RE: Canola Oil

["Thomas, Barb" <thomas@amgen.com>]

Comments on the canola oil (a nickel's worth):
The sky is also falling!!!  Please!!!  I've never heard such hysterical
outcry of so many things gone wrong blamed on one plant.  Even if there
was a bit of truth to any item in this tirade, it is completely
discredited by all the garbage that goes with it.  Some examples:
Canola oil is a plant product and cholesterol is animal-derived so the
canola oil probably did not directly cause an increase in cholesterol
(maybe indirectly by stimulating the person's liver to make it produce
more cholesterol, but this is pretty far-fetched).  You can't "pay" and
get on the GRAS list.  There are very specific requirements outlined in
21 CFR 170 and other federal regulations for GRAS qualifications.
Scrapie is a viral disease of sheep and goats and the causative agent is
the virus (and this particular virus has some very unusual properties
and adaptations when transmitted from species to species), not canola
oil.  I'm sure that if you searched through all the species in any food
plant family, you'd find related toxic plants (referring to the mustard
gas garbage and pass the Grey Poupon and Jif, please).  If there are
this many
problems with canola oil, we must be a nation of nerve damaged, bruised
and bleeding, mushy-brained, blind and deranged people... those of us
who survived the embryonic state, that is.  This kind of overdone
sensationalism really gets me steamed!  I'd love to know the studies and
sources that have proven all this.

Barb