Watch Out for Strange Ingredients! Canola Oil vegetable oil, originally Rapeseed Oil from Canada, has been promoted extensively as a healthy alternative to other fats. But is it a healthy thing to eat? The push toward the erroneous of goal of being low-fat, or even non-fat, can kill us – So why the push from relatively vitamin-rich and heat-stable fats like saturated animal fats, toward vegetable oils that are processed a ton, have little to no vitamins, are not heat stable, and therefore carcinogenic?

I have to comment on the widespread use of canola oil in many crackers, nearly every Lay’s chips products, and many, many health food products. Canola oil is in Alexia frozen french fries and sweet potato fries, Pacific’s frozen fish sticks/pieces, Boulder Chips, Tostito’s chips and queso sauce (cheese sauce), and many chips, crackers, and food products.

The widespread use of canola oil causes diarrhea in myself and some relatives, always (TMI! Please consider how many years it took me to figure that out.).

I am sure the creators of these products believe that healthier food is low fat or fat-free. But as a person with digestive issues, I can tell you that eating fat does NOT cause weight gain – ever.

Fat is used for our brain, and then outer cell wall of every cell in our body. If we want to look good in our bodies, and especially our faces, we need to eat fats to shore up all of these cells. Fat is like nutritional gold – it’s high nine calories – helps us have fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E) and absorb the water soluble vitamins (B series, K), too.

Weight gain is caused by many factors – But that is a topic for another day.

But again, eating fat (strangely) does not cause us to gain weight.

This Harvard School of Public Health article by Dr. Crosby says that canola oil is chemically extracted with the chemical hexane. The article says that the leftover hexane is not an issue, but I read in the book Nourishing Traditions (by Sally Fallon) that oils extracted this way still contain some chemicals afterwards.

Canola oil is also deodorized using heat, which creates trans-fats. Trans-fats are the never-before-seen-in-nature compound, and are found in margarine. Our bodies don’t really know what to do with them, and filter them out.

I learned in a lecture from local nutritionist Kathy Westover (super knowledgable) that all vegetable oils stop our cells from opening and closing in a normal way. It locks them open. We WANT our cells to open and close in the way they are designed. Locking them open all the time is troubling.

More from Dr. Crosby at Harvard:

“Another concern is the report that canola oil might contain trans-fats that have been linked with significant health problems. In fact, canola oil does contain very low levels of trans-fat, as do all oils that have been deodorized.”

• A consequence of transforming some of the natural unsaturated fatty acids to trans-fat during the deodorization step is a reduction in the content of beneficial ω-3–fatty acids. [Omega 3 “desired” fats to help lower inflammation are lowered by deodorization process]
• “The same transformation [trans-fat creation] occurs during commercial deep-fat frying operations with canola oil. Thus canola oil used to fry French fries for seven hours per day for seven days at 185°C (365°F) resulted in increasing the total trans-fatty acid content of the oil from 2.4% to 3.3% by weight of total fat. [6] [Frying raised trans-fats – = cell doors locked open]
• Of potentially greater concern is the formation of oxidation products of polyunsaturated fatty acids during prolonged commercial deep-fat frying.” [Read: free radicals created by frying = cell damage = quicker aging]

We have to also consider a healthy balance between Omega 3 to 6, called Essential Fatty Acids:

Most people are healthier with a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 omega 3 to omega 6 – read this as “nearly balanced.” Many of us are eating foods with ranges of 1:25 (i.e. eggs from chickens fed grains, soybean, other beans) – really out of balance. And this can worsen inflammation. People like Chris Kresser do NOT worry about foods naturally high in Omega 6 like avocado oils. He is mainly against those that are created. – (This info is from a 2012 interview that I held with him personally.)) cite 4

Dr. Axe writes that canola oil has “a poor omega-3/6 ratio of [1:8] and loads of trans fats, with only one source showing it was closer to 2:1 (the first number being omega-6s and the second the omega-3s).” [ratio reversed for clarity, to match Omega 3:6 format]

I have to jump in here with a super brief explanation of oxidation and free radicals – When our bodies make proteins they spin off some unstable bits called free radicals. It is an atom with an unstable amount of electrons. The protons are a certain number and the electrons are less, so they are sort of hungry, looking for another electron to stabilize and make equal the protons and neutrons. They wander around trading electrons with other body compounds, causing a bit of havoc (cell damage and destabilization) as they go. So although free radicals are natural, it’s a good idea to eat anti-oxidants in the form of richly colored fruits and vegetables (mainly these) to counteract and stabilize these “wild card” electrons. The oxidation process burns carbohydrates (sugars) into oxygen. It’s comparable to rust in the body, if I am remembering my chemistry, which is doubtful. But other sources say it has both good and bad qualities. (cite 1, 2)

Chris Kresser explains oxidative stress and damage this way:

Oxidative stress is the precursor to oxidative damage. Oxidative stress occurs when there is an imbalance between the production of free radicals and the body’s ability to counteract their damaging effects through neutralization with antioxidants. Oxidative damage is the harm sustained by cells and tissues that are unable to keep up with free radical production.

I’ve learned that eating chemically-treated vegetable oils is bad news, as is heating them during cooking. We can see that frying oil at fast food and other restaurants could have these oils heating for seven hours or longer, all day, as they fry foods. (And one article talked about the same oil being used for a WEEK! Bleh!)

My negative opinion is from reading the first forty pages of the book, Nourishing Traditions (which I highly recommend!) – Heating any oil makes it carcinogenic. If you buy it heat-extracted, it is carcinogenic before you even open it, and after you heat it again. We (the animal in us that judges well the safe food around us) would reject anything that smells or tastes bad. So why are we allowing our food makers to mask the true bad smell what we are eating through deodorization?

