It's not necessarily a healthy oil, even though Whole Foods uses it in their house-prepared meals. If you've been paying attention, you should already be aware that Whole Foods is a company that takes advantage of health fads without thinking about how to preserve and promote truly healthy products.
Canola Oil: What It Is Really
First of all, there is no canola seed or plant. The seeds of the rapeseed plant, which produces a lot of oil despite its unappealing name, are used to make canola oil. That oil wasn't meant for human consumption at first. That's why it was used in industry, much like motor oil for machinery protection. Erucic acid, which can cause fatty deposits in both human and animal heart muscles, is what renders it unfit for human consumption.
But over time with hybrid breeding, versions of rapeseed plant seeds eliminated most of the erucic acid, making that toxin a non-issue today. So even if a crop of rapeseed (canola oil) is among the ten percent or so of “Canola” seeds that are not genetically modified to be Roundup Ready, the processing of this oil makes it a health hazard.
When you purchase foods made with Canola oils, which is a very cheap processed oil, it is very likely to be GMO because 80-90% of Canola comes from Roundup Ready rapeseed seeds to allow heavy glyphosate spraying.
So how come it’s called Canola Oil instead of rapeseed oil now? Well, Canada had a lot of rapeseed plants growing and wanted to encourage and support farmers growing it, so the renamed rapeseed oil Canola. Can stands for Canada and ola represents factors involving oil and its low erucic acid content. Canola oil means Canadian oil.
This oil is heavily processed with high heat and partially hydrogenated to create longer shelf life. Partially hydrogenated oils are trans-fats. How come the Canola labels say no trans-fats? The FDA allows processed food manufacturers to round down so that anything less than .5 grams per serving can be listed as zero grams.
Chemically deodorizing Canola oil with hexane and bleaching it as well as the high heating processes make Canola oil very unhealthy. Despite terrible results from animal testing resulting in all sorts of diseases from Canola oil, the Canadian government and Canola industry paid the FDA $50 milllion to obtain GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status.
If you see Canola oil as one of two or three possibilities on a food label, realize it’s probably Canola oil that’s used because it’s the cheapest. As you know, cheap is best when it comes to healthy food. The processed food industry, FDA, and Whole Foods says it’s so (sarcasm intended).
All highly processed plant food oils are very inflammatory. Cold pressed oils, such as olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, flax seed, and others that are not heated but cold pressed are the oils that should be used for good health.
Sources: http://www.truthaboutabs.com