The Lemon Fool

The crackpot vegan fad prejudicing the health of those who don't read the ingredients label.
Read about the disgraceful removal by stealth of vitamin D.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20599

V8

88V8 wrote:The crackpot vegan fad prejudicing the health of those who don't read the ingredients label.
Read about the disgraceful removal by stealth of vitamin D.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20599

V8

Veganism isn’t a fad. Not if the shelves of my local supermarket are to be believed anyway.

HYD

I only use butter but if you must use marg., be sure that it isn't hydogenated.

john

We've pretty much gone over to the Bertolli butter/olive oil spread, which does seem to have the sat fats constrained, even though it does contain some palm oil as well as the olive oil. A bit pricier than some other margarines, but the taste is fine.

Works for us, anyway. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/p ... /283788193

BJ

88V8 wrote:The crackpot vegan fad prejudicing the health of those who don't read the ingredients label.
Read about the disgraceful removal by stealth of vitamin D.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20599

V8

No personal criticism intended, honestly, but this sort of comment reminds me of all those dystopian futures we experience in books and films. What have we come to when we expect the food producers to inject vitamins into food because the food is so artificial that anything 'natural' is removed?

I remember many years ago when things like Cornflakes had big words advertising the vitamins... that they'd had to add due to the processing.
Likewise cheap vegetable oils being treated with hydrogen at high temperatures over Nickel catalysts to create long chain fatty acids to give a more butter-like texture. The joke 30 years ago was, you can sell anything, even a dog turd, if you stick it in a plastic tub and print a sunflower on the lid. Then use words like 'Natural', 'Organic', 'Health' etc.

Just eat normal butter in moderation. It's a damn sight more healthy than that stuff called margarine. The last time I ate this crap was probably in the early 80s. I studied Biochemistry, and how the digestive enzymes cope with this junk was a mystery. I'm pretty sure that it contributes to plaques in the arteries.

Though I'm sure that a sunflower on the packaging makes it really healthy.

Steve

I've been using an olive spread because it says made with Mediterranean (Spanish) olive oil. Though when I read the carton, it says reduced fat spread (59%) made with a blend of vegetable oils 38% and olive oil 21%. It also mentions rapeseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, water and whey powder, amongst other things. So I don't really know if the 21% olive oil outweighs the others and whether overall its better.

richfool wrote:I've been using an olive spread because it says made with Mediterranean (Spanish) olive oil. Though when I read the carton, it says reduced fat spread (59%) made with a blend of vegetable oils 38% and olive oil 21%. It also mentions rapeseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, water and whey powder, amongst other things. So I don't really know if the 21% olive oil outweighs the others and whether overall its better.

Well, since 59=38+21, I assume that the fat IS the veg oil and olive oil. That's why is says 'made with' and not 'contains'. Rather like saying that your bricks are held together with cement and sand, even though the mortar is very different. They have simply used high temp & catalyst to bind veg oils and olive oils to the glycerol molecule to make a form of fat.

Our Prof, 35 years ago simply said that we should always consider the millions of years of evolution and what made our brains bigger, the human digestive system then ask ourselves what has changed recently. I simply can't imagine early humans gathering tons of grain and, rather than using them for flour or soups, squeezing all the oil out and eating that. Yes, the digestive system can cope because the body is so damned amazing, but the stuff can't be doing us any good and is certainly not natural. Despite the bleedin' sunflower!

Steve

stevensfo wrote:

richfool wrote:I've been using an olive spread because it says made with Mediterranean (Spanish) olive oil. Though when I read the carton, it says reduced fat spread (59%) made with a blend of vegetable oils 38% and olive oil 21%. It also mentions rapeseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil, water and whey powder, amongst other things. So I don't really know if the 21% olive oil outweighs the others and whether overall its better.

Well, since 59=38+21, I assume that the fat IS the veg oil and olive oil. That's why is says 'made with' and not 'contains'. Rather like saying that your bricks are held together with cement and sand, even though the mortar is very different. They have simply used high temp & catalyst to bind veg oils and olive oils to the glycerol molecule to make a form of fat.

I think the question was whether any of the 38% constituents (rapeseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil) outweighed the 21% value of the olive oil.

In which case it should be called, for example, rapeseed spread and not olive spread.

Scott.

swill453 wrote:I think the question was whether any of the 38% constituents (rapeseed oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil) outweighed the 21% value of the olive oil.

In which case it should be called, for example, rapeseed spread and not olive spread.

Happy to be corrected, but as far as I know rapeseed oil is considered to be healthier than many others**. I just wish they'd call it something else.

