Vegetable oil---what's your plan?

[smallpoxgirl]

normal olive oil is extracted using solvents?

Virtually all plant oils sold commercially are extracted using solvents. Health food stores sell "expeller pressed" oils that aren't solvent extracted. The only oil that you can buy in the average grocery store that isn't solvent extracted is extra virgin olive oil.

[yeahbut]

normal olive oil is extracted using solvents?

Virtually all plant oils sold commercially are extracted using solvents. Health food stores sell "expeller pressed" oils that aren't solvent extracted. The only oil that you can buy in the average grocery store that isn't solvent extracted is extra virgin olive oil.

Yeah, I've just been reading up on this a little, as you say, practically all plant oils are extracted using solvents. Hexane isn't very nice stuff either(it's a byproduct of crude oil refining as it happens), and lot-fed cattle are full of it apparently, so that's another source...

fun with hexane

[skyemoor]

Yes, it seems I have to be on the outlook for expeller pressed canola oil, as most common canola offerings in the market are extracted with hexane.

[Loki]

Virtually all plant oils sold commercially are extracted using solvents.

I've read that. Just looked in my cabinet and all my oil is either extra virgin olive or expeller-pressed organic canola. Guess I'll have to die from something else....

[skyemoor]

FYI on Canola Oil:

The Dangers of Canola Oil

SPG, do you have any comments on this you can share?

Do you know of ANY oil that can be safely consumed that has at least a 1:4 Omega3 to Omega6 ratio? We are currently waiting on our english walnut trees to come into bearing, and have been using SmartBalance as our butter substitute, though the ingredients include "PALM FRUIT, SOYBEAN, CANOLA, FISH AND OLIVE OILS".

[smallpoxgirl]

The Dangers of Canola Oil
SPG, do you have any comments on this you can share?

Well I guess my take on the article comes down to this: Someone decides to sell something. They produce all this wild claims about it's health benefits. Then someone else looks at the glee circus, and rightfully smells a rat. Unfortunately the rat smellers then often accept a bunch of counter claims just as uncritically and start screaming about how the salesmen are black cloacked conspirators trying to kill small babies.

Bad fats in order of badness:
Trans fats
Saturated fats

Good fats in order of goodness:
Omega-3 fatty acids
Monounsaturated fats
Polyunsaturated fats.

Trans fats are a result of hydrogenation - heating the oil in the presence of a platinum catalyst and excess hydrogen. It doesn't happen from just heating an oil as far as I know. I'm pretty skeptical of their claim that non-hydrogenated canola has any appreciable amount of trans fats. It does have some mono unsaturated fats. Olive oil clearly has more monounsaturated fats, so I think it is the most healthy of the cooking oils.

Basically my take on nutrition is this. It's complex and fairly poorly understood. Most claims about nutrition are exaggerated and are made by axe grinders. Your best bet is to try to minimize the amount of processing that's done to your foods and eat as varied a diet as possible. Don't stop nursing your baby and try to raise it on a diet of straight canola oil. Duh. Absolutely I think you should never put anything in your mouth that contains the word "hydrogenated" any where in the ingredients. Eating cows that were jammed into a pen so tight they couldn't move and then fed corn all day - probably not great for you. Keep it to a minimum. If you can use olive oil in your cooking, great. I think canola is generally better than corn, soy, or peanut. Coconut has a fair amount of saturated fats, but it has the bonus of being solid at room temp without hydrogenation and of being able to resist high cooking temps.

Do you know of ANY oil that can be safely consumed that has at least a 1:4 Omega3 to Omega6 ratio?

No. Looks like flax is the highest and it's 3:1. Might not be a bad idea to add some flax seed to your diet if your super worried about that. Personally I'd just eat a piece of salmon every now and then and call it good.

[Goatlady]

Chia Seeds have the proper balance of healthy oils and store long term without going rancid. They are a 'superfood' and considered a great survivalist product.

[smallpoxgirl]

Chia Seeds have the proper balance of healthy oils and store long term without going rancid. They are a 'superfood' and considered a great survivalist product.

How do you use them? Do you grind them up and make chia oil? Or do you eat them as is?

[Goatlady]

Chia Seeds have the proper balance of healthy oils and store long term without going rancid. They are a 'superfood' and considered a great survivalist product.

How do you use them? Do you grind them up and make chia oil? Or do you eat them as is?

We order ours from iHerb.com. NOW brand has a really good write up on that site about them. You can take them or use them several ways. Soak them a couple of minutes and put them in a juice and drink up! Chia seeds can be used to thicken sauces. They don't have a strong flavor which makes it easier to give to children.
We're still learning about them, but we all feel better since starting with chia seeds.....

[Loki]

Well it took me 3-1/2 years, but I think I finally came up with a plan to produce my own vegetable oil using this:


According to their website, Pineba presses can allegedly produce 1.3 liters of oil per hour from sunflowers (black oil type). This may be an overestimate, but there are a number of Youtube videos that show it in action, and online reviews are pretty positive.

I talked to my boss today and he said I'd be more than welcome to put in a few hundred bed feet of sunflowers. I figure I can grow roughly 225 sunflowers per 100 bed feet, 3 rows per bed, 16” spacing within row. 100 bed feet should produce ~20 lbs of seed, which in turn should produce ~0.9 gals of oil (at 75% efficiency). These figures are based mostly on an Oregon State University study (“Economics of Oilseed Crops and Their Biodiesel Potential in Oregon's Willamette Valley”).

