Yuck! Cooking with Motor Oil!

This is from the Sept 08 email newsletter that I receive from Dr. Al Sears in Florida. Please read then go buy Coconut and Olive Oils.

To your health,
Jen

Are You Cooking with Motor Oil?
There is a food in your home right now whose name translates to Canadian Oil and millions of people use it every day to prepare their family’s meal. Are you?

What’s worse is that the food product is promoted as a healthy alternative to other cooking oils. Here are a few of the risks my research turned up on one of the commercial food industry’s favorite ingredients:

Heart attack
Stroke
Heart lesions
High blood pressure
Vitamin deficiencies
Hemorrhaging
Free radical damage
Retarded growth

I’m talking about canola oil.

This is something that’s been marketed for years as a “good” alternative to butter, lard, and other edible fats...but a group of chemists practically made it up from scratch. It isn’t found anywhere in Nature. Chances are you’ve eaten a lot of it without knowing it. You’ll find it in restaurants and kitchens all over the country...and it’s a potential killer.

Today, I’ll tell you what you need to know about canola oil, and give you a safe, natural alternative that’s actually good for you.

Meet the Canola Plant
Think about it: olive oil comes from olives. Peanut oil comes from peanuts. So where does “canola oil” come from?
Here’s a hint: the kind of “plant” it comes from doesn’t need sunlight, soil, or rain to thrive.
The word “canola” is an industry invention. And once you know where it really comes from, you’ll understand why the industry had to come up with a new name for it.

Canola is an artificial, processed oil made from rapeseed, a flowering plant of the brassica family, which includes cabbage, rutabagas, broccoli and turnips. “Rapeseed” comes from the Latin word for turnip, “rapum.” Not an especially appealing name.
It also turns out that for most of human history people didn’t think of it as an especially appealing food, either.

Asians used rapeseed oil to light their lamps for centuries. Then during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, machinists found that it worked well as an engine lubricant. It even played a crucial role in combat operations for the US Naval fleet during World War II.

Today it’s used in all kinds of industries. It happens to be a great insect repellent. You’ll also find it in synthetic rubbers, ink, even soap...
Your Salad Dressing Could Be Toxic
You may be wondering how rapeseed oil turned into “canola” oil—and how it came to be considered a food in the first place.

It all started with the mainstream medical establishment and food industry’s obsession with so-called “bad” fats. Back in the late 70s, they were looking for something to replace corn and soybean oil.

They’d promoted these oils for years as more healthy than traditional fats like butter, lard, or palm oil. But new science was emerging indicating that the oils they were peddling to the public were actually unhealthy.

There were other healthy options available, like olive oil. But olive oil was too expensive to use because it wasn’t a major crop. And it doesn’t blend well into most mass-produced, processed foods. So the industry went looking for something inexpensive, “healthy,” plentiful that would be easy to store, transport, and include in commercial food production.

That’s how rapeseed oil made it onto the industry’s radar screen. It had been widely used in Asian countries. It was cheap, easy to grow, and there was a readily available source nearby, in Canada, where it was farmed in abundance.

Scientists found that it was rich in what they considered healthy vegetable fats, including omega-3. But there was a big problem: two thirds of the fat in rapeseed oil is “erucic acid.” This is a dangerous toxin that can cause deadly heart lesions.

Then in 1978 a few Canadian agricultural specialists figured out how to breed a strain of rapeseed that was low in erucic acid.1 Suddenly, the industry had its new “healthy” alternative. And that’s how it eventually got its name: “canola” stands for “Canadian oil, low acid.”

The problem is that canola doesn’t really resemble the rapeseed oil found in Asia. In places like India and China, they traditionally pre-cooked the seeds before they extracted the oil, and they used stone presses to make it. They sold it soon after they made it, so it was fresh and pure. The process was entirely natural.

Compare that with the industrial processes used to make canola here: high temperature pressing in metal vats; blasting with chemical solvents to remove the oil; bleaching; soaking in acid; and “deodorizing,” since some of the omega-3 in the oil goes rancid and creates a foul odor.

