Since 2001, warnings have circulated via Email and Facebook warning people not to use Canola oil because it is highly dangerous to humans. According to such messages, you shouldn’t use Canola oil because it is made from a genetically engineered plant developed in Canada “which is part of the mustard family of plants.” It is claimed, as well, the rapeseed oil was an industrial engine lubricant that was modified, along with a name change, to fool people into consuming it.
Like other such warnings concerning foods derived from the mustard family, some of the messages probably play on the perceived correlation between mustard gas and the mustard plant, but there are other rumors based on the history of Canola oil that play into this.
- Does Mustard Gas Come from the Mustard Plant?
- Does Canola Oil Contains Trans Fats?
- Is Canola Oil A Pesticide?
- Is Canola Oil Used as an Industrial Oil?
- Is Erucic Acid in Rapeseed Oil Highly Toxic?
- Insects Won’t Eat Canola Plants?
- Where Did These Canola Oil Rumors Come From?
Does Mustard Gas Come from the Mustard Plant?
Mustard gas has nothing to do with the mustard plant or any plant in the mustard family. The gas derived its name because the impure form used in warfare had a yellow-brown color and an odor sometimes resembling mustard plants, but other times garlic, or horseradish. This was due to the sulfur.
The Mustard Family
The mustard family, however, is actually the family Brassicaceae from which all cabbages and cruciferous vegetables come. Brussels sprouts, cresses (watercress, wintercress, etc,) radishes, turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, rapini, and many others. It could also be called the cabbage family.
The family is, in fact, the single largest contributor of plant foods to the human diet, consisting of 330 genera with around 3,780 species around the world.
Therefore, warning people about the dangers of Canola oil because it is derived from a plant in the mustard family is senseless.
As explained here, Canola oil is extracted from the seeds of brassica napus, B. rapa or B. juncea species. These plants from the “mustard family” are also known as rape, oilseed rape, rapa, rappi, rapaseed. Therefore, the oil derived from its seeds is also called rapeseed oil.
The same warnings of the toxic dangers of canola oil correctly state that canola is not the name of the actual plant and that rapeseed oil was renamed canola oil by combining Canada with oil.
This seems to infer that the name was changed to hide the true source of the oil. However, the true reason the name was changed was because a cooking oil with the word “rape” in it probably would not sell well. After this name change, most Canadians adopted the word Canola not only for the oil but for the plant and its seeds.
Recent scarelore about the dangers of GMO foods have only heightened fears about canola oil. Interestingly, however, the canola oil warnings claimed that the plant was genetically engineered even though the production of the oil predates such GMO production by around 20 years.
While some canola oils sold today come from genetically engineered plants, most of the oil being sold at the time the warnings began did not.
Although many different types of netlore about the dangers of canola oil exist, some of the specific claims that have circulated are explained below.
Does Canola Oil Contains Trans Fats?
Canola oil has not been hydrogenated and so does not contain any artificially induced trans fats. If any, only trace amounts of trans fats will exist. These fats will not have occurred on purpose, and will pose no danger to human health (due to the miniscule amount).
Is Canola Oil A Pesticide?
Specifically, canola oil is claimed to be a biopesticide. Biopesticides are pesticides whose action is based on biological effects rather than chemical effect. It is true that canola oil can be used as a biopesticide.
Rapeseed oil has been used as a biopesticide although there are much cheaper and effective oils for this use such as petroleum and tar oils.
Rapeseed oil has been used as oil emulsions as summer sprays on apple trees. As a biopesticide, it poses no chemical threat whatsoever to humans or animals.
Canola oil, can be sprayed on trees and will smother the eggs and pupae of overwintering insects, and, when diluted can be used directly to control such pests as mealybugs, scales, mites, and thrips and many other pests. Only insects or eggs that come into direct contact with the oil are affected.
Canola oil is only one example of a household product that can be used as a natural pesticide. For instance, plain water is a pesticide. Small insects that eat the leaves of plants in your garden, such as aphids and mites, can be knocked off the plant when you spray them with water.
Sure, they will climb back up. But many of them will have had their mouthparts damaged from being forcefully torn away from the leaf they were feeding on. So, regular spraying can help control such insects. Saying water is dangerous because it is a natural biopesticide would be silly.
Soap is another example of a biopesticide. It can control aphids, small caterpillars, mites, and other insects with soft bodies. Similar to oils, soap only kills insects on contact. It will not affect insects crawling on the leaves after the soap has dried. Soaps are made from oils.
