Talk:Vegetable fats and oils

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Can somebody add information about how expeller and extruder oil mills work ?. Thanks in advance.

It's not very interesting. You basically just squeeze really hard. However, extracting the oils doesn't necessarily give you an edible oil. I've added a bunch of information on turning crude vegetable oil into edible fats and oils. ClairSamoht 07:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

You might want to edit that up a bit, the transition between Extraction and Production is rough. The Extraction section seems to be solely about soybean oil. 67.167.248.128 02:27, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Is the processing section only applicable to soy oil? Rmhermen 15:33, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I tried to copyedit that a bit between 67's comment and yours. The processing of vegetable oils varies somewhat according to the oil. For instance, ISTR one of the tropical oils, the seeds are rotted for an extended period before the oil is extracted, and the oil takes quite a bit of processing to become edible. Cold-pressed olive oil is somewhat edible without much processing; on the other hand, olive oil has a rather strong flavor. Oils are generally considered best when flavorless, but that's not necessarily the case with olive oil. Soybean oil, when extracted with hexane (the most common practice) isn't anything I would want to eat; it has some residual hexane in it, often has some pesticide in it, and it tastes green and "beany". I included that processing because it is representative of other oil processing.
I used to have a textbook on edible oil processing which was about two inches thick. I don't think it would serve the readers well to provide every possible detail; I think they are looking for a fairly quick overview, instead. I'm willing to be convinced, though, if there appears to be a consensus.
One of these days, I'll go back in and do a thorough job of copyediting what I originally wrote, if someone else doesn't do it first. It's hard to copyedit your own work, and I would need to let this get "stale" in my mind before I cculd do a good job. ClairSamoht 21:17, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

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Is there some technical difference between Linseed and Flax seed? PML

It's the same difference between an oak and an acorn. Flax is the plant from which we get linen. You get linseed oil from the seed. ClairSamoht 07:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Source

Could someone find a source for the claim that sunflower seed oil is the most commonly used in human nutrition? It seems to me like soybean oil is, with it's higher consumption rates and all. Scott Ritchie 20:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I am also suspicious and have removed the claim pending evidence. — Pekinensis 18:20, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vegoil

I believe that the word "vegoil" is generally restricted to biodiesel, rather than being a general synonym for "vegetable oil". — Pekinensis 21:26, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gross error

I removed the claim that vegetable oil doesn't mix with water "because it's a saturated fat" - that is just plain wrong on two counts - any kind of oil does not mix with water regardless of whether it's saturated or unsaturated; and vegetable oil tends to be mostly mono and poly unsaturated fat, with only a small amount of saturated. And a later statement accurately mentions oil not mixing with water, so there was no need for a replacement to the deleted text.

Reaverdrop 01:20, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Efficiency?

Vegetable oil is inexpensive, yet I look around at even the plants on the list and they don't seem to be that oily. What gives? Does anyone know how many grams of one of these sources it takes to make a cup of oil (or any equivalent metric)? —BenFrantzDale 04:21, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I wonder what you would consider to seem oily. Olives, even fresh, seem pretty oily to me. The amount of oil varies greatly by plant type. According to one site[1], percentages are:
  • Almonds 50% oil
  • Olives 40%
  • Peanuts 50%
  • Sunflower seed 35-45%
  • Sesame seed 50%
  • Rape seed 40%
  • Soybeans 20%
  • Tung nut 20%
etc.
Of course, extraction is not 100% efficient. Rmhermen 16:08, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. Although those are all seeds and nuts. I just checked corn oil, which claims a yield of 2.8% by mass, which still seems pretty impressive. —BenFrantzDale 16:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use

Does anyone know when vegetable oil came into use or when it was discovered/created?

