Canola oil comes from a real plant, but calling it “natural” depends on what you mean by that word. The canola plant itself was created through traditional cross-breeding of rapeseed in the 1960s and 1970s, not in a lab. However, the oil you buy at the grocery store goes through an extensive industrial process involving chemical solvents, high heat, and multiple refining stages before it reaches the bottle. So the short answer: the plant is natural, but the oil is heavily processed.
How the Canola Plant Was Created
Canola is a descendant of the rapeseed plant, which produces oil rich in erucic acid, a compound considered nutritionally undesirable. Plant breeders in Saskatchewan and Manitoba spent roughly two decades using traditional cross-breeding to develop rapeseed varieties with much lower levels of erucic acid and other unwanted compounds called glucosinolates. The name “canola” is short for “Canadian oil.”
This is an important distinction: canola was not created through genetic engineering. It was developed the same way farmers have bred crops for centuries, by selecting plants with desirable traits and crossing them over many generations. That said, a large share of today’s canola crop is genetically modified for herbicide resistance, which is a separate issue from how the plant originally came into existence. If GMOs are a concern for you, organic or non-GMO verified canola oil is available.
Under U.S. federal regulations, canola oil must contain no more than 2% erucic acid to be sold under that name. Anything above that threshold is classified as rapeseed oil.
How Most Canola Oil Is Made
The processing is where things get complicated. Conventional canola oil goes through a multi-stage industrial extraction and refining process that looks nothing like, say, pressing olives for olive oil.
First, the seeds are crushed or broken into smaller pieces, heated, and run through a mechanical expeller press to squeeze out some of the oil. But this doesn’t get all of it. The leftover press cake is then broken down further and mixed with hexane, a chemical solvent derived from petroleum, to pull out the remaining oil. The hexane is later evaporated off by heating the mixture, collected, and reused. The oil and any residual hexane go through distillation to separate them.
After extraction, the crude oil still isn’t ready for your kitchen. It goes through a full refining sequence: degumming to remove certain compounds, bleaching to strip out color pigments, and deodorization to eliminate odors and flavors. Deodorization alone involves heating the oil to temperatures between 160°C and 260°C (320°F to 500°F) under near-vacuum pressure while injecting steam. For canola oil specifically, this stage typically lasts 20 to 90 minutes. The result is a neutral-tasting, light-colored, shelf-stable cooking oil.
What Processing Does to the Oil
High-heat deodorization creates small amounts of trans fats. Commercial canola oil typically contains between 1.9% and 3.6% trans fats as a percentage of total fatty acids. This is a relatively small amount, but it’s worth noting because these trans fats don’t appear on the label. They’re not added artificially; they form when the oil’s unsaturated fatty acids are exposed to extreme heat during refining. The linolenic acid in canola oil (an omega-3 fat) is particularly susceptible to this transformation.
To be clear, these levels are far lower than the trans fats found in partially hydrogenated oils, which were the major dietary concern behind trans fat labeling rules. But for people who specifically seek out canola oil for its omega-3 content, it’s worth knowing that some of those fats are altered during processing.
Cold-Pressed and Expeller-Pressed Options
Not all canola oil goes through chemical extraction. Expeller-pressed canola oil uses only mechanical pressure, with a screw-type machine squeezing oil from ground seeds. No hexane is involved. The friction from pressing does generate heat, typically reaching 140°F to 210°F, so the oil isn’t processed cold, but it avoids chemical solvents entirely.
Cold-pressed canola oil takes this a step further. It uses a slower, low-resistance press that minimizes friction and keeps temperatures below 122°F (as defined by European standards). Cold-pressed canola retains more of its original flavor, color, and nutrient profile, but yields less oil per batch, making it more expensive. You’ll typically find it in specialty or health food stores rather than on the regular grocery shelf.
If your concern about canola oil is specifically about the chemical processing, these alternatives offer a middle ground: still canola, but with fewer industrial steps between the seed and the bottle.
What “Natural” Actually Means on a Label
The FDA has never established a formal legal definition of “natural” for food labeling. Its longstanding policy says “natural” means nothing artificial or synthetic has been added to a food that wouldn’t normally be expected to be there. But this policy explicitly does not cover processing or manufacturing methods. Pasteurization, high-heat treatment, and similar industrial techniques don’t disqualify a food from being labeled natural.
This means a bottle of conventionally processed canola oil, extracted with hexane and refined at temperatures above 400°F, could technically carry a “natural” label without violating FDA policy. The solvent is removed during processing, not added to the final product. Whether that feels “natural” to you is a personal judgment the regulation doesn’t attempt to make.
So Is It Natural?
The canola plant is as natural as any modern crop variety. It was developed through the same kind of selective breeding behind most fruits, vegetables, and grains we eat today. The oil inside the seed is a natural fat. But standard commercial canola oil undergoes a level of industrial processing that most people wouldn’t associate with the word “natural”: chemical solvents, temperatures exceeding 400°F, bleaching, and deodorization. The final product is safe and widely used, but it’s far removed from what you’d get by simply crushing a seed.
If minimal processing matters to you, cold-pressed or expeller-pressed canola oil skips the chemical extraction. If your concern is about the plant itself, canola was created through conventional breeding, not genetic engineering, though most commercial canola today is a GM crop. The answer really depends on which version of “natural” you’re asking about.