Sometimes edible oils are used for more than just cooking. If you’re on the look out for a biodegradable oil to use for a seemingly “unusual” application, we can point you in the right direction!

The smoke points of oils are important. They indicate at what temperature a particular type of oil will begin to smoke at, and are key for allowing manufacturers to choose the right oils for their current production process.

Canola oil is a common oil used in manufacturing and by home chefs so this is a popular discussion. Depending on who you ask, you may get different indications of smoke point temperatures from each different supplier, even if they are supplying the same type of oil.

Here's a good indication of the smoke points of canola oil.

High oleic oil is a term that you will see applied to many different types of oil: canola, sunflower, safflower and more. High oleic oils have seen a recent spike in popularity, especially in the natural snack food manufacturing industry.

Why is this so? High oleic oils are premium options that have a healthier fat composition, a longer shelf life, a higher heat tolerance and an extended fry life. 

Timing of contracts can be key, and most people at this point know that I’m a proponent of contracting your oil needs out each year.

This is your official notice that if you’re thinking about locking in a contract for your 2018 canola needs — be it RBD canola, non-GMO expeller pressed canola or organic canola oil, this fall is a great time. In fact, it’s one of the most common time to sign seed oil contracts. Why? Let me explain.

RBD Canola Oil and RBD Soybean Oil are all based of off a set parameter — the Chicago Board of Trade, also called the Board, the CBOT or the CME Group depending on who you’re talking with. This is the baseline for pricing, so that producers and suppliers can offer standardized pricing.

But what if you’re not buying the industry standard refined, GMO canola or soybean oil? What if you need organic canola oil or organic soybean oil? Does the pricing for those oils work in the same way? We’ll fill you in.

Recently I have read a myriad of misinformation on organic canola oil on the internet. There’s also a myriad of truthful information out there, but sometimes it’s hard for the average consumer to know what is correct, because everyone — on both sides — is only trying to share the truth as they know it.

As food manufacturers, it is our duty to our customers to be able to explain the ingredients used, so if you’re using organic canola (or thinking about it) here’s how to answer one of the more common questions you’re going to get.

Or if you’re a consumer reading this, here’s the background to your burning question.

I’ve gotten this one multiple times myself: how can organic canola oil exist, if certified organic products can’t be genetically modified, and canola oil is — by its very nature — genetically modified from the rapeseed plant?

That is right where we will start, because that’s right where the first misunderstanding begins. Because canola was never actually genetically modified from rapeseed to begin with.

Some whole foods consumers have expressed concern about the use of canola oil for a few years. Much of this concern, however, is due to confusion and misunderstanding on how canola oil is made and what it is actually made from.

There are numerous articles shared on the internet that are aiming at explaining the “truth”, but end up pulling information that is either misinformed, related only to conventional canola oil, or based on information from decades past when organic and non-GMO oils were not so readily available.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the internet it’s hard to know what is correct. So I’d like to address a few myths and truths related to Organic Canola Oil with answers directly from the source.

Expeller Pressed vs. Non-GMO: the interrelatedness of these two traits are a common point of discussion for me. Is all non-GMO oil expeller pressed? Is all expeller pressed oil automatically non-GMO?

These two terms are actually completely independent of each other, but often get confused because of how often they are used together in today’s natural oil descriptions.

Is all expeller pressed canola oil available automatically non-GMO? Is all non-GMO canola oil automatically expeller pressed?

Much of the Non-GMO Canola Oil that you’ll find nowadays is in fact expeller pressed, so it makes sense that the opposite, that expeller pressed canola oil would automatically be non-gmo… Right? Not so fast.

This article was originally posted on Berkeley Wellness. They addresses many questions concerning canola oil and the many questions surrounding it that are so common in the whole foods industry. We get lots of questions like this, so this article should help to clarify!

 Canola oil has been called both the “world’s healthiest cooking oil” and a “poison.” Obviously there is much misunderstanding and misinformation out there about it. The oil comes from a specially bred variety of rapeseed, a yellow-flowering plant in the Brassicaceae (cabbage) family, developed by Canadian scientists in the 1970s.

Do you use non-GMO canola oil in your food products, or are you considering using it in the future?

Today we will overview of the popularity and availability of this oil. It will help you get a better picture of why manufacturers like you are using this oil and the state of the supply chain, both short and long term.

Why would any food manufacturer choose to go with a high oleic oil over a traditional one?

This is a hot debate right now, especially for snack food manufacturers. There’s a number of reasons that a food manufacturer would opt to go with a high oleic oil over a traditional oil.

For simplicities sake, we’re going to discuss this in terms of High Oleic Non-GMO Canola Oil vs. regular Non-GMO Canola Oil so that the only variable is the oleic value. Of course, the same discussion applies to both non-GMO and GMO varieties of oil, as well as many different types of oils — sunflower oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, etc.

Over the years we’ve showed a lot of information on how olive oil is made. We haven’t, however, showed much on how canola oil is made.

Given the popularity of this oil (it holds the #2 spot in terms of US oil production volume, and Non-GMO Canola Oil is now Centra Foods’ #1 item), I thought it would be good to answer all of your canola oil questions with a video that explains and demonstrates canola oil production.

This article was originally a case study published by Omega-9 Oils, and is printed here with permission. Their canola seed, used to produce the oil that this article refers to, is now available from Centra Foods in a non-GMO form as Non-GMO High Oleic Canola Oil.

At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the dining services team grade themselves on creating cravable experiences and making student health a priority. Kenneth Toong, Director of Dining Services, is constantly seeking ways to improve the nutritional and flavor profiles of the 4,000 recipes in his six campus dining establishments. Making the switch to Omega-9 Oils was an “A” move in his book.

In 2008, he reviewed research from the Harvard School of Public Health that stated 120,000 to 228,000 heart attacks could be averted each year by reducing trans fats in the diet. As a result, Toong began looking for ways to reduce or eliminate trans fat from University of Massachusetts’ menus. With a health profile including zero trans fat, the lowest amount of saturated fats and high monounsaturated fats, Omega-9 Oils provided Toong and his team the ideal healthier oil solution.