History in North America
While olive oil and other pressed oils have been around for millennia, Procter & Gamble researchers were innovators when they started selling cottonseed oil as a creamed shortening, in 1911. Ginning mills were happy to have someone haul away the cotton seeds. Procter & Gamble researchers learned how to extract the oil, refine it, partially hydrogenate it (causing it to be solid at room temperature and thus mimic natural lard), and can it under nitrogen gas. Compared to the rendered lard Procter & Gamble was already selling to consumers, Crisco was cheaper, easier to stir into a recipe, and could be stored at room temperature for two years without turning rancid. (Procter & Gamble sold their fats and oils brands – Jif and Crisco – to The J.M. Smucker Co. in 2002.)
Soybeans were an exciting new crop from China in the 1930s. Soy was protein-rich, and the medium viscosity oil was high in polyunsaturates. Henry Ford established a soybean research laboratory, developed soybean plastics and a soy-based synthetic wool, and built a car "almost entirely" out of soybeans. Roger Drackett had a successful new product with Windex, but he invested heavily in soybean research, seeing it as a smart investment. By the 1950s and 1960s, soybean oil had become the most popular vegetable oil in the US.
In the mid-1970s, Canadian researchers developed a low-erucic-acid rapeseed cultivar. Because the word "rape" was not considered optimal for marketing, they coined the name "canola" (from "Canada Oil low acid"). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved use of the canola name in January 1985, and U.S. farmers started planting large areas that spring. Canola oil is lower in saturated fats, and higher in monounsaturates and is a better source of omega-3 fats than other popular oils. Canola is very thin (unlike corn oil) and flavorless (unlike olive oil), so it largely succeeds by displacing soy oil, just as soy oil largely succeeded by displacing cottonseed oil.
Read more about this topic: Vegetable Oil
Famous quotes containing the words north america, history, north and/or america:
“New York is a meeting place for every race in the world, but the Chinese, Armenians, Russians, and Germans remain foreigners. So does everyone except the blacks. There is no doubt but that the blacks exercise great influence in North America, and, no matter what anyone says, they are the most delicate, spiritual element in that world.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“Where we come from in America no longer signifies—it’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
The irony of the role of women in my business, and in so many other places, too, was that while we began by demanding that we be allowed to mimic the ways of men, we wound up knowing we would have to change those ways. Not only because those ways were not like ours, but because they simply did not work.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)