Vegetable oils have been known since prehistoric times. See a new discovery of a 4000-year old nut oil processing location in Indiana[2] Rmhermen 15:44, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Which is as interesting because it's a 4000-year-old discovery in Indiana as because it's 4000-year-old nut oil processing. All the history books used to tell kids that the natives of North America were ignorant savages who needed to be exterminated because they weren't overusing the natural resources. ClairSamoht 00:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Cooking Oil" vs. "Vegetable Oil"

If we merge these articles as "cooking oils", then we are going to need a new article on SALAD OILS. If we merge these articles as "vegetable oils", then we are going to need a new article for ANIMAL OILS. If we merge these articles as "Edible oils", then we need a new article for biodiesel oils, and nobody is going to be able to find the edible oils article. Merger is NOT an idea that's been well thought-out. ClairSamoht 00:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Plus, what do we do about Linseed oil and tung oil? I agree with ClairSamoht. Luigizanasi 20:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I personally use the vegetable oil almost exclusively in the context of inedible oils that are used to produce biofuel. As ClairSamoht says above, a merger would require a new Category:Seed oil category. If the purpose is to reduce categories, a simple merger doesn't really help. Waitak 15:19, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

"Cooking" oil implies something you cook with. What about the industrial uses of vegetable oil? May be misleading

I don't think that merging is a good idea. Vegetable/vegetarian oil is something too different from animal-derived oils used in the cuisine. Alex ex 16:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm somewhat against merging ... My impression is that we need to make Oils a disambig to all of them, food (edible) and non-edible (fuel) oil, ECT. The if some of this needs to be more salad, or animals or more inorganic oils it can all be found pretty easily under the auspices as an oil in Oils. Comments? -- ∞Dbroadwell 20:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that we've got something like this:

Oils used in cooking Oils used elsewhere
Vegetable oils A B
Other oils C D

As it stands, this article covers A and B, and explicitly doesn't cover C and D. There could, in principle, be an article that covers A and C (and entitled "Cooking oils"), but that's not what this article, as written, is about. If it were written, it would be an expansion and generalization of the section on "Culinary uses". I vote that we put this question to rest, and remove the merge discussion tag from the article. For the record, if somebody wants to write "Cooking oils", I think it'd be a great idea! Waitak 02:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and remove the merge tag, since there have been no votes for merging, and the decision has been pending since February. Waitak 13:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New page

I've started a List of vegetable oils page, in case anyone's interested... Waitak 16:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

The List of vegetable oils page (which should probably be called List of oils from plants or something) is relatively complete. It contains all of the oils listed here, as well as all of the oils on the essential oils page, and a good many more besides. I went for "comprehensive", so if there's anything that I missed, please feel free to add it (or ask me to). Waitak 10:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Restructuring

What would everyone think of restructuring this page? A large chunk of the existing page is a simple list of a few sources of oils. Now that the List of vegetable oils page is complete, there's no need for one on this page as well. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes by just diving in, so I thought I'd contribute a sketch of what I had in mind for people to comment on. The key goals are:

  1. Leverage the information in other, related articles (Essential oils, Biodiesel, List of vegetable oils), but cover things not covered elsewhere
  2. Deal with most of the material that's related to vegetable oils, as opposed to oils from animal fats or other sources

Here's a first-draft structure to get the ball rolling:

  • Introduction, essentially as it stands
  • Uses of vegetable oils
    • Cooking and food
    • Medicine and aromatherapy
    • Industrial uses
    • Fuel
  • Extracting
    • Oil presses
    • Chemical extraction
    • Distillation (referring to Essential oils)
  • Components
  • Processing
    • Might want to include a reference to making biodiesel
  • History of oils
    • United States
    • Maybe the role of palm oil in South East Asia?
    • Small scale oil production certainly plays a role in India...
    • ... and Africa

Any thoughts? Waitak 15:24, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd recommend that you back off a little on the "clueful" requirement.

Regular encyclopediae hire experts to write articles. The Wikipedia doesn't know who's an expert and who isn't, so they require everything be verifiable. You want someone to write that piece who doesn't really know much about fatty acids, but is willing to do some research. That's the only way you end up with verifiable content.

Experts, whether they like it or not, get treated with kid gloves. People are afraid to question anything they say. The reason why Wikipedia beats the pants off Brittanica and Encarta is that there are a bunch of hard-headed editors here who question everything, and demand that content be verifiable.

