[Sca-cooks] To oil or not to oil?
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Mon Oct 3 03:01:06 PDT 2005
On Oct 2, 2005, at 11:14 PM, UlfR wrote:
> otsisto <otsisto at socket.net> [2005.10.03] wrote:
>
>> Linseed is not a food safe oil.
>>
>
> Are you certain? I've been under the impression that is was.
>
> UlfR
If you take fresh, perfectly edible linseeds and squeeze the oil out
of them, that's one thing, but bottled linseed oil can become rancid
easily. This is why woodworkers sometimes use boiled linseed oil
(essentially encouraged to become rancid) to treat wood in lieu of
things like polyurethane -- the observation of such phenomena has
led, among other things, to the development of petroleum-based
plastics. So, while I don't think linseed oil, per se, is dangerous,
it has a lot of technological baggage attached to it, and I would not
be at all surprised if the concept bothered some people.
Also, another consideration is that that things described as "food
safe" are actively so. Food scientists, the US Food and Drug
Administration, and people like that, don't necessarily think in
terms of "items that have not yet been proven safe and approved for
human consumption". These are still relatively new concepts, and I
expect that if an item falls outside of the list of 26,000 (or
however many it is currently) "food safe" items, it is then
officially not food safe, until such future time that a specific
determination is made. "Not food safe" is a default setting.
I expect SCAdians have more than their fair share of "not food safe"
items in their kitchens ;-)
Adamantius
"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils mangent de la
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them
eat cake!"
-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
"Confessions", 1782
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry
Holt, 07/29/04
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list