It's always entertaining for me when my dad starts to spout out information about anything health related. I'm quite often inclined to immediately disagree with his normally outdated information as I've watched enough Netflix food documentaries to sometimes feel like I'm a qualified nutritionist, and this weekend was no different.
As an avid Countryfile watcher, my dad came home on Sunday evening and whilst watching me spoon out a scoop of coconut oil he asked me very smugly if I'd heard of rapeseed oil. Rapeseed oil it transpired had been one of the topics of tonights Countryfile episode and he was keen to show off his new found health knowledge.
Well, yes, I had heard of rapeseed oil. But alarm bells had sounded in my head as soon as he had mentioned it. I had flashbacks of watching one of the 10,000 food docs on Netflix and although I couldn't remember exactly what I had heard about it, I knew that it wasn't good.
I proceeded to spend the next half an hour googling away trying to find articles to back up my fairly poor argument of "it's not good for you". However, even after all that time spent on various search engines, I couldn't find anything substantial to support my case.
It was at this point I decided I needed to see for myself what the BBC had said about rapeseed oil, and I needed to spend some time researching the benefits and dangers of this "super oil".
I can't say it's everyday I find myself on iPlayer searching for Countryfile, but you know, needs must and all. A few facts I managed to pull from the show:
- You can grow 3.5-4.5 tonnes of rapeseed per hectare of land (about the size of a football pitch)
- That amount of rapeseed can produce from 2000-2500 bottles of rapeseed oil
- It has 1/4 of the saturated fat of classic olive oils and has the lowest saturated fat content of any vegetable oil
After doing a little bit of internet searching I also found that Sue Quinn from The Telegraph had written similar findings plus others including:
- It's rich in vitamin E and Omega-3
- It has a higher smoke point than olive oil (all oils if heated above a certain temperature can become toxic in the body)
- It has the fastest growing sales in the UK (+24%) whilst olive oil has declining sales (-8%)
As it turns out, I did find a long list of dangers of rapeseed oil (or canola oil if you're from the US). Things such as it contains up to 40% erucic acid which is toxic to humans, it's genetically modified, it's used as a pesticide so shouldn't be consumed,it can cause emphysema and mad cows disease amongst other diseases and even that it's part of the same family that formed the mustard gas used to kill people in WWII.
However, whether or not they were true at some point, a lot of these just don't apply anymore. Rapeseed oil that is cold pressed in the UK contains less than 0.5% of erucic acid which is deemed as insignificant and completely safe. The new types of rapeseed that contain less toxins were bread using traditional plant cross breeding, not genetic engineering. There's no sound scientific evidence to support that it causes any of the diseases it's been related to in articles across the internet and although rapeseed is linked to the mustard family, no actual mustard was used in the toxic mustard gas - it's name was given because of the smell it gave off.
Now, I'm a stubborn girl. Like father like daughter. And although I'm fairly certain there's nothing dangerous or particularly unhealthy about using this oil (in fact there seem to be more health benefits to it than I thought), I'm a creature of habit and I think it will take some time for me to make the switch to rapeseed oil. I need to do some more digging, but who knows, rapeseed oil might sneak it's way into my kitchen cupboard sooner than I thought.
What are your thoughts on rapeseed oil? Have you read anything or watched anything that's put you off or had you rushing to the supermarket to pick it up?
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