Canola oil has practically taken over as the food processing industry’s oil of choice. Whether it’s mayonnaise, chips, or salad dressings, canola oil is usually the first, second or third ingredient on the list. Unfortunately, the health dangers of canola oil are far beyond what we’ve been led to believe.

So if there aren’t any actual health reasons to use it, why would it be so widely used throughout the food industry? As with most reasons certain ingredients are used over others – the price. Canola oil is extremely inexpensive to grow and harvest. It is also very easy to grow, due to its genetic modifications and the fact that insects won’t go near it.

Canola oil was first created in the early 1970s as a natural oil. But in 1995, Monsanto created a genetically modified version of canola oil. By 2009, over 90 percent of the Canadian canola oil crop was genetically engineered (1).

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