From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: misc.kids.health,sci.med
Subject: Re: Canola oil
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 21:17:15 -0700

Tsu Dho Nimh wrote in message ...
>"john" <whale@whaleto.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Research submitted by Chas
>
>http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blcanola.htm
>http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blcanola2.htm
>http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blcanola3.htm
>
>http://www.canola.ab.ca/
>
>Seem to nicely debunk this "research".
>
>
>>My sister spilled Canola oil on a piece of fabric, after 5 pre-treatings
>>and harsh washings, the oil spot still showed. She stopped using Canola
>>oil ,wondering what it did to our insides if it could not be removed
>>from cloth easily.



COMMENT

Probably the same thing as it does to the cloth. Luckily for you, your
insides slough their lining every couple of days, and the molecules
which are permanently bonded to them by free radical chemistry go
with.  It's better than Spray 'n Wash and no doubt it has a lot to do
with keeping us mammals alive so long, while we eat polyunsaturates
and gulp air the whole time.

Yes, linolenic acid in rapeseed, linseed, and canola has a lot to do with
its interesting chemistry. Paint thinners for oil based paints are mostly
linseed, and these oils are called "drying oils" because their free
radical chemistry is what makes the paints "dry." This is not a process
of losing water, as with latexes. Rather, the hardening is an
oxygen-driven free-radical cascade chain-reaction vinyl polymerization.
It goes faster in the omega 3's oils because they have a double bond out
there near the periphery of the molecule, hanging out there in the
breeze, so to speak, where any other molecule with an unpaired electron
can latch onto the pi cloud. And then off you go.  These things go
rancid. They polymerize to gunk. They give off toxic stuff that yellows
photographs in the vicinity, for months. They heat up enough to cause
spontaneous combustion!

However, it's hard to prove that any of this does much to your body, with
the possible exception of your gut epithelium, which may be stimulated to
form polyps and cancers a little more often under free radical attack. In
the rest of you, if you eat enough vitamin E, you stop this cascade
before it does much. It's hard to even measure it without some very
careful chemistry, and in animals which have been shorted in several key
defense systems. Megadosing mammals with vitamin E does not make them
live any longer, nor does giving them fewer polyunsaturates. Nor does
giving them MORE polyunsaturates kill them faster, all other things being
roughly in good shape. Not too many answers there.


>>Ask for it at your nursery. Rape is an oil that is used as a lubricant,
>>fuel, soap and synthetic rubber base and as a illuminate for color pages
>>in magazines. It is an industrial oil. It is not a food.
>
>  Odd, it was used as a food by the Vikings, along with flax-seed
>oil and hemp-seed oils, both of which are also used for
>industrial purposes.

I've heard it on good authority that the Vikings were big on rape -).

In Europe, colza oil has been used for a long time without too many
problems.  If rapeseed oil is cardiotoxic, it's not due to the same
properties that make it go rancid, but rather due to the erucic acid, as
has been noted.  But even that influence is hard to find
epidemiologically.

SBH