[DoctorBeaver]

Perhaps you could repeat the experiment with a nut oil like nutmeg oil. It too should be more difficult to wash out

Have you tried washing out turmeric?

Turmeric may slow Alzheimer's disease
Turmeric may combat diabetes
Turmeric may prevent bowel cancer

[Bored chemist]

As Blakestyger already pointed out, the "it's difficult to wash out" is a complete red herring anyway.
I usually treat curry stains with borax before washing them; it seems to help.
Of course, since borax is toxic I should presumably (according to the sort of logic shown  before) avoid all foreign food.

[DoctorBeaver]

I know it was a red herring. I was adding to the shoal  []

By the way, do you extract the Borax from your cocaine stash?  []

[blakestyger]

...I should presumably (according to the sort of logic shown  before) avoid all foreign food.

Is foreign food toxic? [:0]

[Bored chemist]

It must be, some of it difficult to wash out of clothes. Not only that but the people who made mustard gas wore clothes too!

[miriam0920 (OP)]

I will have a look at the labels on things I buy when I'm out shopping today.



[/quote]

At least you are more conscious of what you are digesting and feeding your system.

[miriam0920 (OP)]

BC, so when I talked about trans-fat you didn't make any comments.  As a good "scientist" in this post, you should have promoted the good argument (accordingly to you) and ignore the wrong arguments.  Unfortunately, you didn't.  You stir the stinky one over and time again.
Peace out.

[Bored chemist]

Why say things like that which simply are not true?
Here's some of what I said about trans fats..

What is this ""Mostly all the cooking oil are partially hydrogenated soy. "
Well, if that's true then since, as you say, hydrogenated oils are often high in trans fatty acids (which seems not to be a good thing) it would be better to use some other oil
Canola oil would fit the bill. It's used as-is rather than hydrogenated.

" Why you do think companies are now proclaiming "NO TRANS-FAT" in their commercial labels? "
Because there is evidence that trans fats are a bad thing.
So what?
Canola oil isn't a good sourse of trans fats.
"Because people are investigating, they know that trans-fat is a man-made fat that the body doesn't know how to dissolved."
Well, it's more complex than that but it's fair to say that trans fats are a by product of fat processing and there's evidence they are bad for you.


WTF does this have to do with canola? Wild type rapeseed oil has a relatively high trans fatty acid content. But Canola has been bred specifically not to. Did you read the wiki article? It explains the name "The word "canola" was derived from "Canadian oil, low acid""

"If you want to read about warning google it.  Go to "google.com" and write Canola Oil.  Read for yourself.  "

I did. That's how I found the wiki article I cited earlier. That wiki article in turn features a report saying canola is full of trans fatty acids.  The organisation that produced the report also says  (on their website)  that "It contains "the infamous chemical warfare agent mustard gas" which simply isn't true.
Now I obviously can't vouch for all the world's oil, but I have seen analyses of biodiesel made from rapeseed oil that had very low levels of erucic acid (the alledged source of the problems). So, even industrial oil hasn't got the stuff in it. Why would it be in the food chain?

[lyner]

BC
The newspaper headline "Everything OK today" is just not an attention grabber, I'm afraid.
Sexy News with an ill informed basis is much more successful.
This is another Moon Landing  thread. You won't win, despite the sense of your arguments.

[Bored chemist]

I might not win, but at least I'm entitled to ask why someone says things that are so obviously false.
Miriam,
what on earth did you think that your last post would achieve?

[Madidus_Scientia]

This is another Moon Landing  thread. You won't win, despite the sense of your arguments.

Keep at it though BC, your unwavering determination in fighting all that is irrational is both inspiring and amusing. Kudos!

[DoctorBeaver]

You stir the stinky one over and time again.

 []

[Bored chemist]

I think I was being accused of S**tstiring, which I think is ironic.

[Total-Amateur]

Hi, this topic was so interesting, it inspired me to register, so that I could have my two cents worth I just want to point out a few things:

There were points on both sides of this argument that I found to have some validity. I was really torn on what to believe.

On the one hand, BC has a point -- anecdotes aren't proof of anything. Wikis aren't reliable sources of information. For that matter, neither is Google. Google doesn't test the validity of any claim, or the reliability of websites that it indexes. All Google does is say "here's what I found on the subject." Google assigns the same relevance to a website written by a 5th grader for a science project on potatoes as it does to a website written by a PhD doing a proper scientific study on potatoes. Both sites = potatoes, so Google spits them both out as relevant search results.

By the way, even though most Wikipedia entries provide links to relevant websites, very little of those links are actually "sources." By that, I mean peer-reviewed. So citing them doesn't increase the validity of one's claim.

