Canola Oil

Food · Fat & Oil · Food, Typed Supps

The lowest saturated fat of any common cooking oil, and it costs the least.

Stage by stage

Neutral (Taste): Little flavour of its own, which is why it works where olive oil would intrude.
Lowest saturated (Liver): 7.3 g per 100 g — half olive oil, a seventh of beef dripping.
Monounsaturated (Circulation): 59.36 g per 100 g, the profile that lowers LDL when it replaces saturated fat.
Vitamin E (Cell membranes): 26.22 mg per 100 g, which also keeps the oil itself from oxidising.

Timing

Smoke point around 200 °C refined, which covers frying, roasting and almost everything a home kitchen does.

Time to effect

3–4 weeks: LDL response to replacing saturated fat with unsaturated.
—: ALA does not meaningfully convert to EPA or DHA.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Keto, Low-FODMAP.

Environmental footprint

7.3 kg CO2e and 1098 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Palm oil" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Cheap — roughly £3 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Vitamin E
Monounsaturated fat
Omega-3

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 884
Fat: 100g
of which saturated: 7.3g

Food vs. supplement

Swapping saturated fat for unsaturated is one of the few dietary changes with consistent controlled-feeding evidence behind it. Canola is the cheapest available way to make that swap, which matters more at population level than which premium oil is best.

Kitchen tip

Refined canola for cooking, cold-pressed for dressings. The refined version handles heat that the cold-pressed one does not.

Common myth

“Canola oil is toxic — it comes from rapeseed.” In reality: It comes from a cultivar bred out of rapeseed in the 1970s specifically to remove erucic acid, the compound that made the original unsuitable for food. Food-grade canola is legally defined by a maximum erucic acid content. On composition it has the lowest saturated fat of any common cooking oil at 7.3 g per 100 g, and it is the cheapest oil on the shelf.