The Dirty Truth About Canola Oil Revealed

If you think of canola oil as one of the “good” oils, you may be surprised to learn that the truth may be just the opposite! Here’s what canola oil may be doing to your health.

While much has finally come out in the media over the past few years about the unhealthy nature of most vegetable oils, for some reason canola oil has mostly gotten a free pass.

Contrary to what you might have heard, canola oil is not a “heart-healthy” oil similar to olive oil. In fact, canola oil (also known as rapeseed oil – the name was changed by marketers to make it sound more palatable), is just as bad as most of the other processed, polyunsaturated oils out there, and the article below explains why:

Canola oil typically ranges between 55-65% monounsaturated fat and between 28-35% polyunsaturated fat, with just a small amount of saturated fat.While we’ve been led to believe that high monounsaturated fat oils are good for us (which they are in the case of virgin olive oil, avocados or from unprocessed nuts or seeds), the fact is that canola oil has more detriments than it does benefits.

As you may have heard me talk about in other newsletters or popular articles, one of the biggest problems with highly processed and refined vegetable oils such as corn oil, soybean oil, and yes, even canola, is that the polyunsaturated component of the oil is highly unstable under heat, light, solvents, and pressure, and this heavily oxidizes the polyunsaturates which increases free radicals in your body.

The end result of all of this refining and processing are oils that are highly inflammatory in your body when you ingest them, damaging your cell membranes, contributing to heart disease, weight gain, and other degenerative diseases.

The reason that extra virgin olive oil is good for you is that it is generally cold pressed without the use of heat and solvents to aid extraction, and also contains MUCH LESS polyunsaturated fats than canola oil, so is therefore more stable.  EVOO also contains important antioxidants that help protect the stability of the oil.

Canola oil, on the other hand, is typically extracted and refined using high heat, pressure, and petroleum solvents such as hexane.  Most of this oil undergoes a process of caustic refining, degumming, bleaching, and deoderization, all using high heat and questionable chemicals.

Does canola oil even have trans fats?

Even worse, all of this high heat, high pressure processing with solvents actually forces some of the omega-3 content of canola oil to be transformed into trans fats.

According to Dr. Mary Enig, PhD, and Nutritional Biochemist, “Although the Canadian government lists the trans fat content of canola at a minimal 0.2 percent, research at the University of Florida at Gainesville, found trans fat levels as high as 4.6 percent in commercial liquid canola oil“.

And this is the crap that they are marketing to you as a “healthy oil”!

As you can see from the details above on how canola oil is processed, it is barely any healthier for you than other junk vegetable oils like soybean oil or corn oil.  The bottom line is that it is an inflammatory oil in your body and should be avoided as much as possible.

The only canola oil that might be reasonable is if you see that it is “cold pressed” and organic. Unfortunately most is NOT cold pressed or organic, so you might as well choose oils that you know are healthier.

Read more on canola oil, and some healthier alternatives, at http://holistichealthwire.com/dirty-truth.