The canola industry predicts consumer demand for its oil will leap now that the U.S. government is allowing it to be labeled as heart healthy.
Is it just hype?
If the experience of the American almond industry is anything to go by, probably not.
“Our consumer-branded sales have doubled within the last three years or so and we expect them to double again soon, before the end of the decade,” said Susan Brauner of Blue Diamond Almond Growers of Sacramento, California, the world’s largest almond producer.
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Three years ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the tree nut industry the same permission that the canola industry now has received to make a “qualified health claim” about its products’ beneficial effects.
Nut promoters claimed for many years that their products were good for people’s health, but those claims could not be made in advertisements or on product packages. Once the FDA allowed many tree nut products to make a health claim in promotional material and on product packages, the sales job became much easier.
“We attribute our strong supply-demand situation to, in part, good marketing and sales strategy, but also to the health message about almonds,” said Brauner, whose company is a co-operative owned by about 60 percent of California’s almond growers. California produces about 80 percent of the world’s almonds.
“We believe there are a lot of Americans and Canadians and others who are eating more tree nuts – including almonds – because they know they are good for you and the way they know is that our almond industry has spent about $10 million US over the last 10 years doing a lot of nutritional research to show people just how almonds work in the body and are good for the body when consumed in a low saturated fat diet.”
The FDA has been stingy about handing out qualified health claim approvals, with canola only the fifth food to receive one allowing it to say it can reduce heart disease. To earn it, food product promoters must supply FDA with data from numerous credible tests that prove their claims.
Only canola, olive oil, walnuts, tree nuts and omega 3 fatty acids are allowed to make an FDA approved heart health claim. Tree nuts were the first commodity to win such a right.
The canola industry supplied the FDA with the results of 20 human nutritional studies, of which FDA found eight that met its requirements and six that showed a strong link between improved cardiovascular health and a replacement of saturated fats with canola oil, which has the lowest saturated fat content of any vegetable oil on the market.
Guy Johnson, the scientist and consultant who put together the canola industry’s request for the health claim, said the claim approval will help sell canola oil in the United States.
“We really hope the word will get out, spurred by the health claim, which can be used on packages of canola oil and canola oil containing products,” said Johnson.