HOWEVER, BC says something that makes me want to side with Miriam's point of view, insofar as not wanting to use canola oil. He says that raw rapeseed is the toxic stuff, and that canola oil is refined and genetically modified to remove the toxins. That's a red flag for me.

Every time I've heard of genetically modified anything, it always follows the same formula: At first, it's a miracle product, then some scientists do some studies on it, and later, it's proven to be bad for you in one way or another. I remember back in the early 80's when everyone was so hip on NutraSweet. And we all know how that turned out.

Now I'd like to make a small caveat here; I'm not a scientist. (Hence, the username.) In fact, I hold an MA in English, and I am currently in an MLIS program (Master of Library and Information Science.) I am in no way, shape, or form a chemist, nor do I fancy myself as one.

However, I do know how to think critically, and how to give weight to arguments, and to make an informed decision.

And the conclusion I have come to is this: Since it is a genetically modified product, I am going to avoid it, until I see a properly documented, peer-reviewed study on its long-term effects that says different.

I came to this website because I recieved the chain email that was mentioned earlier in this post. (The one that Snopes says is false.) I was looking for any sort of information for either side of the argument, so that I could research this for myself. I figured that this forum might be a good starting point, a catalyst to point me in a productive direction. But it's beginning to look as though the research won't be necessary. Everyone seems to agree that canola oil is a GMO. So for me, case closed, at least for the time being.

Having said this, I would like to point out that I am extremely skeptical about the scrapies (or whatever it's called) assertion and the link to the canola oil in the feed; there are many more factors that need to be considered. Simply feeding an animal the wrong food can throw their systems out of whack. That's why non-free range cows get sick, because they're being fed corn, instead of being allowed to graze. (Not to mention being injected with synthetic hormones!) A cow living on corn is akin to a human being living on potato chips or jelly beans. So the scrapies thing could be the result of any number of bad farming practices.

I am also skeptical of any article which cites personal anecdotes. "My Paw said that he once tried this so and so and it made him sick." Lawyers have a term for that: heresay.

But the GMO thing sealed it for me. There is too much evidence out there that modifying food on the genetic level is (at the very least) unpredictable, not to mention dangerous.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Feel free to reply. I apologize for resurrecting such an old thread, but I think that it's an issue which needs to be further addressed.

[Madidus_Scientia]

Every time I've heard of genetically modified anything, it always follows the same formula: At first, it's a miracle product, then some scientists do some studies on it, and later, it's proven to be bad for you in one way or another. I remember back in the early 80's when everyone was so hip on NutraSweet. And we all know how that turned out.

Can you list some examples?
Isn't nutrasweet just aspartame? So.. it turned out great? What are you talking about?

[Total-Amateur]

Well, if it were so great, there wouldn't be a whirlwind of controversy over its safety. Again, it's one of these issues where the evidence for both sides is unclear. Check out this blog: newbielink:http://www.thatdanny.com/2008/06/25/is-aspartame-safe-an-unbiased-review-of-aspartame-information/ [nonactive]

I couldn't have said it better myself, I simply don't know what to believe anymore. Ha ha.

[Bored chemist]

"I do know how to think critically, and how to give weight to arguments, and to make an informed decision."

OK, you say you can think critically and come to an informed decision yet you accept that , at this time, you are uninformed "I'm not a scientist. (Hence, the username.) " yet you voice an opinion.
Unfortiunately, that opinion doesn't tally with reallity.

""Every time I've heard of genetically modified anything, it always follows the same formula: At first, it's a miracle product, then some scientists do some studies on it, and later, it's proven to be bad for you in one way or another. I remember back in the early 80's when everyone was so hip on NutraSweet. And we all know how that turned out."
Two points strike me as important here.
Firstly there simply isn't any real evidence for harm from GM materials (I'm not saying they are witout risk- just that so far we seem to have controlled that risk)
Secondly you muddle up GM with neutrasweet.
That makes as much sense as saying "GM is bad because theu used to put lead in petrol".


You say that "And the conclusion I have come to is this: Since it is a genetically modified product, I am going to avoid it, until I see a properly documented, peer-reviewed study on its long-term effects that says different."

Well you are going to wait a long time. On the other hand you can look at one of the world's biggest experiments.
In the real world people have been eating GM crops for years. There has yet to be any real problem of safety (there have been some serious cockups about other aspects of it).

The "peers" reviewing this are American ambulance-chasing lawyers. Now, it's fair to say that my opinion of the morallity of this group isn't generally high, but that's not the point. They are good at their job. If there had been a single case of anyone proven to have been harmed by these materials they would have sued for punitive damages and bankrupted the GM organisations.

Those organisations are still in business.