Traces of these chemicals remain in the oil, particularly hexane. Hexane’s a component of gasoline. It’s used to make shoes, leather products—even roofing! Its toxic effects on the body are well known. It causes nerve damage,2 and the gas emissions from industrial hexane can cause cancer. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency issued regulations on commercial hexane use in 2001 because of the serious cancer risks.3

They Can’t Back Up Their Claims
One of the problems with all the industry’s health claims about canola is that there are virtually no studies of canola’s effects on humans. But the research done in animal studies paints a grim picture.

Canola has been shown to retard growth and cause heart lesions in rats.4
Newborn piglets fed a formula with canola oil developed a vitamin E deficiency in one study. Vitamin E’s a key ally in overall heart health, protects eyesight, and acts as a powerful antioxidant. They also suffered from sustained bleeding, because a diet high in canola lowered their platelet count (platelets are what help your blood to clot and stop hemorrhaging).5

Another recent study found that canola worsens high blood pressure, and stroke in rats genetically prone to these health conditions.6

Yet we’re still hearing about how good canola is for you. Millions of Americans are pouring this stuff on their salads or eating foods fried in it, thinking it’s great for their health. They may as well be eating their shoes.

Try This Truly Healthy Oil From Nature, Not Industry
For some reason, the word still hasn’t gotten out on this, but there’s a natural plant-based alternative to canola that’s plentiful, and safe for all kinds of cooking. It’s easily digested, free of toxins... and actually comes with a host of major health benefits.

It’s coconut oil.

I still scratch my head over why this isn’t the best-selling edible oil in the world. The fact is that conclusive clinical evidence of its health-promoting power has been around for over 30 years.

Coconut oil has the power to:

Power overall heart health
Boost your metabolism
Raise your antioxidant levels
Promote weight loss
Strengthen your immune system
Stimulate healthy thyroid function
Maintain healthy cholesterol balance

You can even use it as a skin care product. It helps to moisturize and keeps your skin elastic, radiant, and youthful.

Unlike canola, coconut oil actually protects the heart by keeping fat and cholesterol in your bloodstream in proper balance. One study looked at native island tribes in the South Pacific whose diets were heavy in coconut oil.7

They had perfect serum lipid and cholesterol profiles at the start of the study. But once they migrated to New Zealand and stopped using coconut oil, their total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol increased, and their HDL cholesterol (the good kind) decreased.

It’s also been shown to ramp up your body’s ability to convert fat into energy, increasing your metabolism and actually helping you to lose weight.
The most recent research also suggests that the natural health-promoting compounds in coconut oil can actually prevent free radical damage.8

Finally, coconut oil contains lauric acid, one of the key building blocks of your immune system and a powerful anti-viral/anti-microbial.

In other words, you should make coconut oil one of the staples in your kitchen. Unlike olive oil, coconut oil’s stable at very high temperatures, so you can put it on salad or fry with it. It won’t start to smoke and burn your food like olive oil.

I recommend finding an organic, extra virgin brand at your local health food store or on line. These give you all the health benefits and are free of any industrial contaminants.
____________________
1 RK Downey. “Genetic Control of Fatty Acid Biosynthesis in Rapeseed.” Journal of the American Oil Chemists Society. 1964. 41:475-478.2 Hathaway GJ, Proctor NH, Hughes JP, and Fischman M. Proctor and Hughes' chemical hazards of the workplace. 3rd ed. 1991. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.3 Anuradee Witthayapanyanon and Linh Do. “Nanostructured Microemulsions as Alternative Solvents to VOCs in Cleaning Technologies and Vegetable Oil Extraction.” 2005. National Center For Environmental Research.4 Trenholm et al. “An Evaluation of the Relationship of Deitary Fatty Acids to Incidence of Myocardial Lesions in Male Rats.” Canadian Institute of Food Science Technology Journal. 1979. 12(4):189-1935 Kramer et al. “Hematological and lipid changes in newborn piglets fed milk-replacer diets containing erucic acid.” Lipids. 1998. 33(1):1-10.6 Ratnayake et al. “Influence of Sources of Dietary Oils on the Life Span of Stroke-Prone Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats.” Lipids. 2000. 35(4):409-420.7 Prior et al. “Cholesterol, coconuts, and diet on Polynesian atolls: a natural experiment: the Pukapuka and Tokelau Island studies.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1981. 34:1552-1561. 8 Nevin and Rajamohan. “Virgin coconut oil supplemented diet increases the antioxidant status in rats.” Food Chemistry. 2006. 99(2): 260-266.

