Cooking oil shock for SA

Last updated: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 Print

When South Africans buy olive oil – especially the cheaper varieties – they may actually be getting sunflower oil doctored with a bit of green colourant.

This is according to Prof Lodewyk Kock, who addressed the media on Friday at a conference on oil abuse and the implications for South Africa. The conference was sponsored by fast-food outlet Nando's. Kock is from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State.

Apart from this startling fact, Kock also elaborated on the dire situation in terms of the reuse and redistribution of cooking oils in this country. It is a well-known fact that many fast-food outlets and restaurants sell their overused cooking oil to employees, who then distribute the oil to people in disadvantaged communities.

Reused oil, and the varnish-like compounds it contains, can pose a variety of health risks and has repeatedly been linked to cancer and heart disease. The tragedy is that many consumers who use these old oils already have compromised immunity due to malnutrition or disease infection, making them more susceptible to the potential negative effects of the oils.

To make matters worse, a recent study by the North West University showed that certain fats can have a negative impact on the liver function of HIV-positive individuals.

Toxic breakdown products
"When cooking oils and fats are used over and over in frying processes, they start to break down to eventually form unhealthy products," Kock says. "Fats containing more than 50% breakdown products have been recorded in various restaurants across South Africa."

According to Kock, old oil is also being masked so that it matches the colour of fresh oil. There has, for example, been a local incident of reused oil that was decoloured (by, for instance, bleaching) and passed off as brand-new oil to a hospital. When oil is repeatedly reused, it becomes murky and dark brown (see picture below).

Photo: Chips fried in reused oil (sample on the right).

As many as one in eight frying establishments in South Africa abuse their oil, Kock says. Factors that contribute to the problem include the increased demand for fried food, the high cost of replacing oil and the difficulty of disposing of old oil.

The olive oil situation
Olive oil, which is widely recommended for its high proportion of mono-unsaturated fats and good antioxidant content, has also been linked to fraudulent practices in this country.

In 2001, there was an incident of sunflower oil being mixed with a colourant not fit for human consumption and subsequently sold as cheap olive oil. This practice surfaced again this year. The South African Fryer Oil Initiative, in collaboration with Agri Inspec, uncovered cheap olive oil that was in fact sunflower oil mixed with a green colourant.

At the media conference, Kock showed samples of the fake olive oil, which had a distinctive green colour.

These fraudulent practices are of concern when one takes the Spanish Oil Syndrome, reported in 1981, into account. This incident involved contaminated rapeseed oil that was sold as olive oil. As a result, 20 000 people suffered severe side effects and 460 people died. – (Carine van Rooyen, November 2006)