Talk:Erucic acid

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The article on Canola says Erucic acid had been linked to cancer in large amounts. This article needs to elaborate on this and other health risks there are from Erucic acid, and for that mater any health benefits.

I have the references for this article ready but there on the Windows PC which has gone down again. Please bare with me for a few days, until I get it up and running again.--Aspro 18:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Health Concerns Rambling

What is all that rambling on about under "Health concerns"?

I'm adding a NPOV template to the section. Although in broad terms I think portions of the narrative there is roughly right, it's presented with an agenda. Quite a bit of it isn't even relevant to erucic acid. Some of it is incoherent.
I don't have enuf time tonight to be bold, so I'll just tag it. David.Throop 01:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Hi David. Yes it does ramble somewhat. Expanding the article I came across so much negative information about erucic acid that I added the Health concerns section balance things out a bit and put it into proper context -or so I hope. However, such was was the amount of danger levelled at this particular fatty acid and frequently repeated non-sequiters stated as facts, that I found myself unable to stay on topic. It needs a fresh pair of eyes to tidy it up. So I am not going to add any more text for now, but I might dig out the viscosity and other properties that have been missed out.--Aspro 11:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I've readded an NPOV template as the article seemed to be campaigning for its safety and didn't mention that it is banned in food stuffs etc. Secretlondon 01:17, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The text cites Rastogi for support that erucic acid is cardioprotective. Reading the Rastogi paper, it does say that mustard oil is cardioprotective. But it explains this by noting the high levels of ω-3 linolenic acid which is cardioprotective. It further notes that, in the studied population, ω-3 levels are otherwise low. It says that mustard oil is cardioprotective notwithstanding the presence of erucic acid.
So the cited paper does not support the claim that erucic acid is cardioprotective.
David.Throop (talk) 17:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, its the 'platelet' bit that is in need of a separate reference – as it stands it is putting things into Rastogi's mouth that he has not said. To expand the article from the original stub I must have read though some sixty papers and the the overall view on the affect on the platelets was at slight variance with Rastogi's very limited references (who was, after all, looking to possible negative effects for worst case). It might be better to just keep the 'suggestion' brief on this article and then refer the reader on to a physiological explanation of the effect that these longer chain fatty acids have on platelets than duplicate it all in this article. If anyone else wants to start searching WP they are welcome as I quite busy now.--Aspro (talk) 22:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I removed the following material as it discussed matters far afield from erucic acid. The material also has NPOV problems. The only one of the cites that discussed erucic acid (canadian biodiversity) did not support the point being made in the text.

The public food regulator, the FDA has been publicly accused of being biased towards protecting industrial interests, and allowing unsatisfactory scientific testing, such as animal testing, where human clinical tests are required.[1] Other trials have shown that total diet substitutions by Brussels spouts, kale, cod's liver, hare and so on can cause very negative health effects, and so the tests of erucic acid on animals done as they are do not fully demonstrate whether or not erucic acid is a threat to health.[2][3][4] If the same safety factor (120) was applied to fluoride then all natural spring water would be deemed not fit to drink.
  1. ^ Lenzer J (2004) FDA's counsel accused of being too close to drug industry BMJ 2004;329:189 (24 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7459.189 Retrieved 2007-01-29
  2. ^ Smith, R H (1980) Kale poisoning: The brassica anemia factor. Vet. Rec., 107: pages 12-15.
  3. ^ Hutchison T W (1977) Onions as a cause of Heinz body anaemia and death in cattle. Can Vet J. 1977 December; 18(12): 358–360.
  4. ^ Canadian biodiversity information facility General poisoning notes Government of Canada. Retrieved 2007-01-29

David.Throop (talk) 02:20, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Just my 2¢. My daughter, who is “into” health-foods, e-mailed me this morning concerned about canola oil. She had run across a health newsletter that seemed to me to be full of inflammatory, unscientific rhetoric. While reading up on canola oil here on Wikiipedia, I followed the link to Eurcic acid. I think, like me, many other readers of this article will be coming here desirous of learning more about eurcic acid in the context of food metabolism, food, and canola/rapeseed oil. It was interesting to read what the industrial uses of eurcic acid are and the general nature of it. I hope editors on both sides of the isle here manage to buttress their edits (facts) with good, solid citations. Generally speaking, I find the nature and scope of this article to be well balanced, topical, informative, and addressing the interests of the typical reader who will be coming here. Having said all that, I am not making any statements about the factual accuracy of what’s here, just that the text is addressing the right issues to be of interest to readers.

    P.S. I don't feel this article merits a {neutrality} tag for very much longer. If there is a factual inaccuracy, let the person who slapped this article with the tag delete the offending error and replace it with the true, well-cited facts. If the tag is instead here because the author feels the article meanders into insufficiently relevant topics, I don’t believe that is the case whatsoever. I note that the author who apparently slapped on the tag justified doing so by stating, in part: “Quite a bit of it isn't even relevant to erucic acid. Some of it is incoherent.” Well, “relevant” is a relative term and the charge doesn’t hold water IMO given what’s currently in this article. I for one, found the content of this article to be addressing precisly those issues I was interested in. My only wish now is that what I’m reading is true. Accordingly, “relevancy” hasn’t anything to do with issues of “neutrality” and neither does “incoherent.” I suggest the tag be removed and the authors get back to editing with well cited facts. Greg L (my talk) 21:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

  • P.P.S.: I saw that the {neutrality} tag was slapped on a year ago, little resolution was achieved over the course of the last year, and no work has occurred here since December to resolve it. I’ve done a couple of edits on both sides of the argument to rid the article of bias and deleted the tag as the dispute has effectively been abandoned. Greg L (my talk) 23:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


This article should have had a neutral POV tag, at least up until now (when I did some work to try and "fix" it.) The evidence for the negative health effects of euric acid as comapred to other lipids is questionable, and based mainly on studies performed on rats (which present a poor model as they have difficulty metabolizing euric acid comapred to humans or even pigs, which present a better animal model;) and even then negative health effects were only observed in males. What's more, it appears to be that euric acid only caused negative health effects in pigs when given in extremely high doses, such that I would start to suspect that any lipid would caused negative health effects at that level; since these levels are literally at the point of eating nothing put pure fat for weeks on end (diets of 100% euric acid are literally diets of pure fat and nothing else,) at which point I would think that any organism would start to suffer heart problems as a result, no matter what type of lipid (fat) they were consuming. As such, I have myself attempted to "fix" the relevant articles by changing uncited statements of "fact" labeled as "needing citation" to statements of possibility (ie. "is known to cause" to "may cause,") and even at that it would be better if somebody with greater knowledge on the subject could come along and either cite these statements or delete them altogether. Regardless, the implications that commercially-sold Canola Oil is unsafe are highly unfounded as the varities sold in stores contain extremely low concentrations of euric acid (levles that are clearly safe for humans.) Works of Sweat (talk) 22:13, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sentence requires editing

Erucic acid silver salt has be found to useful modify the properties of photographic film.
  This sentence in the Uses section requires editing for clarity by someone who understands the intent. Trelligan 16:46, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
There. Have endeavoured to keep it really simple to understand and comprehensive. Does it make sense to everyone? --Aspro 08:56, 13 May 2007 (UTC)