Enova's Claim: Oil Slick

[Guest guest]

Enova's Claim: Oil Slick

By Sally Squires

Tuesday, February 1, 2005; Page HE01

" I'm not asking you to change who you are, " says the

hip young woman on the television commercial. " I am

asking you to change how you think . . . about

pancakes, stir-fry, pasta, brownies, shish kebab,

French fries, waffles, salad dressing, birthday cake,

carrot cake. . . . "

The TV spot is for Enova, a new cooking and salad oil

coming to a grocery store near you. A reformulated

mixture of canola and soybean oils, Enova may soon

also be an ingredient in commercially prepared foods

from spreads to baked goods.

" Almost every major food company in the United States

has expressed some interest in it, " says Branin Lane,

research manager of nutritional science for

agricultural conglomerate Archer s Midland,

maker of Enova.

The oil is already making inroads in Japan, where it's

been sold since 1999 as Econa. Consumers use it to

stir-fry vegetables and to deep-fry tempura. Food

manufacturers there have put it into mayonnaise and

salad dressings.

" It does everything very well, " says Lane, who notes

" it's a nice, bland, light oil that has no inherent

flavor that is passed on to food products. It can be

used across the board so you don't have to have a

[different] sautéing oil and a salad oil. "

But Enova's most distinguishing feature may be its

potential health benefits. Through a patented process,

the oil has been altered to be rich in a naturally

occurring kind of fat that is absorbed just like

standard fat but is metabolized differently. Known as

diglycerides, these fats aren't broken down easily by

the body. So instead of being sent to fat cells for

storage, diglycerides are more likely to be shuttled

to the liver, where they are burned for energy.

In theory, that could result in less body fat and --

possibly -- weight loss, a selling point underscored

on Enova's label, which says, " More is burned as

energy. Not stored as fat. "

" The key message that we are trying to drive home is

the health benefit of Enova that less is stored in the

body as fat compared to other vegetable oils, " says

Tutt, director of the Enova Brand for ADM Kao,

the Archer s Midland joint venture that makes

the oil. " We feel that Enova is a healthy alternative

to cooking with other conventional oils. " Limited

research backs that up, although a number of leading

nutritional scientists caution that the studies are

mostly small and brief. The findings suggest that

diglycerides may slightly decrease appetite. They also

show that after eating diglycerides, blood levels of

an unhealthy fat -- trigylcerides -- temporarily drop.

(Consistently high trigycleride levels are a heart

disease risk factor.)

What about weight loss? A six-month study in the

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examined a

group of overweight people weighing about 200 pounds.

It found an extra two-pound loss in the first three

months for those who used Enova compared with those

who used other vegetable oils. Walter Willett,

chairman of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public

Health, considers this amount of weight loss

" trivial. "

But whether consumers will understand that message

from Enova's " Not Stored As Fat " marketing campaign is

something that worries nutrition experts and consumer

groups.

" This is not a magic bullet that you take to make the

fat melt away, " said Penny Kris-Etherton, professor of

nutrition at Pennsylvania State University and a

member of the 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Scientific

Committee.

Here's what experts say to consumers who are

considering trying Enova:

Proceed cautiously. Since Enova contains the

well-known canola and soybean oils, it didn't have to

undergo extensive testing to enter the U.S. market. It

is being sold under a Food and Drug Administration

provision known as GRAS, or " generally recognized as

safe " (a designation used for products whose

ingredients are already considered harmless.) " I don't

recommend it [Enova] to anyone because we don't know

enough about it, " noted Wahida Karmally, director of

Nutrition at Columbia University's Irving Center for

Clinical Research in New York.

" For us to be able to recommend it to the American

public, we have to make sure that it has no adverse

effects and we have to find out what the good effects

are. " said Karmally, who is helping run an Enova study

for ADM Kao.

Don't expect to save calories with Enova. Like other

liquid oils, Enova has 120 calories per tablespoon, so

it's no caloric bargain. Enova is meant to replace

other oils, not add to them. " The bottom line is if

people overconsume this oil or any oil, they will be

more likely to gain weight, " noted ADM's Lane.

Great for baking, not for dipping. Enova has no

flavor, so you probably won't relish dipping bread in

it the way you might virgin olive oil. But it seems to

earn high marks in salad dressings, sauteed food and

baked goods.