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Lessons from Jon Barron
Rancidity and Processing    In this week's excerpt from Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, Jon Barron explains how when it comes to fats, you can't forget the issues of rancidity and processing.
 "Rancidity:
All oils are sensitive to heat, light, and exposure to oxygen. Over time, depending on the level of exposure and the particular oil, they can turn rancid—noticeable as off-taste and odor. Oils turn rancid through two chemical processes, hydrolysis and oxidation. Both affect the taste and odor of the oil and can degrade its nutritional value. But our primary concern when it comes to health is oxidation. As we will explore in detail in a later chapter, oxidation means free radical production, which can present major health problems.
Rancidification can produce large numbers of highly reactive free radicals and is to be avoided. To delay the development of rancid oil, it is best to store all oils in the refrigerator or a cool, dry place. Most highly refined oils that you buy in the supermarket can easily keep for a year or longer—in some cases, almost indefinitely—but there are other health tradeoffs involved in using highly processed, refined oil. Extra-virgin olive oil, on the other hand, will also keep about a year after opening without the trade-offs. Other unrefined vegetable oils that you buy in the health food store will keep about six months. Rancidity is only a problem for unsaturated fats and oils; saturated fats such as coconut oil do not turn rancid.
The Problems with Processing Oils
An important factor to remember, particularly as omega-3 fatty acids are being introduced into functional foods en masse, is their sensitivity to heat, light, and processing. In other words, their value may be somewhat negated (and even turned upside down) in many of these foods if the manufacturers don't know what they're doing. This brings us to a key issue regarding fats and oils: processing. Over the years, I have talked frequently of the dangers of highly refined oils— plastic fats, if you will—but what exactly does that mean? What follows is a generic description of the process involved in getting oils out of seeds (or in this case, coconut copra) and onto your grocer's shelves.
The first step in the process is for the copra (which is about 64 percent oil content) to be cleaned up. Dirt and other foreign materials are removed by hand. Metallic objects are removed by magnets. The cleaned copra next passes through a series of grinders and flakers, which take the pieces down to about an eighth of an inch in size. The material is then placed in driers, where the moisture is taken down to 2–3 percent. Oil is then extracted from the dried copra by means of a mechanical press. The extracted expeller oil, containing fine solids, is conveyed to the filtration section for purification, then pumped into storage tanks.
But there is still oil in the pressed copra cake. "Waste not, want not." So, the cake goes to a solvent extraction plant, where it undergoes continuous washing with hexane for more efficient extraction of the oil from the cake. This chemically extracted oil is pumped to the filtration section for blending with the expeller oil and further purification. Unfortunately, trace amounts of hexane remain in the oil. Is this a problem? Yes, because hexane is a petroleum-based solvent that can seriously impact health. Side effects from exposure to hexane include dizziness, drowsiness, dullness, headache, nausea, weakness, unconsciousness, and abdominal pain. Also, hexane tends to concentrate in the meal that is left, which is sold as animal feed and can cause anemia in livestock. A number of hexane compounds are carcinogens, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and are classed as hazardous substances. Hexane also poses a serious environmental threat as it is a hydrocarbon polluter and produces ozone and air pollution."
In the next installment, Jon will talk about how oils are refined.
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