BJ

**Including olive oil. Of course, it doesn't taste of anything, but ho hum, you can't have everything.....

bungeejumper wrote:Happy to be corrected, but as far as I know rapeseed oil is considered to be healthier than many others**. I just wish they'd call it something else.

I know, and I seek it out. But not by going for anything branded "Finest Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Rapeseed Oil" in a fancy glass bottle and charged at a premium.

No, I look at the ingredients of the cheapest "vegetable oil" at about a quid a litre and invariably find it's 100% rapeseed oil.

Scott.

bungeejumper wrote:Happy to be corrected, but as far as I know rapeseed oil is considered to be healthier than many others**. I just wish they'd call it something else.

BJ
**Including olive oil. Of course, it doesn't taste of anything, but ho hum, you can't have everything.....

It is called something else: Canola! I really don't know why some people in the UK and a few other countries continue to call it Rapeseed. That's a complete mystery. Though it may be a way of muddying the waters since Canola is (apparently) a far healthier variety of traditional Rapeseed.

Only saying this cos I used to work in DNA analysis of grain and we stopped calling it Rapeseed about 20 years ago. I have no idea why it is still used on labels. If it is really labelled Rapeseed, rather than Canola, then I wouldn't touch it with the proverbial bargepole.


Steve

stevensfo wrote:It is called something else: Canola! I really don't know why some people in the UK and a few other countries continue to call it Rapeseed. That's a complete mystery. Though it may be a way of muddying the waters since Canola is (apparently) a far healthier variety of traditional Rapeseed.

According to the infallible Wikipedia, Canola was a commercial trade mark ("Canadian oil, low acid"), which belonged to the Rapeseed Association of Canada. And maybe it still does? Either way, I can imagine why some/many producers have preferred not to tangle with what might be a grey legal area? Even though science has long since 'thermosed' the expression.

So what does the Canola word say to me? An Italian painter, of course, floating around majestically in a gondola with an intravenous drip in his arm. Or dancing, perhaps, with a bottle of iced Coca Canola at his side? Or, indeed, all of those at once?

BJ

stevensfo wrote:Only saying this cos I used to work in DNA analysis of grain and we stopped calling it Rapeseed about 20 years ago. I have no idea why it is still used on labels. If it is really labelled Rapeseed, rather than Canola, then I wouldn't touch it with the proverbial bargepole.

Canola is not a term that's ever been used in this country. Rest assured that the product labelled rapeseed oil in the shops is more or less the same thing.

Scott.

It would seem that canola is a variation of rapeseed oil, that has had a couple of things removed from it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola_oil

That said, they have a couple key genetic differences. Canola was created through plant-breeding in order to get rid of two undesirable components of rapeseed.

Rapeseed oil and canola oil also get mixed up because they can be labeled incorrectly outside of Canada and the United States.

https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-dif ... eed-206047

Rapeseed oil is used for industrial and culinary purposes. To be called canola oil, it must have a lower erucic acid content and meet international standards. It was named canola oil after Canada, its largest producer.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ra ... ssing-uses

Another key selling point is the health-giving profile of rapeseed oil. It has the lowest saturated fat content of any cooking oil – half that of olive oil – and is rich in Vitamin E and omega-3 and 6 fatty acids. With a higher sm

oke point than olive oil – which can be toxic at very high temperatures – rapeseed oil is a better option for frying and roasting.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrin ... eseed.html

You can be sure the culinary rapeseed oil sold here has low erucic acid.

Scott.

swill453 wrote:You can be sure the culinary rapeseed oil sold here has low erucic acid.

You can also be sure it won't contain GM materials, as 90% of the US production does. Even the US giant Mazola runs its European Union operations through a Dutch subsidiary which ensures that no GM rapeseed ever makes it into European bottles.

Well, that's what they tell us. Ask me again about British supplies in three years' time.

But all may not be lost after we become the 51st US state. There's a half-reasonable write-up about specifically British advances at https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/20 ... 5114107797. The key word seems to be "cold pressed".

I do a microscopically small amount of frying - usually when preparing meats to go into casseroles, etc - but I do notice canola's thin, runny, taste-free character and I'd always use olive oil if I wanted anything better. It amuses me somewhat to hear that, until the 1970s, rapeseed oil was used primarily in steam engines, ocean going vessels and the like. Before the canola variants were created, it was really very toxic to humans.

BJ

I have noticed that marketing people are busy trying to convince us that rapeseed (canola) oil is a healthy alternative. However rapeseed, as mentioned above, needs extensive processing to make it palatable / edible - and for that reason, I would suggest, it is not a good choice.

Olive oil needs little processing and I would always choose it in preference.

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/dear-mark-canola-oil/