "Canola Oil, Good or Bad?")

Food grade Canola oil must be deodorized to remove the “terrible stink”. To do this it must be heated to at least 300 degrees F which would destroy any Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s). When EFA’s are heated to a high temperature they are transformed into trans- fatty acids. Enzymes are destroyed at about 118 degrees F.

 The original, unhybridized, unaltered  rapeseed plant contained at least 50% erucic acid. "Erucic acid is highly toxic to the heart and promotes heart failure." (Dr. Bruce Fife, "Canola Oil, Good or Bad?") Canola oil has been engineered to contain less of this toxic substance – 2%. (What worries me is that it still contains ANY erucic acid. Logic tells me that if I’m given poison at 50% of a lethal dose, that, if continually repeated over time, it will just take double the time to kill me.) Erucic acid is a long-chain fatty acid which has been associated with fibrotic heart tissue. A 1996 Japanese study and a second study (published in Nutrition Research, 1997, v17), verified that piglets given Canola oil became dangerously depleted of Vitamin E and died.

“Food grade” rapeseed oil (canola oil) is not entirely erucic acid-free. It is illegal to sell rapeseed oil for human consumption if it contains more than 2 percent erucic acid by weight in the USA and more than 5 percent in Europe. Although most of the erucic acid has been removed, would you want to eat an oil that contains even a small amount of a toxin that attacks the heart? Studies have shown that even as little as 2 percent can have detrimental effects on the heart and circulatory system. This is one of the reasons why canola oil is not allowed as an ingredient in baby food. It is also not recommended for breastfeeding mothers because erucic acid is deposited in the mother’s milk fat. If canola oil is not good for babies, why would it be any better for adults?" (Dr. Bruce Fife, "Is Canola Oil Healthy?"  
  

 Although there have been studies carefully crafted by the Canola industry, independent empirical research studies on humans are limited. This would, permit the medical industrial complex to say truthfully, “there have been no studies on humans that show the toxicity of Canola oil.” Why? Because there have been no research studies on humans AT ALL!

 It’s important to note that Dr. Richard Easterling says that the effects of rapeseed are cumulative and take almost 10 years to manifest.  Dr. Easterling lists the following as directly or indirectly caused symptoms of Canola oil consumption:

·         COPD

·         Blindness in humans and animals

·         Anemia

·         Irritability

·         Constipation

·         Lung cancer

 According to the June 7^th, 1995 issue of Wall Street Journal, symptoms include :

·         Loss of vision

·         Disruption of the Nervous System

·         Respiratory illness

·         Anemia

·         Heart Disease

·         Cancer

·         Low birth weights

·         Irritability in Adults

 Canola oil is registered with the EPA as a pesticide.

 I was horrified to find out that my favorite vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Austin uses canola oil in my favorite salad dressing, as evidenced in the ingredient list in their bottled salad dressing sold at the health food store. (I made the mistake of blindly trusting that they would make the healthy choice.)

 After reading Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s books,  Eat to Live, The End of Heart Disease, Super Immunity,etc. as well as T. Colin Campbell’s book, Whole, among others,  I have learned that any food in its extracted form is not healthy.  We should all be getting our fats from whole sources, like raw cashews, avocadoes, etc. as mentioned in Dr. Fuhrman’s books. (Dr. Fuhrman recommends “frying” food with water,  as does Udo Erasmus who says the best oil to cook with is water..)

“Oils, like other processed foods, have their fibers and most nutrients removed, are weight promoting, and do not have the health benefits of seeds and nuts. In fact, a recent study compared a traditional Mediterranean diet with one that substituted nuts for the oil and found that the atherosclerotic plaque regressed only in the diet containing the nuts; it did not regress in the control diet or oil-heavy Mediterranean diet.

“You will find that in the Nutritarian program the delicious texture and flavor of whole nuts and seeds are used to make dressings and sauces that taste even better than oil-based dressings and sauces. Best of all, the result is superior health.” (p. 149, Fuhrman, Dr. Joel, The End of Heart Disease)

 I love and treasure our two animal companions, and would not ever want to do anything that would jeopardize their health. Why, then would I ever feed them a product that contains canola oil? Why would I myself ever want to eat anything with canola oil? For now, I will continue to make my own dog food (and my own human food!). It will never contain Canola oil.

I am not a doctor, or a scientist, or a nutritionist, or a health care professional. I can only share my personal opinion formed on the basis of my internet and book searches. I do, however believe that my health is my own responsibility which I should entrust to no one, and what I am reading and hearing about Canola oil frightens me enough to stay far away from it.  I’ve lived long enough to know that what is purported to be perfectly safe by the powers-that-be may, in fact, be very dangerous :

(Thalidomide? Vioxx?, DES? See “35 FDA-Approved Prescription Drugs Later Pulled from the Market”, http://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005528  )

Also, watch drug ads on MSNBC, followed by lawyers’ ads for Class Action Suits for the same drugs.)

 

I  have also lived long enough to know that when two substances are produced by two competing industries, they will try to discredit each other. (I remember that coconut oil and palm oil, among other food substances, were purported to be VERY bad for your health by the competing soy oil industry.): http://www.thealternativedaily.com/soybean-oil-vs-coconut-oil/  Then there was the demonizing  and discrediting of the experts who dared to bring the truth to light about the dangers of substances that were making  corporations a great deal of profit. (Among many others, “Dangers of Aspartame” Woodrow Monte, http://thetruthaboutstuff.com/ and more recently, Tom Valentine, Canola Oil )

 Below, you will find a few references I have found in my search for the truth about canola oil.

 “Stop Using Canola Oil Immediately”, Dr. Josh Axe,

http://druglessdoctor.com/wp2015/wp-content/uploads/Stop-Using-Canola-Oil-Immediately.pdf

 “The Facts About Canola Oil”, David Lawrence Dewey,  October 10, 1997 (Updated  February 21, 2001, February 22, 2010, May 5, 2010) www.dldewey.com/columns/canola.htm

 “Canola Oil”, Dr. Rich Easterling, Oct. 29, 2012, www.realpurity.com/blog/canola-oil/

"Is Canola Oil Healthy?" Dr. Bruce Fife, http://www.fertilegroundwellnesscenter.com/images/IsCanolaOilHealthy.pdf 

 Fats that Heal and Fats That Kill, Udo Erasmus

 “Canola Oil: Is It Healthy?”  Bruce Fife, N.D., Wellbeing Journal Vol. 21, No. 6, November/December 2012

"Canola Oil: Good or Bad?, Bruce Fife, Dr. http://www.jctonic.com/include/healingcrisis/21canola_oil.htm  

 “Canola Oil Report - The Straight Dope on Canola Oil – HBC”  www.customers.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/canola.htm

 “Oil of Olé”  (http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/canola.asp )