Flax Oil-The Best and Worst

Flax seed oil is Canada's speciality. In its freshly-pressed and unrefined state, it's widely accepted as a source of essential fats like omega-3 and omega-6. It has become a popular food oil and is sold in health food stores everywhere. Refined flax oil, on the other hand, is undesirable for maintaining good health. It contains trans fatty acids, which come from heat-damaged omega-3 fatty acids. As a result, bottled refined flax oil has almost completely disappeared from the market. Some capsulaters are still using refined flax oil. If you want to find out whether the oil in the capsule is refined or not, simply open the capsule and squeeze the oil onto a white plate. Unrefined oil has a golden yellow color, while refined flax oil is pale white and has no taste.

Fresh cold-pressed flax oil was not produced commercially on the North American continent until 1984. Imported unrefined flax oil from Europe or Canada was stopped by US Customs at the border, as "unrefined flax oil" or linseed oil for food purposes was not listed in the Agricultural Handbook and therefore not recognized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as either food or nutritional supplement. Now, freshly-pressed, unrefined flax oil has slipped in as an unrestricted neu-traceutical food, as the FDA no longer bothers to regulate it.