The Healthy Oil Delusion

by Heinz R Gisel
(La Jolla, CA, USA)

Canola (rapeseed) Oil and/or Soybean Oil are found in almost every US household and their presence is evident in almost all prepared foods in supermarkets, fast food and restaurant meals. One or the other, and often both of these oils are ubiquitous in almost all bakery goods, candies, chocolate, cookies, snacks, chips, salads, condiments, cereals and a myriad of other foods. These oils are so common because they are cheap, easy to use and basically healthy, if they are natural and minimally processed.

But the demand for these oils at lowest cost has grown so dramatically, that natural and minimally processed are terms of the distant past. Today, almost all commercial Soybean and Canola oil in America is made from genetically modified, Monsanto "Roundup Ready" (RR) crops. In 1997 more than 90 percent of soybeans in the US were grown conventionally, but in as little as ten years, the Monsanto Biotech crops reached a whopping 90 percent. The numbers for genetically modified RR rapeseed are almost identical.

The cheap price of these GM oils has spawned aggressive development of Biotech versions of other oil plants, including safflower, sunflower and palm oil. Moreover, the cheap price of GM-crops leads to gigantic fraud schemes, where more expensive oils, typically Olive oil is being diluted.

While the health safety effects of genetically modified variety of soybeans and rapeseeds are hotly debated, even more disturbing "collateral fallout" has recently surfaced. Monsanto has been aggressively peddling RR GM-seeds not just to dominate the global soy and rapeseed growths, but to sell Roundup weed killer and fertilizer - the two are sold as a package and RR is - where GM-crops are.

A recent publication of a scientific study unveils shocking news: the Roundup residues end up in the harvested crop and these toxins cause cell damage in humans' even at very low levels. The study found that some of these formulations lead to DNA damage and cell death within 24 hours.

Now let's consider that GM-soy is staple food and feed, thus these toxins residues will appear not only in oils, but also in meat, eggs, milk, soy milk, tofu, etc. Already it is difficult to avoid products with Canola or Soybean oil, but these findings lead to the conclusion that even "certified Organic" labeled foods and pricey Olive oil may check out positive for RR residues.

It follows that the safest food is the home grown produce and where that is not an option, we should at least check out our food sources more diligently than ever before.

References:

Wikipedia, search terms Canola Oil, Soybean Oil, Roundup.

Chemical Research in Toxicology. 2009 Jan; 22 (1):97-105. Glyphosate formulations induce apoptosis and necrosis in human umbilical, embryonic, and placental cells. University of Caen, France.

Chemical Research in Toxicology. 2002, 15 (3), pp 326-331. Pesticide Roundup Provokes Cell Division Dysfunction at the Level of CDK1/Cyclin B Activation. Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Cedex, France. Copyright American Chemical Society.

Related reading: http://www.vitalityconcepts.com