I've really cut back on Wikipedia lately, due to other demands on my time, and with summer soon to arrive, my time is going to be even more constrained. Someone who doesn't play the game ought not be making up the rules. I may be willing to stop in every so often to challenge content which is incorrect, but that's about all I can offer for the next few months.

I was against merging vegetable oils into cooking oil, because cooking oil is a different subject, not a more inclusive subject. Now, I'm wishing I'd thought to recommend that they both go into an article on "edible fats and oils", which would be basically all fats and oils not coming from petroleum. Butter and margarine really ought to be discussed together, and shortening with lard. Biodiesel oils and essential oils aren't used for nutrition, but they are edible, even if they are toxic to some creatures.

So I'm going to discourage this reorganization in favor of another, substantially more extensive, project. But since I'm not playing the game, feel free to ignore my suggestions. ClairSamoht 01:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no move. -- tariqabjotu 00:38, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Vegetable fats and oils → Vegetable oils – This page was moved from its most common logical name to make an unnecessary disambiguation, while leaving hundreds of current and future links hanging. Rmhermen 03:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

  • support. No case has been presented that any of the things listed on the disambiguation page are ever called "vegetable oils" so there is no reason to need a disambiguation. Rmhermen 03:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment:I do not see in that discussion anyone claiming that macerated oils and essentials oils are commonly referred to as vegetable oils. Rmhermen 14:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose Cocoa butter is a triglyceride, same as cooking oils and salad oils, and really ought to be on the same page; the fact that it's solid at room temperature is NOT sufficient reason to create a second article that's virtually duplicative, and we should use the common ordinary "fats and oils" terminology. ClairSamoht 06:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

The term "vegetable oil" sits uncomfortably between a technical definition and common usage. We've wrestled to find a good compromise, but it hasn't been an easy process. The comment that No case has been presented that any of the things listed on the disambiguation page are ever called "vegetable oils" just isn't true, as you'll see from the discussion on Template talk:Vegetable oils.

I also don't understand the "hundreds of current and future links hanging" comment at all. Pointing to a disambiguation page isn't a bad thing. Waitak 07:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes pointing to a disambiguation page is a very bad thing. It is the entire purpose of the Wikipedia common names policy, least surprise policy and several bots - when you hit a link you should go to the subject of that link. This ill-considered move - not discussed here - has left almost all pages linking to the wrong page. Rmhermen 14:41, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
There are currently 361 links to Vegetable oil when there should be no links to a disambiguation page. This is clearly the most common term (Note there are only 16 links to vegetable fats and oils) Anyone writing new text about an oil is likely to write and link to the term vegetable oil and therefore the article should be there. This is a clear case for primary topic disambiguation. Rmhermen 14:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying - I think I see your point now. I'd rephrase the problem a bit, then.

  • The phrase vegetable oil, in common usage, means pressed oils that are composed of triglycerides.
  • There are other oils that are derived from parts of plants, with different common names (essential oil is the biggest such category).
  • We don't have a better term than vegetable oils to refer to all such oils, included fats pressed from parts of plants, volatile oils, and macerated oils.

So the problem is:

  • If we use Vegetable oils to talk about the general topic, it misleads people who are expecting it to refer to vegetable fat oils.
  • If we use it to talk about vegetable fat oils, as is common usage (and as it did until recently), we don't have a good way to talk about the whole category of oils, and we get people who care about other kinds of plant-derived oils upset.

It's not that the disambiguation isn't needed. It's that introducing the disambiguation also introduces other problems.

