*information obtained from Eight Weeks To Optimum Health by Andrew Weil, M.D
DID YOU KNOW: the canola oil you will find in most grocery stores are not acceptable. It has been extracted with chemicals solvents or by high-speed presses that generate high heat; both extraction methods alter fatty-acid chemistry in undesirable ways. Canola oil producers use a lot of pesticides on the crop, residues of which probably find their way into the final product.
Margarine is also bad for consumption if you want to attain optimum health.
- The process of hardening vegetable oils to create solid spreads increases the percentage of saturated fat and thereby diminishes any advantage over butter in the realm of cardiovascular friendliness.
- The process of artificially hydrogenating oils deforms fatty acids, creating unnatural species called trans-fatty acids, or TFAs.
When you put TFAs into your body it may cause an unbalance in your horomone systems that regulate healing, which would lead to the construction of defective cell membranes, and encourage the development of cancer.
DID YOU KNOW: Butter is one of the highest sources of saturated fat in our diets which has clearly been implicated in atherosclerosis and arterial diseases.
Avoid all other sources of artificially hardened fats. Solid vegetable shortening is easy to do without. Much harder are all of the commercial products made with partially hydrogenated oils. Manufactures like these unnatural fats because they oxidize less quickly than liquid oil, yielding longer shelf life No matter how good are the oils that go into the process of partial hydrogenation, what comes out is unnatural and unhealthy, since it is full of TFAs.
Hydrogenated oils are ubiquitous in snack foods, baked goods, cookies, crackers, spreads, and many other items in grocery stores and supermarkets.
I suggest you to strongly read labels carefully and reject all products containing them. In addition, avoid cottonseed oil and anything made with it because it has a high percentage of saturated fat and many contain natural toxins as well as high levels of pesticides, since farmers use many agrichemicals in growing cotton. Get in the habit of reading labels carefully when you shop for food.