Canola is a Canadian invention whose name simply means Canada oil
Rapeseed oil once lit European homes, railway carriages and lighthouses. As food it had problems: a green tinge, a strong taste and plenty of erucic acid. Plant breeders in Manitoba fixed that in the early 1970s, and a trade group named the result canola, joining Canada with a shorthand for oil.
The plant is a brassica, a relative of turnip, swede, cabbage and mustard; rapeseed takes its name from rapum, Latin for turnip. Oilseed brassicas are among the oldest crops, recorded in India about 4,000 years ago and in China and Japan 2,000 years ago. Northern Europeans burned the oil in lamps from the thirteenth century, and it was preferred for train lamps and cheaper than whale oil in Argand burners. For much of the nineteenth century, rapeseed oil burning in a Carcel lamp even defined the French standard unit of light.
Early food versions sold in 1956 and 1957 were unappealing, so researchers bred varieties low in erucic acid, testing them with gas chromatography at a national laboratory in Saskatoon. Food-grade oil must now contain under 2 per cent; in western Canada the average fell from 0.5 per cent in the decade to 1996 to 0.01 per cent by 2008 to 2015. No human health effects from dietary erucic acid have been shown, though animal studies hint that high levels could be harmful. Breeders also cut glucosinolates, compounds that concentrate in the leftover seed meal and can poison some livestock.
Genetic modification arrived in 1995 with a glyphosate-tolerant variety, and by 2009 about 90 per cent of Canada's crop resisted herbicides. A 2010 North Dakota survey found resistance genes in 80 per cent of wild roadside plants, possibly from seed spilled by trucks. In Western Australia, GM canola sells at an average discount of 7.2 per cent. World output reached 31 million tonnes in 2023, led by Canada, China, Germany and India.
Nutritionally the oil is mostly monounsaturated fat, and in 2006 the US FDA allowed a qualified label claim that about 19 grams a day replacing saturated fat may cut heart disease risk, while stressing the evidence is limited. Industry prizes it for biodiesel because it yields more oil per hectare than soybeans. It also carries a dark chapter: in 1981, industrial rapeseed oil denatured with aniline was illegally refined and sold as olive oil around Madrid, causing toxic oil syndrome.
Source: Rapeseed oil
