What's In Vegetable Oil? Labels Make It Tricky to Tell
The Columbus Dispatch

Gone shopping for vegetable oil lately? It's a confusing mess of everything from corn oil to grape seed oil, all with their own claims about naturalness and healthiness. Dietitian Marisa Moore from the American Dietetic Association does some translating for us poor consumers.

There were two things that I found surprising in this article. The first is that a bottle labeled "vegetable oil" is almost always just soybean oil. If anything, Moore indicates that soybean will be the main ingredient with a few other plant-based oils blended in.

The second is that liquid vegetable oils like those we typically find in bottles on store shelves are naturally free of both cholesterol and transfats. Moore says that when you see a label claiming the oil to be cholesterol-free, "the goal might be to attract those who are trying to lower their cholesterol who may not understand that vegetable oil doesn’t naturally have cholesterol in it."

• Read the Whole Article: Oil Labels Sometimes Quite Slick by Judy Hevrdejs in The Columbus Dispatch

What kind of vegetable oil do you usually buy?

(Image: Flickr member Mel B. licensed under Creative Commons)

Comments (20)

I don't. Canola and Vegetable oils are so processed. I'm particularly skeptical of Canola, or Canadian Oil...

I personally believe saturated fat is good for you, especially if it comes from natural sources like pastured butter and extra virgin coconut oil. Most vegetable oils (olive oil is an exception) can only be made in a factory which makes me question how healthy they could be for you.

You know why so many people in Asia die of heart disease? That lovely extra virgin coconut oil. Saturated fat is bad for you. Please don't misinform people this way, stoojie. It could kill them.

I avoid vegetable oil as much as I can. When I go out to eat I tell them that I am allergic, so they take me seriously. Don't want to be consuming that nasty GMO stuff.

100 years ago the majority of Americans ate 8x as much saturated fat as they do now, and guess what? Heart disease was rare! It's only now that heart disease has become an epidemic, and it's because society has moved away from diets that have sustained humanity for thousands of years.

I agree with stoojie. There's a lot a research to back up his/her statements. The problem is that the ethical animal husbandry lobby doesn't have the same capital/influence as the corn and soybean lobby.

I've been avoiding corn, vegetable, canola oils for years. I recently saw an episode of "How It's Made" that featured the making of canola oil, and I knew that I had made the right choice.

Also, since cutting those oils completely out of my diet, switching to non-homogenized, barely pasteurized, whole milk, my weight has been more stable, and my cholesterol (which was good) amazes my doctor.

I usually buy canola (hey, I'm from a prairie state), but does anyone know where I can get non-gmo veggie oil?

@stoojie: 100 years ago people were moving around on their two feet a lot and doing manual labor, and this was one of the reasons to avoid cholesterol build up. Today's americans, especially ones with a preference to high fat foods, "have no time" to walk or "hate" exercise.
Diet and disease is a two way traffic.

@Stoojie, people need to get off their couches. It has more to do with exercise and movement than it does saturated fat.

I also avoid canola oil, which is usually rancid and genetically modified, and always extremely processed in a factory. It is not healthy! I eat butter, coconut oil and natural animal fats instead. They are real foods and have been eaten for millenia without the health problems we have today.

And by telling people to eat real food and real oils/fats, I'm definitely not telling you NOT to exercise. Why would someone think that? Of course you should exercise!

We use pastured butter and olive oil. I'll use lard too if I can find some from a happy pig. Very occasionally I'll use something neutral oil, usually non-gmo corn. Varies by whatever Whole Foods has.

But I am sick to death of the "coconut oil people" I encounter all the time. I have a healthy deeply engrained skepticism of anything that is promoted as a wonder drug for everything to do skin rashes, body order, bicycle care, to allergy reduction.

starlinguk, where has the western low fat diet got us? obesity, diabetes, chronic disease. Healthy fats are good for you. Stop avoiding them, you need to eat fats in order to have a proper functioning metabolism. Your body will burn a high calorie high (healthy) fat content food more efficiently than it's low fat equivalent which has sugars or artificial sweetners added to it. Full fat dairy, grass fed meats (grain fed has toxic omega 6:3 ratios), avocados, olive oil, nuts, all good for you. not all calories are the same.

if1hadwords gets it.

I buy Spectrum sunflower oil. I love their wide varieties and that each oil is just that, the one ingredient.

I usually use a little first-cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil. I also use butter, on occasion. And, it is probably all in my head, but I love to use corn oil when I make popcorn.

I haven't used non-butter spreads for years because of the whole hydrogenated deal. I got curious about "smart" butters, but saw the trick...they contain palm and palm kernel oils, which are actually worse than animal fats!

I'll take my EVOO and butter any day. Everything in moderation. I eat a relatively healthy diet. Very few processed foods and I'm trying to be more active. I'm lucky, genetically, that my cholesterol levels have always been in healthy ranges.

Yes.
That.
What talktoearthworms said.

My granny swears by grape seed oil - it has a high burning point (higher the olive oil), which makes it better for stir-fry.

I don't think South African canola is GMO, and the quality seems a bit more consistent than sunflower oil.

We use olive oil (but not extra virgin), unless we want the taste - more economic. The foodies around here also recommend avocado oil as the best thing since sliced bread.

"where has the western low fat diet got us? obesity, diabetes, chronic disease." Let's be realistic, people who are obese, have diabetes and chronic diseases are not on a low fat diet. Just because two situations co-exist does not mean they are related or causal. If people were to faithfully follow any diet, they will lose weight and eliminate many health issues. Problem is that no diet lasts forever.

Also, people seem to forget that the life expectancy 100 years ago was far shorter than it is now. You couldn't get a lot of diseases because no one lived long enough to get it (from google: in 1911 men lived to 50 and women to 54). Plus who is going to diagnose that sick people had clogged arteries?

I think its good to use everything in moderation. I cook with butter, canola oil, olive oil and grape seed oil (tried it recently and liked it). Don't have too much of any of them. Also, where would a person get avocado oil? It sounds interesting...and expensive. Avocados are $1.50+ each where I live.

People, please do some research on the latest research on human nutrition.

I'll tell you this. Most of the Americans are so misinformed about the nutrition fact and reality, it is absurdly sad. If fat and saturated fat are so bad for you, you would see French and Belgian people dying left and right. They use butter, cream, and cheese heavily in their food. Check the per capita consumption of those staples by French, Belgian, and American. Then compare the rate of cardiovascular disease amongst those three groups.

Also, I really wish you would check the classic study of the Inuit's diet and their cardiovascular health observed and researched by the anthropologist called Stefansson in the mid-1900s. They only ate meat, organ, and FAT (yes straight out fat) from the animal, and they rarely had any cardiovascular disease. Don't give me some nonsense that they worked hard to hunt and stuffs. The women and children didn't move that much especially during the winter. And they were all in "normal" weight and cardiovascularly healthy.

I really wish people would stop stalking about nutrition before they do proper research. You are simply misinforming the other with your premature nutrition knowledge.