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SOYBEAN OIL VERSUS RAPESEED OIL IN INDIA hile canola oil is displacing soybean oil in many American processed foods, soybean oil is displacing traditional rapeseed oil in India. In her book Stolen Harvest, Indian author Dr Vandana Shiva describes how American _ industrially processed soy oil replaced traditional seed oils in a large part of India. Each region in India has its specific edible oil used for cooking. In the North and East it is rapeseed oil, in the West it is peanut oil, in the Deccan it is sesame and in Kerala it is coconut. In India, rapeseed or mustard oil was traditionally sold in small quantities, extracted as needed with a small oil press or ghanis. Oil processing provided employment for thousands of artisans and ensured that the housewife had a fresh product. The oil cake was then fed to cattle (with no apparent negative effects). Mustard oil also served as mosquito repellent and as a nonpolluting oil in lamps. Within a few months after the advent of "free trade" for soybean oil into India, thousands of Indians fell ill with "dropsy" due to a mysterious adulteration of rapeseed oil. The government banned the sale of all unpackaged edible oils, thus ensuring an end to all household and community-level oil processing. Edible oil production became fully industrialised and local processing became a criminal act. Thousands of workers were dispossessed of their livelihood and millions of Indians were dispossessed of a healthy oil. Cheap, highly processed soy oil immediately replaced rapeseed oil in the markets. During the crisis, the US Soybean Association pushed for soybean imports as the "solution". One business publication reported: "US farmers need big new export markets. India is a perfect match." Growth was achieved by theft of an important part of the small-scale local economy. SOYBEAN OIL VERSUS RAPESEED OIL IN INDIA Says Professor Wolke: "I found no research studies indicating that today's low-erucic- acid canola oil, as distinguished from ordinary rapeseed oil, is harmful to humans." That's because, even though canola oil now has GRAS status, no long-term studies on humans have been done. Animal studies on Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed oil were performed when the oil was first developed and have continued to the present. The results challenge not only the health claims made for canola oil, but also the theoretical underpinnings of the diet-heart hypothesis. The first published studies on the new oil were performed in 1978 at the Unilever research facility in the Netherlands.'' The industry was naturally interested to know whether the new LEAR oil caused heart lesions in test animals. In earlier studies, animals fed high-erucic-acid rapeseed oil showed growth retardation and undesirable changes in various organs, especially the heart—a discovery that touched off the so-called "erucic acid crisis" and spurred plant geneticists to develop new versions of the seed. The results of the LEAR study were mixed. Rats genetically selected to be prone to heart lesions developed more lesions on the LEAR oil and the flax oil than those on olive oil or sunflower oil, leading researchers to speculate that the omega-3 fatty acids (not eru- cic acid) in LEAR and flax oil might be the culprit. But rats genetically selected to be resistant to heart lesions showed no significant difference between the four oils tested, and LEAR oil did not cause heart problems in mice, in contrast to high-erucic oil which induced severe cardiac necrosis. In 1979, researchers at the Canadian Institute for Food Science and Technology pooled the results of 23 experiments involving rats at four independent laboratories. All looked at the effects of LEAR and other oils on the incidence of heart lesions. They found that saturated fats (palmitic and stearic acids) were protective against heart lesions, but that high levels of omega-3 fatty acids correlated with high levels of lesions. They found a lesser correlation with heart lesions and erucic acid.’* In 1982, the same research group published a paper that looked at the interaction of saturated fats with LEAR oil and soybean oil. When saturated fats in the form of cocoa butter were added to the diets, the rats in both groups had better growth and a significant lowering of heart lesions. Said the authors: "These results support the hypothesis that myocardial lesions in male rats are related to the balance of dietary fatty acids and not to cardiotoxic contaminants in the oils." Canadian researchers looked at LEAR oils again in 1997. They found that piglets fed milk replacement containing canola oil showed signs of vitamin E deficiency, even though the milk replacement contained adequate amounts of vitamin E." Piglets fed soy- bean oil-based milk replacement, fortified with the same amount of vitamin E, did not show an increased requirement for vitamin E. Vitamin E protects cell membranes against free radical damage and is vital to a healthy cardiovascular system. In a 1998 paper, the same research group reported that piglets fed canola oil suffered from a decrease in platelet count and an increase in platelet size." Bleeding time was longer in piglets fed both canola oil and rapeseed oil. These changes were mitigated by the addition of saturated fatty acids from either cocoa butter or coconut oil to the piglets’ diet. These results were confirmed in another study a year later. Canola oil was found to suppress the normal developmental increase in platelet count.'° Finally, studies carried out at the Health Research and Toxicology Research Divisions in Ottawa, Canada, discovered that rats bred to have high blood pressure and proneness to stroke had shortened life-spans when fed canola oil as the sole source of fat.” The results of a later study suggested that the culprit was the sterol compounds in the oil, which "make the cell membrane more rigid" and contribute to the shortened life-span of the animals."* These studies all point in the same direction: that canola oil is definitely not healthy for the cardiovascular system. Like rapeseed oil, its predecessor, canola oil is associated with fibrotic lesions of the heart. It also causes vitamin E deficiency, undesirable changes in the blood platelets, and shortened life-span in stroke-prone rats when it was the only oil in the animals' diet. Furthermore, it seems to retard growth, which is why the FDA does not allow the use of canola oil in infant formula.” When saturated fats are added to the diet, the undesirable effects of canola oil are miti- gated. Most interesting of all is the fact that many studies show that the problems with canola oil are not related to the content of erucic acid, but more with the high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and low levels of saturated fats. 34 * NEXUS CANOLA OIL STUDIES www.nexusmagazine.com AUGUST — SEPTEMBER 2002