Vegetable oils have gradually sneaked their way into all the aspects of our food supply. If you buy so-called “healthy” snacks, chances are, they are made with vegetable oils. Or when you eat out, most likely your food is cooked in some type of vegetable oil. If you buy mayo, dips, salad dressings you will find vegetable oils as part of the ingredients.
Did you know that vegetable oils were practically non-existent in the early 1900s? In fact, During the time of steam power, one of the best lubricants available was derived from rapeseed oil (aka canola)? (source)
Until that time, most people cooked with animal fats like tallow, lard, butter, cream, etc. As animal fats are the most natural and traditional form of cooking fats.
Today, people consume, about 70 lbs of vegetable oils yearly. Vegetable oil consumption increase can date back to the 1950s, when a governmental agenda was pushed on people to convince them to eat vegetable oils and margarine and avoid “artery-clogging saturated fats.”
These oils include: Canola Oil, Sunflower Oil, Soybean Oil, Cottonseed Oil, Peanut Oil, Safflower Oil. Rice Bran Oil and Corn Oil
Let’s take a look at Sunflower Oil
Unlike olive oil that has been pressed for centuries, most vegetable oils such as sunflower oil need heavy industrial processing. Sunflower oil production has the following manufacturing processes: cleaning of the seeds, grinding of the seeds, pressing and extraction of crude oil from these seeds and then further refining the oil obtained before packaging. A volatile hydrocarbon like hexane is used as a solvent to extract the oil. (source)
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