Rapeseed oil allergy

[Wavyheaded]

Has anyone heard of this?

Through elimination my DP has discovered an allergy/intolerance to rapseseed oil, every time he has something that contains it he gets IBS-type symptoms, mainly diahorrea. It's a really hard one to deal with because it's not part of the 14 'known allergens' that food businesses HAVE to prepare for. When we go out for a meal we have to ask the staff and they often don't know/haven't heard of rapeseed oil, so it makes it hard to order/buy food/go out!

I've read online that many people suspect rapeseed oil is causing an allergy and that it could be the hidden cause of many people's IBSs. I don't know the science behind it though I do know that rapeseed oil is a genetically modified crop, which doesn't sound natural to me.

It's also a 'hidden' ingredient in foods as it's often labelled as just "vegetable oil" so most people don't know about it, which makes it even harder to know if something has it in! (veg oil is usually rapeseed oil, soybean oil, or a combination of both.)

Does anyone know/heard about this? And how does one go about getting an allergy recognised as one of the 'known' allergens that businesses have to be aware of?

What do other people use for cooking? Things like Yorkshire puddings that require high temps so Olive oil is out. I have a nut allergic child so those are out.

You can use lard or butter for cooking, many vegetable fats are palm oil or a blend with others, soya oil also. Rape pollen affects me in high summer but hadn’t noticed anything after petals fall, so many allergens these days, the list goes on and on.

Hard to see a common cause, or were they always present undiagnosed and dismissed as other illnesses.

Yes @Ansumpasty, rapeseed oil is in almost every product I check - even houmous, soya milk and every processed food and baked product. Is almost unavoidable.

I now eat only butter (mixed with a little olive oil to prevent rock hard winter butter - genius idea thank you MN for that one!), and use olive oil or lard for bread and cooking. Lard is amazing stuff - half the saturated fat of butter and makes pastry really, really nice - I use half and half. I'm not overly keen on lard for roasts but it's better than itchy hands and intestinal bleeding - sorry waaay TMI!! Tesco's houmous seems to be the only one with no rapeseed oil,

I use olive oil. Olive oil being toxic when heated to normal cooking temperatures has been debunked, but have a research if you don’t feel comfortable.

I’d take it back to basics with olive oil, butter and lard.

Have you joined the Facebook group for rapeseed allergy? It’s pretty helpful!

I buy Sainsbury’s organic hummus. Their bakery bread is also safe 😃
Warbuton’s bagels don’t have it in, so I buy them for the kids’ breakfast. Sainsbury’s also do an organic mayo. I don’t eat it as sunflower oil also tends to give me D in high quantities, but it’s good to know!
I hate the constant checking of ingredients. Companies seem to be throwing in some rapeseed even when there was no previous oil added!

Rice bran oil is a good one as can be used at high temperatures and is healthy. I usually buy in Tesco
www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/258669752

Thanks for the bagels info @Ansumpasty ! Love bagels! I don't go on facebook but someone else might find that useful

I know this is a very old thread but still relevant. I too am annoyed and angry this rapeseed oil is being paraded as if some luxury oil but it’s still the nasty canola oil I remember being in the shops before they renamed it. Here is something I found interesting and it has a number to contact a lady. All you members here who have posted about symptoms, I’d message this lady on the link below to let her know that reactions are in fact severe sometimes and not mild as she presents it. These people need to know! https://www.allergyuk.org/news/allergy-alert-rapeseed-oil/. It’s in our kids schools they eat it everyday- it’s so sad we are being poisoned daily with impure food products now from a very young age. It’s disgusting and should be banned from schools. I’m sure it’s what has clogged my daughters skin. Something needs done about it. It’s not a luxury oil like olive oil it’s a vile nasty refined product and not fit for consumption. Sorry for the rant and thanks for the thread it’s reinforced me to be strict and to remember and completely refuse to buy any product with it in- heading towards paleo I think… we gave the power to these manufacturers when we started buying packaged convenience foods no longer cooking like our ancestors but look how ill we have all become because of it- a bit like the Spanish getting the gold from the aztecs in return for rubbish - our health is our gold- and we must take it back , treasure it and fight for it!

For cooking you could substitute organic coconut oil it can withstand high temperatures without become unadulterated it is the best alternative if your not allergic to it or pure sunflower if you can find it., nothing but pure olive oil should be used on salads. Avoid oils in plastic bottles too if you can help it! Might be difficult with sunflower oil though.

Here is the email address of FSA to notify of your rapeseed intolerance if wanted. [email protected]

@Chocatonic thanks for your posts. I've just come back from Canada where canola oil is everywhere! My partner has an allergy and found it very difficult to eat out anything there.

