Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives
To view PDF files, you must have a copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available as a free download.
INNOVATIVE IDEA: FLAX AND CANOLA OILS FOR HEART HEALTH
What happens when you take flax oil
and canola oil, both heart-healthy oils, and mix them together? It
just might be a “higher horsepower, higher octane fuel for the
body,” in the words of Dr. Peter Jones, Director of the Richardson
Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals.
Jones is leading a clinical
research study to investigate the effects of canola and flax oils in
reducing cholesterol and preventing heart disease. Canola oil is
high in heart-healthy monounsaturated fats and Omega 3 fatty acids,
while flax is an outright powerhouse in Omega 3s. As for the ‘bad
guy’ fats, both oils are very low in saturated fat and contain no
trans fats.
The study got underway in the fall
of 2007, with volunteers arriving daily at the Metabolic Unit of the
Richardson Centre to be served a nutritious breakfast. Each
breakfast ingredient was weighed and measured to make sure that
volunteers took in exactly the right amount of calories for their
height, weight, age and gender. After breakfast, volunteers headed
off to home or work with cooler bags containing their lunches and
dinners.
“By controlling the diet and
providing all the meals for the participants, we are able to
determine the specific effects canola and flax oil have on
cholesterol levels and other markers of heart disease risk,”
explains Leah Gillingham, the PhD student coordinating the
canola/flax study. In the test diet, 70 per cent of the fat consumed
by volunteers came from the canola and flax oils.
To date, the first round of
results have revealed that both the canola oil and flax/canola oil
blend successfully reduced ‘bad’ cholesterol as compared to the
control diet of typical North American oils. After four weeks of
consuming the canola oil diet, the LDL-cholesterol of study
participants decreased by 11 per cent, total cholesterol decreased
by six per cent, and ‘good’ HDL-cholesterol was preserved.
Furthermore, the flax/canola oil blend reduced the study
participants LDL-cholesterol by 14 per cent and total cholesterol by
10 per cent.
Analyses of the study results
are still underway at the Richardson Centre. Researchers are
assessing the effects of canola and flax oils on markers of
inflammation in the body and analyzing how much energy participants
expended to metabolize their meals. So far, the results strengthen
the heart-healthy benefits of incorporating canola and flax oils
into the diet, replacing other oils rich in saturated and trans
fats.
This project received support from
the Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative (ARDI), Flax
Canada 2015 and the Canola Council of Canada. ARDI is funded by
Growing Forward, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.
