This week I investigated the history, manufacture, and health implications of a 3 common food ingredients I saw in the US.

Tools I used:

• Google

• Attempting to read scientific papers (poorly, it takes a lot of focus!)

Context

I was at a friend’s house and we were eating some snacks. Out of habit, I glanced at the food labels, and noticed that most packaged foods had canola oil in them. For example, here are a couple:

I didn’t know where canola oil, maltodextrin, or soy lecithin came from, so I decided to do some research to find out.

Process

The research begins:

Canola oil / Rapeseed oil

. It turns out that rapeseed is one of the oldest documented crops, with its harvest and use first recorded 4000 years ago in India. However, original rapeseed oil is very bitter and contains high levels of erucic acid, which is harmful to humans, so in the 1970’s Canadian scientists bred a more nutritious and less toxic version, which they dubbed ‘ CAN ada O il, L ow A cid’ aka Canola.

In the 80s and 90s, a genetically modified variety of canola, resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (originally patented by Monsanto as Roundup), proliferated. It became very cheap to grow and produce, high in the ‘good’ kinds of fats, and had a long shelf life.

According the the US Canola Association, today canola oil is the third most consumed oil in the world and number two by volume in the United States. The largest producers are Canada, China, India, and France.

As the canola industry became bigger, they successfully pushed the message that canola oil was a ‘heart healthy’ oil and better than other sources of fat in the diet. They funded several studies as well as secured stamps of approval from the FDA in the US.

So it makes sense that it’s in so many foods then, right? Unfortunately this is where the bad news starts.

First, the process to turn canola seeds into oil itself.

• The seeds are crushed, heated, and dissolved in hexane solvent to extract the oil. Hexane, extracted from petroleum, is popular because its cheap and has a low evaporation point, so it’s extremely effective at extracting oil from the crushed seeds. Unfortunately, it’s also known to be toxic to humans since the 1970s (with links to peripheral neuropathy and hormone disruption), and metabolites are found in urine samples, meaning sufficient residues remain in the oil after processing (it’s also present in petrol fumes and cigarette smoke - which may actually be the main way it gets into our bodies).

• It’s refined, filtered, deodorized, and bleached - which almost completely removes vitamin E, carotenoids, omega-3s, and chlorophylls (the good stuff) - and leaves behind something your grandma wouldn’t recognize.

• Frying and deep frying in this oil, which, along with soybean and palm oil, is likely what the majority of restaurants, takeaway, and fast food establishments use, may produce harmful oxidative byproducts.

However, the bigger problem, as I see it, happens before the extraction process. Canola seeds are tiny and the genetically modified variety is essentially a superweed, so within a few years of its introduction in 1995, a majority of farmers grew GMO canola whether they liked it or not. Today 96% of US canola and 98% of Canadian canola is GMO - specifically to be resistant to glyphosate. In theory, foods that contain detectable GMO DNA now need to be labeled, but because canola oil is so highly processed its not possible to detect GMO DNA, so it doesn’t need to be labelled.

There are many studies that show glyphosate residue is present in consumer foods, and regularly found in urine samples.

The implication here is that you’re pretty much guaranteed to be eating some amount glyphosate when you consume processed foods, and possibly canola oil as well. Glyphosate has been controversial for decades, and numerous studies have found evidence of its toxicity as well as environmental damage. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

Yet it is still the most commonly used herbicide and legal around the world.

While researching this week I read two blog posts with far more detail on glyphosate in food that are themselves fascinating reads:

• The Next #42 - Environmental Toxins

• The Feed 095 - Everything You Need To Know About Glyphosate and Your Health

The main unknown for me remains: “Are we ingesting glyphosate in sufficient quantities to be toxic?”

It seems like a general rule of thumb here is to avoid highly processed foods, avoid GMOs sprayed with glyphosate, avoid foods with too many ingredients, and choose organic.

Maltodextrin

Maltodextrin is a white powder derived from a mix of corn, wheat, rice, tapioca, or potato starches. It’s essentially a highly processed carbohydrate. It binds well with oils but not other liquids, it favorably changes the texture of processed foods and can replace sugars, has little to no flavor of its own, and it’s of course cheap to produce, making it a great filler for many consumer products, as well as interesting to play with in fine dining. It’s very common in sports drinks and protein bars (because it increases blood sugar so quickly, which can be useful when you’re doing intense exercise), as well as many other snacks.

Again, unfortunately, there’s bad news. Maltodextrin has been linked to bowel inflammation and intestinal problems, as well as Crohn’s disease. Also, those blood sugar spikes I mentioned above, if you aren’t doing vigorous exercise, they are damaging and can eventually lead to diabetes.

Seems like the occasional snack is probably fine if you’re eating protein, veggies, and fibre as well, but if you’re getting a large chunk of your daily calories from these processed foods it could start to be a problem.

Soy Lecithin

Ok, some good news - this one seems to be ok.

Soy lecithin is a byproduct of soybean oil extraction. Basically, the leftovers are crushed and dissolved (more hexane), precipitated and dried. It’s used for lots of things: keeping oils blended together (emulsification) in chocolate and salad dressings, adding foamy texture in baked goods and sweets, makes dough retain moisture, etc.

As far as I can tell, this is the case with soy lecithin. This article provided a pretty good overview. There’s very little soy left in it, and its present in such small amounts when used as an additive that we don’t need to worry. It’s good to remember that our body can detoxify itself pretty well (and there are things you can do to detox more, like sweating).

Learnings

• This stuff is super complicated, and I’m way out of my depth. There are as many conflicting studies - eg this one published by Bayer in 2020 (who acquired Monsanto in 2018) that claims that all dietary glyphosate levels are well below established legal levels (does legal = safe though? I genuinely don’t know here) and there’s nothing to worry about

• It’s good to remember that ‘the dose makes the poison’. Even water can kill you if you drink too much of it, and a lot of these additives are present in the such small quantities that our body can easily deal with them.

• It’s easy to get swept away and think everything is toxic. The devil is in the details

Next steps

• I recently read that sunscreens containing oxybenzone are also toxic hormone disruptors. Do some research into that

• Read all food labels religiously until I go crazy

• Write about our approach to food