Why Factory-Made “Cooking Oil” Is Bad for Health
Free Science 365
https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=0Imlp722I5Y
We get some good cooking oil history in this video. First, one point of accuracy for the perfectionist: vegetable oils are really seed oils. Now for the history.
In the panic of 1837, Proctor & Gamble (P&G) started making candles and soaps out of cottonseed oil instead of animal fats. In 1882, Edison started his company, which produced direct current electrical power. In 1886, Westinghouse began to compete with alternating current power. This meant the demand for candles tanked.
In 1901, P&G found that cottonseed oil could potentially be used as cooking fat except for two small problems. First problem: it stank. Second problem: there were two toxic components called gossypol and CPFA. Gossypol has minor side effects like infertility, liver damage and digestive problems. I don’t remember what CPFA stands for, but if I told you, you wouldn’t remember either, so who cares? The thing to remember is that it causes cancer. Unprocessed cottonseed oil also was liquid at room temperature and that did not appeal to customers at that time.
In 1903, they learned how to hydrogenate the oil so that it was solid at room temperature. Bleaching and deodorization took care of the smell and reduced toxicity enough to get away with marketing it as a cooking fat. So, it went from waste in the 1830s, to industrial lubricant in the 1870s, to soap in the 1890s, to food in the 1910s.
In 1933, the Agricultural Adjustment Act forced cotton growers to reduce production, so P&G switched from cotton to soy, which was cheaper. In 1949, the American Health Association (AHA) received $1.7 million from P&G. Shortly after that, AHA began to promote seed oils and demonize animal fats. Coincidence, I’m sure.
Seed oils are produced using toxic hexane, and the process generates major oxidation, which continues as the product sits on the shelf. Our infallible and morally unimpeachable government watchdogs seem to think that is fine. It is fine as long as you leave it on the shelf and never touch it. The thumb is UP.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2024
🖨️ Print post
Leave a Reply