What more proof could a bunch of lab experiments offer?
(Incidentally- the lab experiments were done first, of course, and they didn't offer any evidence of a problem)

Lets sum that up; you say
"I do know how to think critically,"
and
"But the GMO thing sealed it for me. There is too much evidence out there that modifying food on the genetic level is (at the very least) unpredictable, not to mention dangerous."

OK, cite the evidence.

Sorry to have to tell you this (and I know it's partonising) but, unless you actually understand the science, you are not in a position to think critically about the issues.
If you don't understand that I have seen someone assay canola oil and I know it doesn't contain the toxic chemicals that industrial rapeseed does so it doesn't constitute a toxicity hazard then you are missing the point.
Also  most technology works just fine yet you say "Every time I've heard of genetically modified anything, it always follows the same formula: At first, it's a miracle product, then some scientists do some studies on it, and later, it's proven to be bad for you in one way or another. I remember back in the early 80's when everyone was so hip on NutraSweet. And we all know how that turned out." once again, you just haven't noticed what's really happening.

[raptorguy]

Our family is health conscious.

Canola oil is our first choice of cooking oils.

 We use olive oil sometimes as a sprinkle on salads. Olive oil has quite a bit more saturated fat than canola and becomes unstable in light and under moderate heating temperatures.

 Sunflower and Corn oils are also better choices (at least for our family) than olive oil for cooking.

 

[elementaljoe]

We live in an astonishingly informed age, with data available as it has never been before in recorded history. The challenge is in determining which is pertinent to the situation, and then which is actually correct.

I'd already studied most of the sites that have been referred months ago. Clearly, like Miriam's grammar, lexicon, and style, different sources are less attractive than others, and have fewer references to support their statements. But does that mean they are wrong? With enough "support," OJ and Rodney King's abusers both got off, and Bush Jr. won two elections.

To the point... I no longer eat canola oil. It may be perfectly harmless. When it can be purchased in a relatively unrefined form, I suppose it may be the most economical high heat oil, though that hasn't been my observation, and without the refinement, it no longer has so high a smoking temperature. The problem I have with it is that the public awareness program that the Canadian government crafted to sell the oil was exceptionally well-funded, with a capital E. Billions of dollars, many billions of dollars were at stake, perhaps trillions in time, and we're all sitting here thinking that with a few clicks of our mouses we'll get the truth.

Under these circumstances, with such vast profits at stake, the information available to me is utterly insufficient. The references presented throughout this chain simply cannot be trusted. The whole truth is very easy carve into pieces and obfuscate with other data and rhetorical methods, and that's only if the research was ever done honestly, or allowed to be done. Even if some of you are very serious chemists, the research you would have to do to determine falsification of data surely demands too much of your life, and still might be impossible. Science is more about skepticism than agreement. And you'd be making a serious enemy of the Canola industry.

What you can trust is traditional cuisine, produced and processed as hundreds, even thousands of years of trial, effort, and actual human nutrition determined. The further away from that you go, the more risk you take. The more profit there is in presenting a new product, or processing method, the less you can trust so much as a single word. You may be rewarded, but in the case of canola oil, modified rapeseed oil, the money will do the talking, not some ethical consideration about the peon consumer's health. Eat unrefined oils, traditional ones, and don't make'em smoke. Ignore the mountains of hype.

Or support agribusiness -- Monsanto et al. Your choice.

[Bored chemist]

"and we're all sitting here thinking that with a few clicks of our mouses we'll get the truth."
No, I think that my mate putting some through a GC/MS got the truth.
Do you have any scientific evidence to gainsay this?
When you say "The references presented throughout this chain simply cannot be trusted."
is it me you are calling a liar, or my colleague?

Re "Even if some of you are very serious chemists, the research you would have to do to determine falsification of data surely demands too much of your life, and still might be impossible."
I think it was about half an hour of machine time. The point is that it showed that the manufacturers were telling the truth. Why don't you accept that?

Incidenatlly, please make up your mind. Plenty of traditional food is fried in oil so hot it smokes yet you say we shouldn't heat oil that hot, but we should eat traditional food.

Anyway, unless you happen to have the time on your hands, the idea of spending "traditional" amounts of time cooking is a non-starter.
Oh, and while I'm at it, do you plan to recompense people for the expense of following your sugestion?
Canola is a lot cheaper than olive oil.
Personally I use olive oil (or groundnut or sunflower or hempseed depending on what I'm cooking) because I like the taste. I'm lucky- I can afford to do that. Not everyone can, so why tell them they are harming themselves by using canola when there's no basis for that assertion?

Oh, btw, you seem to have missed something. It was lawyers who got OJ off and re-elected Bush, not scientists.