Do you cook with canola oil? A recent study found that regular consumption of canola oil over a long period of time could lead to Alzheimer's disease.
According to the researchers, "In recent years consumption of canola oil has increased due to lower cost compared with olive oil and the perception that it shares its health benefits. However, no data are available on the effect of canola oil intake on Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis."
With that in mind, they investigated the effects of chronic daily consumption of canola oil by feeding an experimental group of mice with chow supplemented with canola oil for six months. Among other findings, they found that the mice gained weight and exhibited "impairments in their working memory" characteristic of Alzheimer's disease.
Canola oil is actually rapeseed oil. Since ancient times rapeseed oil has been used as fuel, and in the age of steam engines it became widely used as an engine lubricant. But after the Second World War, demand declined sharply and farmers began to look for other uses for the plant and its products.
Rapeseed oil initially suffered from several unacceptable characteristics, such as a distinctive taste, a disagreeable greenish color, and high erucic acid content. But through experimental breeding in the 1970s (and genetic engineering in the 1990s) more commercially acceptable varieties were produced.
In the 1970s, the Rapeseed Association of Canada came up with the name "canola" as a trademark to represent "Can" for Canada, and "ola" for oil, but it is now a generic term for edible varieties of rapeseed oil in North America and Australia.
If you are in the mood to try to digest some highly technical stuff, you can read the full text of the research article on Nature Magazine's Scientific Reports journal.
Canola Council of Canada defends canola oil
Meanwhile, the Canola Council of Canada cautioned consumers about the misinterpretation of results in the study, saying that it was conducted using a mouse model and was not a human clinical trial.
Specifically, they said, the mice were genetically engineered to develop three characteristics of Alzheimer's disease: memory impairment, amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.
"This mouse model is a huge stretch from what you may see in humans," said Peter J. Jones, Ph.D., Canada research chair in functional foods and nutrition, Richardson Center for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals, University of Manitoba.
"Animal models of Alzheimer's lack predictive validity," added Richard Bazinet, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Nutritional Science, who reviewed the study. "We have a series of major phase III clinical trials with drugs in Alzheimer’s disease. The drugs 'worked' in the animal models, but failed in humans."
In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized a qualified health claim about canola oil's ability to reduce the risk of heart disease when used in place of saturated fat.
