canola-red palm oil blend

found it at the grocery store the other day and decided to get some coz,well, it's red, lol. now i dont know how to proceed with the lye calc coz the bottle said nothing about the percentages of each oil. the brand is carotino and it's a blend of red palm and canola.

how should i proceed in regards to counting the sap values? any help appreciated, thanks..

Wow, what a conundrum! Is there any info at all on the container about where it was made or who produced the oil? Maybe you could call the company and ask them.

I don't know if it would be a "good" oil to use, but you could also use it as a HP superfatting oil. If you made sure the oils in the pot were at a 1-2% superfat after the cook and then just added (an eyeballed guesstimate) of the blend, then at least you'd know you wouldn't end up with a lye heavy soap. You wouldn't be able to know what your resulting superfat was though.

Or, you could try making soap using the salting out method. Then you wouldn't need to know the SAP at all.

no info at all on the label regarding the percentages of each oil i just opened their website and sent them an email. hope they will respond.

The lye required to saponify (with 5% SF!) 1lb Palm is 61 grams. For Canola it is 57 grams per lb.

1lb Palm with 57 grams lye is just over 11% SF!

To be fair, I would really want to know the mix so that I could calculate them on two rows in the calc. I do this with my palm and rape oils - I by a product which is an 80/20 mix of the two, so work it out that way.

hmmm... i just looked at soapcalc, and they didn't have a listing for red palm oil. there's red palm butter (with the same sap as palm oil). should i just go with palm oil?


@The Efficacious Gentleman, yeah.. i would like to know the correct percentages too. the main ingredients is listed as canola. hope they'll answer my email.

It seems that palm oil is 51% saturated, canola is 6%.

What % of the bottle is saturated? 2g per 100? Then from there we can work out the ratio!

I hope the attachment works.. I suck at math and have no clue what to do with those numbers

ugh, the numbers came up real tiny!

for the sake of your eyes, here's what it says regarding fat contents:

Qty per 100 ml:

Total fat 92 gr
Saturated 14.5 gr
Trans 0 gr
Polyunsaturated 26.7 gr
Monounsaturated 50.8 gr

I make it to be about an 80/20 mix of canola to palm based on this - (bear with me!)

100g oil has 14.5g saturated fat

Palm is made up of 51% saturated fat, canola is 6%. So we can see that it won't be made up of more palm than canola or the amount of saturated would be higher.

((100g / 100 )* 20 ) * 0.51 gives us 10.2. What this tells us is that the amount measured on the label divided by 100 to get a percentable figure, multiplied by an estimated ratio of palm and then adjusted for how much of the palm is saturated gives us how much saturated fat would be in something is palm made up 20% of it.

Do the same for the canola -

((100g / 100) * 80) * 0.06 gives us 4.8 - so a 100g mix with 80% canola will have 4.8g saturated fat.

Add the two together and we have 15g saturated fat per 100g from an 80% canola and 20% palm mix. So it's more like 81/19 rather than 80/20.

For those wondering, I made a spreadsheet with the figures in and just adjusted the ratio of palm to canola, making sure it added up to 100 of course. Starting at 75/25 (it clearly wasn't 50/50!) I saw I was close, so the next was 80/20.

But don't take my word for it - please, someone else who is better at maths or chemistry (where is Dee when we need her?) can either confirm this or save you from making a mistake

@TEG.. thank you so much for doing the calculation for me. for now, let's just say it's 80/20 blend till someone says otherwise i'm not in a hurry to soap with this oil, still trying to find ideas and what to do with it..

Looks like this has come up before, and the company won't say... http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=19958

What total bs that they market it as a health food oil when its primarily canola. I see why the company doesn't want to admit it, their entire marketing is surrounding this as a NEW and HEALTHY choice.

I asked for specifics on my palm/rape mix before I found another source of information - the company wouldn't tell me as they classed it as a trade secret! Oh well!

i have no intention to use it for cooking, only for the red color. i guess it's sad if it's mainly made from canola, 80/20 is quite a striking number. so, basically this is just canola... with a dash of red palm oil... lol... no wonder it was bloody cheap. bought it on special... 2 dollar something for a 500gr bottle? okay, that says a lot i guess

I know you aren't cooking with it, but doing some googling to see if I could find a percentage plus looking at the makers website shows that they're all about how 'healthy' their oil is. That's their market, and they compare it to olive oil. But its just canola with a little palm for coloring imo. That sort of crap really bugs me. I think they should have to say the percentage or something.

Lin said:

I know you aren't cooking with it, but doing some googling to see if I could find a percentage plus looking at the makers website shows that they're all about how 'healthy' their oil is. That's their market, and they compare it to olive oil. But its just canola with a little palm for coloring imo. That sort of crap really bugs me. I think they should have to say the percentage or something.

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Oh I hope not - I'm planning on listing cocoa and shea butter and just putting 1% of each in

Lin, i totally agree with you. but yet, i ain't surprised by their tactics. it's just one small example of the many producers that misrepresent their products.

100% virgin palm oil (I think that's how it's listed on soapcalc) is VERY orange. A very small % PPO will give you a nice yellow. If you use about 20-25% VPO in your recipe, your soap will look like cheddar cheese!

Be advised that the color will fade over time. My very first batch 3+ years ago was made with virgin palm oil and the remaining bars I have left have faded to a peachy tan color and they have been stored in a box away from the light.

If you want to play with it, I'd try it at about 15% of your total recipe and plug in the canola number. Canola in higher % can shorten the shelf life of your soap (rancidity). At that % the difference in effective superfat would be negligible.

Bummer that it is mostly canola - very deceptive. Good on EG for figuring out how to calculate all of that!

ah okay, thanks for noting that judy.... the oil i have in front of me is kinda bright orange in color. at first glance i thought it was red, but upon closer inspection of the bottle just now, it seems that i was wrong. it's not exactly very orange, more like darker orange kinda thing? to be honest, the bottle is still sealed. i'll have a better visual upon opening.

but yeah, it's a bummer that it is mostly canola. when i bought this, i was thinking perhaps 50/50 or 60/40.... did not expect an 80/20.. oh well

judymoody said:

.............Good on EG for figuring out how to calculate all of that!

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I was VERY bored at work today. An excuse to play with numbers is always welcome indeed

If following Judy's good idea, then this will be irrelevant, but just in case it comes up another time, note that the label states the saturated oil amounts etc are in grams pr 100 mls, not grams pr 100 g and a ml of oil weighs less than a gram.