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Canola On Bread?? It's Much Better To Walk In

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Amid the heated controversy over canola oil, critics of canola oil hasten to point out that it is a byproduct of rapeseed, several species of rapeseed contain high levels of erucic acid. This is a toxic substance that when consumed in large quantities, can be deadly to humans, according to Katherine Zeratsky, a registered nutritionist and licensed dietician from the Mayo Clinic.

While the toxicity allegations about rapeseed and erucic acid have a measure of truth, certain realities have been overlooked. Canola oil for human consumption is being extracted from special hybrid rapeseed cultivars. According to Catherine Zeratsky, these hybrid cultivars are now formally being recognized as “special canola plants”, bred specifically to reduce their erucic acid content. 

ADDENDUM: 2020- Unlike ordinary canola plants, these hybrid plants have much lower levels of erucic acid. In spite of these new facts, consumers would be well advised, to continue moderating their use of this oil.

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    • Hello, Jolanta, of course, you are right and I just love olive oil in everything. Here in the Western Cape of South Africa, we are growing the finest award winning kalamata and green olives and wines of all types but you know, our own products are so expensive to buy, the only olive products ordinary citizens can afford are questionable low-grade supermarket blends.

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    • It is one of those unexplainable questions and one we in the know, all struggle with. Rapeseed is a poison, period! It’s like cigarette smoking, not everyone will die of lung cancer but no one knows beforehand. I am a diabetic and my right leg was amputated and we all thought:”Oh yeah, diabetes did it.” But we were all dead wrong! The surgeon showed me a yellow layer of something running through the wound tissue then asked me how many cigarettes I smoke. I told him that I had quit 25 years ago. He said that smoking was had clogged up my arteries and that was why he had to remove my leg and not diabetes! So I hope you can see the complexity of your Rapeseed question in my story. My answer is, who knows?

    • Hello Ge’ The fields of canola in the Western Cape where I lived for 15 years are as strikingly beautiful as in the photo. The area is called “Ruens” in Afrikaans (my native language) it literarily means “Backs”, as in winter, the hundreds of hills look like gray elephant backs, all packed tightly together, stretching for miles. Thank you for reading.