Okay, we’ve already heard from ill-tempered TPM Reader CB on the Canola Oil/rapeseed oil policy debate. Now a more interesting a even-tempered follow-up from TPM Reader SR …
Okay, as enough of a foodie to still be DVRing “Good Eats” reruns, I now have to chime in with two exclamations phrased as questions, and an important piece of new info.
1. Rapeseed and canola plants are brassicas? Whoa! Who knew? And I’m not being facetious. Ever since I learned (yeah, from Alton Brown) that a ginormous number of the things we think are different vegetables are barely distinguishable from each other genetically, I’ve just been fascinated by the whole brassica thing.
It answered a question that had been stuck in my mind ever since the first time I ever saw Giada cook a thing I’d never heard of called broccol rabe and went “WTF?” And once you start looking into it, the brassicas, /k/a the cruciferous vegetables, are basically every vegetable that you’re supposed to eat a lot of and every vegetable that no one is indifferent to, that people either love passionately or hate passionately. And most people both love and hate different brassicas. All just cultivars of one to three (depending on who you ask) species of a single genus. And it’s got a serious side serious thing—the implications of seeing all that variation in organisms that are basically indistinguishable genetically, it gives one furiously to think. About biology, about ecology, about evolution, about hoe significant that one percent (depending on who you ask) variance between humans and chimpanzees really can be, and, of course, about race.
And now you tell me canola oil is in the same family. Wow.
2. You say: “In other words, it’s not rapeseed oil, it’s Canada Oil with a smooth, less bitter taste!” So, basically the same as the difference between how foreigners view Americans vs. Canadians. Coincidence? I think not.
3. Thanks, I suspect, to you and your correspondent, “brassica oleracea” appears to be trending on Google. Popped up before I got to the “I” in “brassica.” Well done.