Although the warnings seek to link canola oil pesticide use with its claims of toxins, its effectiveness as a pesticide has nothing to do with toxins. Biopesticides are, instead, natural plant products that belong to a group of chemicals called secondary metabolites such as alkaloids, terpenoids, phenolics, and others. They have biological activity against insect pests while having no known function in plant physiology.
Is Canola Oil Used as an Industrial Oil?
Rapeseed oil, in highly refined states, is used as an industrial oil. There are many other examples of oils that are used for cooking and human consumption that are also used in industry:
- soybean oil
- cottonseed oil (small amounts)
- sunflower seed oil (small amounts)
- safflower oil
- linseed oil
The last deserves some special attention. I already mentioned linseed oil. It has a number of important industrial uses. It is used to make oil-based paints. It is also used to make linoleum.
Linseed oil comes from the seeds of the flax plant. In other words, it is flax oil, the same flax seed oil that contains beneficial Omega 3 acids and it is sold as widely as a nutritional supplement.
Rapeseed oils made from plants that contain a large amount of erucic acid and used to produce oil containing up to 50% erucic acid are thought to pose health risks to humans and are not suitable for use in livestock feed. They are therefore mainly used as sources of industrial oil.
Is Erucic Acid in Rapeseed Oil Highly Toxic?
Many parts of the world still produce high-erucic-acid varieties for human use rather than only industrial use. Erucic acid was, incidentally, the magic ingredient in “Lorenzo’s Oil” which was a supposed cure for the genetic disease adrenoleukodystrophy.
Canola oil is a specific trade name referring to rapeseed oil made from low-erucic acid plants (LEAR) and most oil made in Canada and Western Europe is this type of oil.
Erucic acid can be found in other foods and oils such as sunflower oil, salmon, cereal grains, and nuts. Its supposed danger to human health is based on scant evidence. The regulations concerning the use of LEAR oils for human consumption are based on studies from the 1970s, where experiments found evidence that erucic acid may be cardiotoxic in rats.
As well, in 1970, over 20,000 people were poisoned in Spain, a tragedy that became known as Toxic Oil Syndrome. This poisoning was initially thought to be caused by erucic acid in rapeseed oil but further investigation has shown that erucic acid was not to blame.
A number of oils were involved in the outbreak, including low-qualify olive oil, rapeseed oil, and and other vegetable oils. Some toxic compounds were found, including aniline or oleoanilide. However, erucic acid was present in such low amounts that researchers found it could not have been the cause of the poisoning. Further research by the Word Health Organization rule out erucic acid as the cause of poisoning.
Due to the limitations in the early rat studies and the proven fact that erucic acid was not involved in Toxic Oil Syndrome, together with its beneficial role in neurodegenerative diseases like adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), you should rest assured that erucic acid, is not highly toxic to humans. While it is probably not good for humans in high doses, it is not the dangerous villain it has been made out to be. 1Galanty A, Grudzińska M, Paździora W, Paśko P. Erucic Acid-Both Sides of the Story: A Concise Review on Its Beneficial and Toxic Properties. Molecules. 2023 Feb 17;28(4):1924. doi: 10.3390/molecules28041924. PMID: 36838911; PMCID: PMC9962393.
Regardless, Canola oil is only made from LEAR plants, or plant with low erucic acid content. It contains a high proportion of monounsaturated fatty acids which are beneficial to human health.
Insects Won’t Eat Canola Plants?
This type of claim is common in such internet myths. Often, insects, bacteria, mold, etc. “will not eat” the offending food. This claim that insects will not eat rapeseed or ‘canola’ because it is toxic is simply untrue. Rapeseed has pest problems just like any other plant crop.
Where Did These Canola Oil Rumors Come From?
The toxic canola oil scare has been helped greatly by the ridiculously nonfactual website Natural Health, among many others.
However, it may be that it started with an article by John Thomas called ‘Blindness, Mad Cow Disease, and Canola Oil,’ published by Perceptions magazine in 1996. Thomas claimed that:
Canola oil comes from the rape seed, which is part of the mustard family of plants. Rape is the most toxic of all food-oil plants. Like soy, rape is a weed. Insects will not eat it; it is deadly poisonous! The oil from the rape seed is a hundred times more toxic than soy oil…Canola is a semi-drying oil that is used as a lubricant, fuel, soap and synthetic rubber base, and as an illuminant for the slick color pages you see in magazines. It is an industrial oil and does not belong in the body!
He then went on to say that it formed latex-like substances in the blood (just like soy, but worse), causes blindness, emphysema, respiratory distress, anemia, constipation, and irritability. You’ll find most warnings tend to contain some of all of the elements used in his article, which can be read here.
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