Hi, I can imagine it was rife in Canada, I’m sorry to hear of your experience it’s terribly frustrating. I should mention that currently products in the uk that mention they have sunflower oil in it have been replaced with canola / rapeseed oil without notification from the manufacture or on labelling- this is due to the war in Ukraine as most of our sunflower oil comes from there. This is mentioned in the link I posted so uk allergy are aware but I just wanted to re iterate it here as you may think you’re buying a product with sunflower oil but it’s in fact rapeseed. My daughter is now gluten free it’s practically impossible to find gluten free bread without rapeseed oil- so far I’ve found tortilla wraps but only 6 tiny ones for £3 - so in most cases I’m having to learn how to work with gluten free flour to bake with… (but that’s another post I reckon. )- whether manufacturing will revert back to sunflower oil no one can know but at least allergy alert are aware and hopefully will push for some kind of requirement for them to do it- so perhaps the more people who get onto allergy uk about rapeseed oil the better. I have emailed them and directed them to this thread so they can see that canola oil can in fact produce severe reactions. Then, finally maybe like soya, dairy wheat gluten sugar nuts some e numbers , ( rapeseed oil) can be added to the list and it will be viewed as a ( baddie) ingredient too- and encourage more manufacturers to think about what crap they are making to poison us to make a quick buck - instead we might get decent choices whether buying packed foods eating in restaurants or hotels or buying ingredients. It may be at a cost but that cost is worth the sacrifice of losing your health I guess.

Im sorry to jump in onto an older thread but I am also sensitive/intolerant to rapeseed oil. I know these sensitivity tests are taken with a pinch of salt but I did one and it definitely seems to track with elimination.

also going slightly conspiracy theorist here but when I googled sensitivity to rapeseed oil (how I stumbled upon this thread) I found it incredibly interesting that the first page of results from all different websites had almost exactly the same wording on each result

Almost as if there’s a kind of agenda or vested interest in keeping rapeseed oil in everything 🤔

Hi sorry to hear you have an intolerance to rapeseed oil too. I still continue to avoid it as much as possible. Finlay crisps from Aldi still use sunflower oil- many others all include rapeseed now and I just refuse to buy stuff with it in which is nearly all packaged food. What does the name rapeseed mean anyway? It is an absolutely horrible name. Why it’s not still called canola oil I don’t know, probably the former association and bad press it got then . Producers now think they can manufacture it cold press and make it appear like an exclusive olive oil. Well it is not and sadly for the bees it is just as disruptive for them with millions of yellow flowers in a field which the pollen is also quite invasive and aggressive on one’s system. If you want to do more I would continue to post on allergy uk about it and make them and others aware. I try to inform as many people as I can about it when the opportunity is available.
Re: conspiracy alert- nothing would surprise me to be honest. We mostly are bombarded with the agenda they want to push - before conspiracy even became a thing the term was propaganda and it is a blatant fact that it is used against the masses continually as affirmed and admitted by these Governments after the war- why should anything be different now?

I have suffered for about 8 years, at times severely, from an intolerance to rapeseed/canola oil with all the symptoms described by previous posters (thanks for sharing), and some strange additional ones, too. Worst were the skin eruptions after repeated restaurant meals with fried foods, salad dressings, cakes, bread, etc.. The skin eruptions tended to be accompanied by an intolerable stinging, burning itch and tended to become inflamed before eventually healing. It looked like rabies.
The symptoms usually started with immediate digestive disruption and then continued for weeks, ranging from above skin eruptions to fatigue, strange mental symptoms, headaches, joint pains, etc, etc..
Funny thing is when a lot of food companies switched to rapeseed oil, I didn't like the taste of their products anymore, e.g mayonnaise which to me suddenly smelled and tasted ''off'' and stale. Anyway, all is good now after definitely tracing the cause to canola by rigorous elimination and avoiding it, which is very difficult to do as it is hidden in a lot of foods, including ''healthy'' organic products. Strangely, I can consume mustard (which has a high erucic acid content and is a recognised allegen) without any problems. I am beginning to wonder whether the processing of rape seed into oil might be to blame for the intolerance and allergic reactions, as this oil is highly processed, extracted with solvents, and often bleached as well, see the Wikipedia quote below:
''...Canola oil is made at a processing facility by slightly heating and then crushing the seed. Almost all commercial canola oil is then extracted using hexane solvent, which is recovered at the end of processing. Finally, the canola oil is refined using water precipitation and organic acid to remove gums and free fatty acids, filtering to remove color, and deodorizing using steam distillation. Sometimes the oil is also bleached for a lighter color...''.
Anyway, my preferred oils always were extra virgin olive oil, even for frying, and organic sunflower oil as an alternative with a neutral taste.
Rapeseed oil smells disgusting when very hot, with a hint of chemicals and burnt plastic or rubber. Avoid, even if you can tolerate it, as I believe it is an inferior oil generally.