Stop using Canola Oil immediately (says the story)

The cashew seed (the part you know as the cashew nut) has a shell that has an oil that is toxic and is related to the oil in poison ivy and poison oak. That doesn't make the cashew "apple" or the seed interior, the "nut", any less delicious and edible.

My point is that you can take just about any food or product and find something totally gross or dangerous about it if you want to play with the details a little bit. All it takes is having an agenda and a somewhat ignorant population.

What isn't mentioned is that the rapeseed oils have been used as food for 4000 years in India and at least 2000 years in China. It was used for a food source first and later adapted to lubricant and industrial use. Thus the "details" part of my complaint above..

So 4000 years of eating rapeseed oil is trounced by a single doctor attempting to sell a book? There's that *agenda* thing I was talking about.. He offers absolutely no scientific evidence, no links to the "studies" and no proof that anyone has actually suffered from the things he says.

As a scientist, the first thing I look for is footnotes or links to the studies that are cited in the articles.. None of which are present here, nor are they present in many of these types of sites. That's the first sign that this is an agenda driven article. The second thing is when someone claims strange manifestations of illness with such a BROAD range of symptoms that come on so many years after primary exposure, I have to be very skeptical. To me, that sounds like scare tactics of the worst sort, preying on the ignorance of the population.

I don't mean to be pessimistic, but I'm a scientist, therefor I am a skeptic. You have to be. Being a scientist means you attempt to DISPROVE theories, not prove them. If a scientist tells you he's attempting to PROVE something, then you should never believe him, because he has an agenda, either conscious or unconsciously.

In the age of the internet, there are so many hoaxes and folks scamming for money from the gullible, it behooves oneself to be a skeptic, even if you aren't a scientist.

Now, I DO agree 100% with the GMO issues. We should NOT be screwing with mother nature at all. I'm infinitely more afraid of the GMO stuff than I am of any other food issues.

On the other hand, do you remember when butter was going to murder our hearts with fat? Then came the cholesterol scare, then came HDL and LDL cholesterols and then came saturated and unsaturated and then came margarine to save the day? Have you kept up with the new studies that show that margarine is terrible for you and that cholesterol intake amounts have almost NOTHING to do with your heart attack risk?

EDIT:  Yes, I try to use more unprocessed foods too, but I'm not going to go crazy over it.

Take my father for instance.  My family has a history of heart problems.  My dad also has heart problems from years of eating badly and being lazy, but he also has heart issues from being sprayed with agent orange in the 'Nam too, but that's another story.

Anyway, his heart doc has him taking meds for his blood pressure, more meds for his cholesterol, more meds to control the side effects from the other drugs, and even more meds for various things.  He started gaining even more weight and feeling really bad.  His cholesterol and blood pressure weren't cooperating so they added even more drugs.

Thankfully he changed jobs and got new insurance that required a new doctor.

The new doctor looked at the list of drugs and (not surprisingly) told my dad that he's lucky to be alive.  This drug reacts with that drug, and this other one has bad side effects which cause other organ problems, etc.

He took my dad off of every single one of those drugs and put my dad on something similar to the Atkins type of diet.  Within a month my dad lost 30 lbs and his cholesterol and blood pressure were normal.  He says he hasn't felt this good in 15 years.

Go figure.

I can offer this; If you only eat food that grows from the ground and is un-altered (genetically or from pesticides) by human hands you will be one very happy, healthy person. I know this to be fact from first hand experience. Don't believe me? Then I DARE you to try!