We’ve gotten a veritable avalanche of emails in response to my post on the secret history of Canola Oil. Some are particularly vehement. Which brings me to one in particular from TPM Reader CB. He actually says in his email “Please don’t use my name anywhere” so I am simply referring as ‘Canola Oil Badass’ (i.e. ‘CB’) who accuses me of “playing up the ‘secret conspiracy’ angle [to] you denigrate a very healthy and affordable food oil by smearing it as the product of some sort of nefarious, secret scheme.”
From CB …
Josh’s Canola post had a slightly off smell to it for me: I’ll try to explain why.
1. Why revel in your ignorance? That Canola is from a plant developed from plants in the large family of rape vegetables is not a secret, and most cooks know what it is.
2. Which leads me to, “You don’t cook, do you?” Canola is better for pan or wok frying because its smoke point is up to 100 degrees higher than olive oil.
3. Canola is comparable to olive oil in nutrition: Less saturated fat (7 to olive oil’s 13 percent), and more polyunsaturated fat (33 to 8). Where olive oil is strong is monounsaturated fat, but not by that much: Canola is 55 to olive oil’s 74). Peanut oil is 17-46-32 for S-M-P, soybean oil 14-23-58. (Data from Harold McGee’s book.)
4. Canola is a hybrid of Brassica rapa and Brassica oleracea. Brassica rapa is a plant species, and includes turnips, broccoli rabe, bok choy, napa cabbage. Yes, all these plants are variants of the same species, and can interbreed. Brassica oleracea is also a species that has many variants, including cabbage, kale, collards (kale and collards are the same species variant, Brassica acephala), cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi. These too are all one species. (Source: McGee, again.)
5. By playing up the “secret conspiracy” angle you denigrate a very healthy and affordable food oil by smearing it as the product of some sort of nefarious, secret scheme. The news hook of a town changing its slogan is pretty weak.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/canola.asp
http://books.google.co.jp/books?hl=ja&id=bKVCtH4AjwgC&q=canola
(Please don’t use my name anywhere.)