The Canola Oil label says “no trans fat.” However, the trans-fat is claimed to be zero because the serving size is too small (tricky):

Canola oil, and many other vegetable oils, write on the bottle that they contain “no trans-fat”, but this may be completely wrong – They can only claim it because the serving size is so small – only one tablespoon. From the article: “The FDA allows any component that is less than 0.5 grams per serving to be listed as zero grams!” (Are most people using only one tablespoon, I wonder.)

The same article also talks about the risks of mixed refined, deodorized oils – we know that there is widespread food fraud relating to olive oils (read my article about this), avocado oil, and all the other vegetable oils could be the same. Who really knows what food is actually in there.

It’s a Canadian product that went in search of, and found, a market. Dr. Axe writes in this Canola Oil article that this is a largely genetically-modified food, changed by Monsanto around 1995 to reduce “large amounts of erucic acid, which is known to cause health problems” as compared to the wild rapeseed plant seed. In 2009, 90% of the crop was genetically-modified. (It may be more now, fourteen years later. This means that the crop may also have been treated with Round Up, or glyphosate, but I have not confirmed this with my research.)

Dr. Axe warns us about the great health risks of eating genetically-modified organisms (GMO’s):

• 1) kidney and liver problems in animal studies (which don’t translate to humans perfectly),
• 2) possible heart disease related to Keshan disease (marked by fibrotic heart lesions) which occur in areas where eurucic acid [found in rapeseed] is higher and selenium is lower;
• 3) a possible increase in risk of hypertension and stroke [in rat animal studies (which don’t translate to humans perfectly) it shortened blood clotting time [did they mean lengthened here?] and increased death rate from hypertension and stroke. The rates were bread to have tendency for hypertension and stroke to use them for medical testing.);
• 4) it may retard growth in infants, because they can’t break it down. It was illegal in the US (by FDA) to use it in baby formula before, but may have made the “good list” somehow now. Dr. Axe is concerned about this. (In the FDA Food Additive Guide only 1 in 5 was prohibited from being in this formula.)
• 5) increase in trans fats, which raises inflammation and “increase LDL cholesterol and lower HDL cholesterol.” – this is the opposite affect from what you want; “Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils like canola are also known for causing inflammation and calcification of arteries, which are well-established risk factors for coronary heart disease.”
• 6) eating Genetically-Modified Organism (GMO) foods: (- whoa! -) Toxicity, Allergic reactions, Immuno-suppression, Cancer, Loss of nutrition*

In spite of all this, the FDA Food Additive Guide lists canola oil and four other rapeseed oils that are low is erucic acid as GRAS or “Generally Recognized As Safe” to use.

The Lays potato chip ingredients don’t even truly tell you the cooking oil – they say one or more of these two or three oils.^ (I don’t know how this is legal!) And the FDA apparently allows the label to say that “two or more oils were used” (page 18, item 8):

What foods may list alternative fat and oil ingredients?

Answer: Listing alternative fat and oil ingredients (“and/or” labeling) in parentheses following the declaration of fat and oil blends is permitted only in the case of foods in which added fats or oils are not the predominant ingredient and only if the manufacturer is unable to predict which fat or oil ingredient will be used.

“INGREDIENTS: . . . Vegetable Oil (contains one or more of the following: Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, or Safflower Oil) . . . .” 21 CFR 101.4(b)(14)

I’m pretty sure that a major snack maker would know which oil, or oil blend, is part of the recipe…. Not listing whether canola oil is in there means people like me need to cut out these foods “just in case”it does contain it.

I’m not sure a snack food is worth all of the above effects – Remember that canola oil is found in nearly all snack foods right now, and many health food store products, too!! It’s insane! It’s in nearly all Lay’s chips“ (Doritos, Cheese puffs, standard Lay’s chips in the yellow bag), Oatie? Oat milk at coffee houses (blue box, funny font), Cheese Its crackers, Goldfish Crackers, sourdough and other pretzels, egg rolls, Daiya brand dairy free cheesecakes, Daiya mac and cheese, stone-ground white wheat crackers, most health food store muffins, bread, most frozen hash browns… And who knows what oil is used by companies fry for their fries – Do you see why I am so bummed? This food that has a really bad adverse affect on me is nearly everywhere!

Is everyone against eating vitamins A, D, and E? Does everyone want to eat genetically modified foods? We don’t know the long term consequences of that, but the short and long term list from Dr. Axe above is bad enough!

If you liked this article about Canola Oil, check out these two related articles about Fake Imported Olive Oil or Fake Avocado Oil. That’s right, food fraud is rampant!!

Or read about Six Sources of Healthier Fats, Omega 3 & 6 Balance, and Why You Care.

Would you like to talk with me about your own health journey? I am an herbalist, nutritionist, and health coach. We can chat for a free twenty minutes to see if we would be a good fit, without talking specifically about your main health concern. Contact me now for personal help on your own health journey.

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Bibliography

1 – Oxidation in the Body. National Center for Medicine, Pub Med Central. URL https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2176228/?page=1

2 – Oxidative Stress: Harms and Benefits for Human Health. National Center for Medicine, Pub Med Central. URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5551541/

3 – How Is Canola Oil Bad for You? Plus 4 Substitutes. Dr. Axe website article. URL: https://draxe.com/nutrition/canola-oil-gm/

4 – Chris Kresser, video interview by me for Transform Health in unpublished video. Wise Traditions Conference from the Weston A. Price Foundation, Santa Clara, CA. 2012.

5 – https://kresserinstitute.com/what-really-causes-oxidative-damage/

6 – Harvard School of Public Health

7 – Nourishing Traditions. Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. Newtrends Publishing, Inc.; Revised and Updated 2nd edition (October 1, 1999)

* Does loss of nutrition mean you can’t absorb your food? Is this diarrhea?