Drama with the Kids

Usually when I come home from work, I have one or both kitties meet me at the front door, eagerly awaiting dinner and a little love (though the love mostly comes after the food). So today when I walk through the door and the house is silent, I find it a little strange. "Are they both asleep?" I think. But that hasn't happened before, because they are light sleepers and will wake up as soon as they hear one of us drive up.

So I continue through the living room and into the hallway. This is when I notice the door closed to our back bedroom, which we use as our office. This door is never closed, because we keep the cats' litter box there. Fearing the obvious, as I make my way down the hall, I see a shadow move under the door.

Sure enough, I open the door and BOTH cats come running out. How long they had been confined there, I will never know. It could have been for just a few minutes, but more likely it was several hours. At least they had access to the litter box and didn't leave a mess on the floor, but that long with no food or water (we keep those in the kitchen) and two big cats in a small space, who don't particularly like to be near each other, must have made for a difficult afternoon. I hope for their sake that they mostly slept the time away and didn't fight.

One whole year in this house, and that's a first. But knowing it's happened once, we may have to start using a doorstop so it doesn't happen again. This is especially true when we leave for the weekend.

I felt bad for them, but at the same time it's kind of funny. Makes you wonder what their story is. If only our pets could talk...

Theater Shows

One of my biggest hobbies, besides Civil War re-enacting, is musical theater. I was bitten by the bug in college and have since gone on to do several shows. I love the excitement of live theater, because every night is different: the audience response (or sometimes lack thereof) has a direct bearing on the outcome, and when everything is working, the atmosphere can be positively electric. You can feel the energy in the air, and the actors and audience feed off each other to create something magical. It always happens at least once per show when it all comes together, and those are the moments you live for.

I am not, however, much of an actor. My role has been that of musician: playing piano and keyboards, being rehearsal accompanist, and even leading the band during the show. Sometimes I have had small speaking roles as character of "Band Member" but only once have I had an actual cast part. The vain side of me (and don't we all have one?) loves to see my name in print, whether in the cast list, band list, or anything else, and when it's in the program more than once, well, even better.

So here is my history of shows I have done over the years:

Godspell: My first experience with musical theater. Incredibly fun.
Smoke on the Mountain: Not only played, but acted and sang.
Bye Bye Birdie: First time with a high school drama production (and first as a paid professional).
Lucky Stiff: Was the entire 'orchestra' (meaning: only musician). Very funny show.
Evita: Possibly my most challenging show (again, the only musician, so I had to try to play every part), but also one of the most rewarding and still one of my favorites.
Cabaret: Very intimate setting (small stage, two musicians) for the Empty Space theater. My first show that wasn't a high school or college production.
High Society: First show with Stars Theatre, a local musical theater company. Every show I've done since (except one) has been with this group.
Buddy: Based on the life of Buddy Holly, this one stretched my rock-and-roll chops.
La Cage aux Folles: Loved everything about this one. It ran for only four weekends, but we could have done it for six months.
Cats: Musically, this one was a bit strange in a few places, but visually, it was amazing. Played one of three keyboard parts with a full orchestra.
Brigadoon: After the challenge of Cats, this was a simpler role for me: I basically played the bass part on a synthesizer and added a few sound effects here and there.
Baby: Filled in 'missing' parts on keyboard and essentially created my own arrangement to support everything the piano was doing.

Some other shows that I've seen (either live or on film) that I would love to play for: Chicago, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, My Fair Lady, Chess, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. If any of these shows comes to town, I want to be there. (In fact, Jennifer and I are going to see Chicago next weekend. But it's a touring group, so I'm not playing for it. Maybe next time.)