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Is rapeseed oil harmful or healthy?

In recent years, an ingredient such as rapeseed oil has been increasingly found in some food products. Many people wonder whether rapeseed oil is useful or harmful?

Rape, a plant from the seeds of which rapeseed oil is obtained on an industrial scale, was considered in the past as a source of technical oil (in the production of diesel fuel and lubricants). How did industrial oil become a food product?

It's all about the chemical composition of rapeseed oil, which contains a large amount of Omega-9 unsaturated fatty acid - erucic acid, which gives a bitter taste.

Erucic acid is a toxic compound that can disrupt the activity of the myocardium, affect the growth and structural density of bone tissue, and disrupt the reproductive properties of mammals. For this reason, its presence in high concentration is unacceptable for the health of the body. But in the 70s, bioengineers and breeders learned to grow rapeseed species with a low content of erucic acid, which made it possible to use rapeseed oil for food. Due to the toxicity of erucic acid, there are legislatively regulated norms for its content in edible rapeseed oil - no more than 5%, ideally - 0.2% (for comparison: unrefined rapeseed oil contains about 60% erucic acid).

Refined rapeseed oil is suitable for food, which contains a minimum amount of erucic acid. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the same acid in the minimum composition is contained in plants that are quite usual for eating: mustard, arugula (another name for "eruka", from which the term "erucic acid" comes), watercress, cabbage.

On the market, edible rapeseed oil is often referred to as Canadian Oil Low Acid, after the same name for the low erucic canola variety of Canadian rapeseed.

When biotechnology made it possible to reduce the percentage of harmful substances in rapeseed oil, its beneficial qualities as a food product - a high content of oleic and linoleic acids - came to the fore. In terms of the content of these acids, rapeseed oil is close to that of olive oil. Oleic and linoleic acids counteract the absorption of "bad" cholesterol and are actively involved in almost all anti-cholesterol diets aimed at fighting overweight, obesity and atherosclerosis. The presence of essential polyunsaturated fatty acids in rapeseed oil makes it simultaneously an important product among vegetable fats.