Is there a solution that addresses all of the issues? Waitak 15:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

How about the term you just used: "Plant-derived oils" for what is now the disambiguation page/general topic? Is is pretty descriptive and accurate. Of course, we need the "see alsos" and dab notes. Luigizanasi 15:23, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Going a little further on this thought, I would like to suggest:
  1. The current article title stay the same at Vegetable fats and oils for the good reasons Claire Sahmot pointed out above.
  2. Vegetable oil be a redirect to Vegetable fats and oils for the good reasons Rmhermen pointed out.
  3. The current Vegetable oil disambiguation page be renamed Plant-derived oils, possibly with redirects from Oils derived from plants, Plant-based oils, etc.
  4. Proper dab notices put in at the top of each article, of course.
I think this addresses most issues. Luigizanasi 16:44, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions, which is official policy, doesn't allow renaming the disambiguation page to "Plant-derived oils" or any other such contrived name. Names need to be what USERS would enter. If you do a search on "Plant-derived oils" (quotes included) in Google, you only get 821 hits on the entire internet. That's because nobody uses "plant-derived" when the common term "vegetable", which means the same thing, is available.

Any argument that there's agreement as to what constitutes "vegetable oil" in the supermarket is specious. In the US, it is legal to put cottonseed oil, palm oil, olive oil, or coconut oil in a bottle and label it as "vegetable oil". In fact, you can make a lemony or walnutty vegetable oil, by adding lemon oil to, say, a canola oil blend, and you can still legally call it vegetable oil.

But it is NOT legal to use those oils in a product labeled as "vegetable oil margarine". It's not a matter of quality; palm oil makes a margarine very spreadable, unlike soy oil margarines, which are very brittle margarine. It's strictly a matter of the "standard of identity". "Vegetable oil margarine" has to be at least 80% oil, no more than 2% salt, and can contain only these oils: canola, safflower, sunflower, corn, soybean or peanut oil.

There's nothing here that needs fixed. ClairSamoht 20:29, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

[edit] Merging articles

We've collectively been trying to find a better way to organize the set of articles that are about substances that are:

  • Obtained from plants
  • Immiscible in water
  • Liquid at room temperature

People have quite passionate views on the topic, and it's not been easy to find a structure that everybody's willing to live with. People with a chemistry background don't take kindly to calling "oil" anything that's not a triglyceride ("fats" for us plebes). Other folks don't have trouble with that at all, but have comparable objections to other possibilities. I'm not convinced that there is a good, overall solution, but our current best shot at it (forged by User:ClairSamoht -- thank you!) is to merge all of the general articles into a single article (this one). The next step would be to turn Essential oil and Macerated oils into redirects, pointing to the relevant sections of this article.

The merge has been tentatively done, but:

  1. More work is required to make it really hang together
  2. The content is currently duplicated in the articles that have been merged

Obviously that's not a viable situation. We'd have to either go back to the drawing board or finish the merging. It's already been a painful process to get this far, so, personally speaking, I'd really rather not just do a Grand Revert and start over again -- once through these discussions is enough, thanks. So... what do we do? Waitak 07:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm personally not for merging essential oils partially for the triglycerides reason, as well, because essential oils are not just vegetable oils due to their strong aromatic properties. My other reason for not agreeing to the merge is the degree of "mental" separation or "differences" people generally see between vegetable oils and essential oils. Namely, although essential oils are technically vegetable oils, people generally do not think so that way. Having the articles remain separate can better serve the users of wikipedia. That being said I believe that it is important for a section on Essential oils to be in the vegetable fats and oil article due to the fact that essential oils are technically vegetable oils.
In short, I strongly discorage the merge for reasons of organization and distinctness of essential oil and vegetable fats/oils as subjects. However, I do agree with listing essential oils under a form of vegetable oil and "main paging" it back to essential oil. Sjschen 01:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Sjschen says "Namely, although essential oils are technically vegetable oils, people generally do not think so that way." Obviously, when people think "vegetable oil", they think soybean oil, because that's what's in the bottle at the supermarket, so if we're going to follow THAT line of reasoning, we should just redirect Vegetable oil to Soybean oil and forget about the possibility of an encyclopedia containing any information that people don't already know. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 02:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
You still have not contributed to this discussion any proof that essential oils or macerated oils are called "vegetable oils". Give us some sources so we can evaluate them. Rmhermen 02:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, no... Soybean oil is a major fraction of what's sold as vegetable oil, no doubt about it, but -- at least in my experience -- corn, peanut, safflower, canola and sunflower oil all come pretty readily to mind. All or most of them sit on the shelf in just about every grocery store I look in, under a big sign that says "Vegetable oil".
I'm personally undecided on the issue, but I can think of a couple of practical reasons not to merge:
  • There already are communities of editors who regularly improve both content areas, and the communities don't have a whole lot of overlap.
  • People who are looking for info on essential oils would generally not be interested in what's discussed under vegetable fats and oils, and vice versa.
Waitak 03:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
No offense was intended with my comment ClairSamoht, there is no need to be condescending. On my part, I suppose I was also not clear in my initial comment. To me, merging essential oil into this article would be similar to merging soybean oil into vegetable oil or merging something like Walnut into Nut (fruit) because one is technically a subtype of the other. Both articles has enough content and desimilar information to be separate articles as such I do not agree with the merge. What I DO agree with is that there should be a section is this article that (1) contains information about essential oil and (2) points out the essential oil article as the section's main article. As well, the essential oil article should also link to this article. Sjschen 04:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so how would this be:

