Rapeseed oil

[Tigerhair]

Just been reading up on this - less saturated fat than Olive Oil and more Omega 3. Also it's available from crops locally. That has to be good. Oh and it says it tastes nice too.

[mrsflibble]

most "vegetable" oil sold in supermarkets is from rapeseed.

[Thurston Garden]

Seem to remember an article on R4 during the summer where a farm had been specialising in different varieties of rape oil and selling it in their farm shop as an alternative to olive oil. I think they did some blindfolded taste tests and the rape oil came out tops!

[Tigerhair]

There's a farm in Northamptonshire that does that - but I think it'll be sold in (argh) Sains soon

[snapdragon]

It's probably very good for you - and local - but fields full of blardy 'yellow muck' round here in spring/summer set off OH's hayfever and makes for misery household
If only they'd just grow it away from the roads

I prefer it when they plant linseed - tis a very pretty shade of blue

[mauzi]

Hi all,

There is currently a lot of concern about the use of rape seed oil as a human food source (also known as Canola - named after a Canadian oil). I did have some links to some very disturbing articles (will have a look and see if I can find them). In the short some of the concerns were its carcinogenic properties, the fact that it was originally grown as an industrial lubricant ( I believe it has actually been taken off the market as suitable for human consumption in some countries). It requires enormous processing to take it from a black oil to the oil that we recognize (not sure if that includes other modern strains though - although the seed is black so I am guessing it is so for all varieties). My DH is a chef and will not use it at all as he has had concerns over it for some 20 years so as you can guess we don't use it in our place.

Another concern that I have with Canola (or rapeseed) is that much of it is genetically modified - if fact it has just been approved to grow it as a GM crop in Australia beginning in March. This leads to all sorts of issues for our organic producers as well as for all of us as it readily crosses with any of the brassica family which basically means all our seed could be contaminated with GM grown rapeseed. I think it is a bit of a worry.

[contadina]

I have several misgivings about canola/rapeseed oil, not least, that much of it is genetically modified, which causes a real problem for organic growers. The problem has become so great in North America that Canadian organic farmers have stopped growing it.

I’m also highly suspicious of the marketing campaign praising it as the new all-singing-all-dancing healthy oil. It was not so long ago that we were all fed the lie that margarine (in all its synthetic glory) was far healthier than butter.

Old-fashioned fats, however, are generally more expensive to produce and do not provide such a high rate of profit for their manufacturers. The creation of canola is an attempt to generate a monounsaturated fat that offers higher returns for its manufacturers than olive oil does.

Like Canola, some sunflower seed and safflower oils, olive oil contains monounsaturated fats; but unlike the first three, olive oil is the only vegetable oil that can be consumed as it is - freshly pressed from the fruit. Canola is rapeseed oil that has been processed to remove toxic chemicals. Such processing removes the natural antioxidants in the oil and takes away it's flavour.

Olive oil has been around for thousands of years, furthermore, whereas canola oil is a relatively recent development and the original crops were unfit for human consumption due to their high content of a dangerous fatty acid called euric acid.

Like these guys, http://www.taoistlife.com/processedfoods.html
I'm very suspicious of a food industry that favours processed foods over natural ones.

[Cheezy]

I think you've got to be careful. from what i've read you have canola oil which is gm modified rape seed oil. Then you've got rape seed oil, which I think in th eUK is still gm free? As usual the gov. has managed to confuse everyone so know one knows if the UK is gm free or not (the suspicious would say this was deliberate)

However there is a product in the UK which is cold pressed rape seed oil (like olive oil) and is unprocessed. It's obviously more expensive than heat processing, but doesn't use extraction chemicals.

see here for an example:

http://www.laemunns.com/rapeseed.html

And here's a concise explaination from the Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 341694.ece

My point of view is that where I need a good quality oil that is not strongly tasting (some frying, dressings and mayonaise for example) I use locally produced rapeseed oil. (or hemp but that is very strongly tasting of hay!)

If I want olive oil I use as good a quality olive oil as I can find/afford.

Please also remember that "cheap " olive oil (ie not extra virgin cold pressed) is also quite often heat treated and extracted via chemicals.

And my final food for thought is what is know as the Gastcony Paradox. Due to the huge production of ducks and geese in the Gastcony region (for forgrae, but thats another debate) the locals main fat and food is based on animal fats, and yet in France they have half the heart disease of the US, and in Gastcony they have half that of the French average!.
It has now been shown that duck and goose fat is actually not a "hard" fat and contains a lot of unsaturated fat .

THis is an interesting article:

http://www.health-report.co.uk/saturate ... nefits.htm

[pskipper]

Nope, all rape seed oil is genetically modified. It was a big thing when I was doing my A-level biology.

The modification was to reduce the level of a protein which rape seed plants produce which can be toxic, so unlike the GM crops we here about these days where they are inserting genes, the alteration to the rape seed plant was one which could have been achieved with decades of careful breeding and will therefore not have any environmental impact, there is no chance of gene release or any of the other current concerns to do with GM.

You'll find that most supermarket products contain vegetable oil which is either rape seed oil or palm oil. I don't need to point out the ethical problems regarding palm oil and so if you are completely against GM crops (or like me allergic to the trace amounts of nasty protein remaining in oil seed rape) it makes shopping a lot more interesting! Actually with more products using sunflower oil these days it isn't too bad.

[contadino]

Please also remember that "cheap " olive oil (ie not extra virgin cold pressed) is also quite often heat treated and extracted via chemicals.

There are two types of olive press that I've come across. The cold presses, and the linear mills. The linear mills do heat the pulp (which has detrimental effects on the polyphenols) but I've never seen any chemicals used. The oil is always separated from the juice via a centrifuge.

We always use the cold presses for our oil, but that's for two reasons:

1. Cold-pressed oil maintains its properties for longer (higher burn point, less degradation of the acidity levels over time, etc..)
2. For the UK market, it's considered to be better.

Here in Italy (where I'd venture people have a better understanding of olive oil), people aren't interested in whether it is cold pressed or linear pressed. They want fresh oil, with as low an acidity level as possible. The type of the olives used to make the oil are also important.

As for rapeseed oil, I saw some getting loaded onto a vessel once, and it is a smelly, dark brown sludge. The process of refining it to make it palatable is far more complicated.

[ina]

As for rapeseed oil, I saw some getting loaded onto a vessel once, and it is a smelly, dark brown sludge. The process of refining it to make it palatable is far more complicated.

There are massive differences between types of rapeseed oil - check out this:
http://www.farrington-oils.co.uk/interestingoil.html

It's NOT dark brown, it's naturally yellow - it doesn't even get filtered and comes out this colour!

[contadino]

As for rapeseed oil, I saw some getting loaded onto a vessel once, and it is a smelly, dark brown sludge. The process of refining it to make it palatable is far more complicated.

There are massive differences between types of rapeseed oil - check out this:
http://www.farrington-oils.co.uk/interestingoil.html

It's NOT dark brown, it's naturally yellow - it doesn't even get filtered and comes out this colour!

Well I was a commodity trader at the time, working on a desk where 20,000 tonnes of it was regularly traded daily. The rapeseed oil I saw was a lorry-load of oil that I'd bought, being loaded onto a vessel for shipment. It was dark brown, and stank. All the rapeseed oil on the docks was the same.

But then as I'm now an olive farmer, I expect people to take my word with a pinch of salt - just as I don't believe a website of a company selling rapeseed oil to give balanced facts.