So if I can grow 500 bed feet I may be able to produce ~4.5 gallons of oil. Organic sunflower oil goes for ~$45/gal at the local grocery store, so that's about $200 worth, more than enough to pay for the press. Should also produce 70 lbs or so of seedmeal, which I can feed to the pigs or chickens.

Should be a fun experiment.

[Pretorian]

Of course you can cook with it, but as soon as you do you destroy all the things that make extra virgin special, and render it into normal olive oil- rather an expensive practice.

I'm sure that's true to some extent. The other difference though with extra virgin is that it's not solvent extracted. The idea of eating something that was extracted using hexane isn't especially appealing to me.

Oh boy. This only confirms my belief that sometimes it's better not to know stuff...normal olive oil is extracted using solvents? {muffled gagging} wonder how much of that I've ingested over the years...off now to google 'hexane effects short and long term'...thanks for that SPG, thanks a bunch guess I'll be sticking with my own oil from now on...

Extra virgin olive oil is also extracted using solvents. At the very least, that is the case in countries that do not adhere to International Olive council rules, like USA. If you disagree, please show me the acidity % on the bottle. Where is it?

[Pretorian]

Well it took me 3-1/2 years, but I think I finally came up with a plan to produce my own vegetable oil using this:


According to their website, Pineba presses can allegedly produce 1.3 liters of oil per hour from sunflowers (black oil type). This may be an overestimate, but there are a number of Youtube videos that show it in action, and online reviews are pretty positive.

I talked to my boss today and he said I'd be more than welcome to put in a few hundred bed feet of sunflowers. I figure I can grow roughly 225 sunflowers per 100 bed feet, 3 rows per bed, 16” spacing within row. 100 bed feet should produce ~20 lbs of seed, which in turn should produce ~0.9 gals of oil (at 75% efficiency). These figures are based mostly on an Oregon State University study (“Economics of Oilseed Crops and Their Biodiesel Potential in Oregon's Willamette Valley”).

So if I can grow 500 bed feet I may be able to produce ~4.5 gallons of oil. Organic sunflower oil goes for ~$45/gal at the local grocery store, so that's about $200 worth, more than enough to pay for the press. Should also produce 70 lbs or so of seedmeal, which I can feed to the pigs or chickens.

Should be a fun experiment.

You can use leftovers for a fish bait, chickecn feed or u can sell it to industrial candy makers, congratulations.

[Loki]

That post by "yeahbut" is over 3 years old Pretorian, this is an old thread I started back in 2008.

[pstarr]

I like the mini-expeller press. I once bought a handcrank stone/burr grinder for grains, but then I went no-carb. I hope I don't by the oil nut press. And then go low-fat.

[Shaved Monkey]

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Oil-Press-Ex ... 3f154aa2ef
Something like this would be perfect for a community garden
People grow their own seeds and bring them for extraction 10% remains with the garden as payment to be sold used or distributed.
Surplus seeds used for the community either as the bio diesel or food source depending on need.
Extra land co opted to grow more seed if required.

[Tanada]

The best thing about growing oil seeds is the oil is so versatile. People forget Castroil petroleum company was founded as Castor bean oil company specializing in castor bean oil for lubrication and medicinal uses.

[Loki]

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Oil-Press-Extractor-Extruder-Screw-Biodiesel-Veg-5-5KW-/270940152559?pt=AU_Hardware&hash=item3f154aa2ef
Something like this would be perfect for a community garden
People grow their own seeds and bring them for extraction 10% remains with the garden as payment to be sold used or distributed.
Surplus seeds used for the community either as the bio diesel or food source depending on need.
Extra land co opted to grow more seed if required.

That press would definitely be cool for a co-operative organization. If I were to do a small vegetable oil enterprise I'd invest in a larger, electric press like that.

Unfortunately even with the relatively high price of organic vegetable oils, the return per acre is still quite low. Even at $45/gal (small-volume retail price) the income per acre for sunflower oil would only be ~$4500 at the most (100 gals/acre is a typical figure I've seen). That's not very much, at least compared to vegetables. Seed is cheap, but there's quite a bit of labor involved with planting, weeding, harvesting, and processing. Net return per acre has got to be abysmal.

[pstarr]

the more I think about sunflower the more I like it. Since I went meatatarian I figured there is enough good oil in grass-fed beef that I don't really need veggie oil. But it is nice to be able to grow my own oil, (and our bodies need omega-6) without the hassle of livestock. I planted walnuts (which are iffy here on the coast) for oil, but sunflower sounds like a better idea. I imagine sunflower oil would keep forever in a tight completely filled jar in the dark?

[davep]

Of course you can cook with it, but as soon as you do you destroy all the things that make extra virgin special, and render it into normal olive oil- rather an expensive practice.

I'm sure that's true to some extent. The other difference though with extra virgin is that it's not solvent extracted. The idea of eating something that was extracted using hexane isn't especially appealing to me.

Oh boy. This only confirms my belief that sometimes it's better not to know stuff...normal olive oil is extracted using solvents? {muffled gagging} wonder how much of that I've ingested over the years...off now to google 'hexane effects short and long term'...thanks for that SPG, thanks a bunch guess I'll be sticking with my own oil from now on...

Extra virgin olive oil is also extracted using solvents. At the very least, that is the case in countries that do not adhere to International Olive council rules, like USA. If you disagree, please show me the acidity % on the bottle. Where is it?

It doesn't use solvents in Europe, btw.

[Shaved Monkey]

Here is a simple diagram for building a home made olive oil press (end of page 4)
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/vie ... Olives.pdf

I own a wine press like this which could also be used to press olive oil



we have 3 olive oil farms just down the road so shouldn't really be problem sourcing fruit or oil