Seems to me like the most straight forward, keeps to the terms of the above Move discussion, and so on. What do you all think? Waitak 06:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fair Sjschen 06:32, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response! If we can agree on the above, I'd be happy to implement it after the weekend, unless, of course, somebody else wants to chip in. I'd love to hear from both Rmhermen and ClairSamoht first, though. I really want to avoid a situation where we "agree" (because nobody objected during the discussion) and then "unagree" after the discussion is over, because somebody was unhappy with the outcome. Waitak 04:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be a tad simpler?
Instead of a separate disambig page, put something like "This article is about triglycerides. {{seealso|Essential oils}}{{seealso|Macerated oils]]" at the top of the VF&O article.
I don't expect to win every battle, even though my strength is that of ten, because heart is pure. I'm willing to live with the consensus. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 05:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought that the disambiguation page had some valuable stuff on it in its own right - it treated the topic of hydrogenated oils as well, for example, and gave a particularly good summary of each of the above. I can't think of another place where that could go, other than there. Waitak 08:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, as advertised, it's after the weekend, and I've implemented the above. I tried to catch changes to the original articles that were introduced while there were two versions of them. Hopefully I got everything, but I'd really appreciate a thorough review of the changes I just made. I think that we've finally put to rest the "what's a vegetable oil" controversy. Wish we could have a party to celebrate! Waitak 03:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
You certainly made a mish-mash of this demerge. If you'd put any thought into it at all, you would have scheduled this for the end of the week. How in the world can you possibly have a party, early on a Monday morning?
Although, come to think of it, there's not going to be anything on television tonight. The media is celebrating five years of pandering to the obsessed with an obsession-fest.
So let's party! We can drink canola oil, straight up, or with a cube of margarine, and perhaps with a dash of red pepper oil.... ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 05:16, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah, well, you see... the problem is that I've been so heads-down getting all of this stuff done that I've badly neglected my partying skills. I really need to work on that. Let's see, if I put it onto my todo list... um... Seriously, though, I've been thinking about what a "veggie oil" party looks like. Gotta have at least some really good olive oil, and at least a dozen oils served in one form or another... y'know, for dipping bread.. hmm... Waitak 07:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
My significant other - well, we're married, so it's pretty significant - tells me that my party skills are very undeveloped. According to The Expert In This House, one should imbibe alcohol, while applying the oil, liberally, to nekkid members of the opposite sex. Well, it sounds interesting, but if everyone is all slipping and sliding around, it might be difficult to get much past "interesting" to the next stage.... So much for experts! ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 08:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] topical trans isomers

I removed the statement that trans fats in nonfood applications pose no serious health risk. The same enzymatic pathway (Δ6 deydrogenase) is blocked by the presence of trans-isomers also in dermal cells, where trans isomers were introduced topically. I can dig up that reference if someone wants to put it into the article, as it stands, the misassertion that tans is OK for skin should not be included.

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