p. 8 | Cottonseed Oil

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 13, 1911

Cottonseed-Oil

COTTONSEED-OIL is not a compound, but the pure product of the cotton plant. The seed of this plant looks much like a small black bean. When the fluffy balls of cotton are picked in the fall, they are carried to the gin,—the machine that takes the cotton fibers from the little clusters of seed within, and while the cotton is used to clothe the outer man, the most precious gift of all the South is to be found within those little bean-like seeds, which furnish our tables with a food fat that chemists now tell us is very nutritious, and more easily digested than olive-oil itself.

After the removal of the fiber from the seed of the cotton, the oil-bearing seed is then put through a scalper,—a machine that removes the dark skin from the meat of the seed. This is carefully done, so that no dust nor germs can come in contact with the meats, which are now ready for the crushers. After passing through the heavy steel rollers that crush the seed into an oily pulp, the mass is subjected to intense heat, by the use of superheated live steam, which deodorizes and sterilizes the entire mass. The oil is then pressed out and filtered through fullers' earth. It is then drawn off into immense vats, and stored ready for shipment.

The whiter and cleaner the oil looks, the longer it will keep in hot weather, under favorable circumstances. But really, it is not so rich in vital units of strength and heat as the brands that contain only a slight shade of the white or yellowish tinge.

In comparing the better grades of cottonseed-oil with other food fats, Professor Moore, of the Arkansas University, gives the percentage of digestibility in the following table:—

	PER CENT
Pure cottonseed-oil	93.37
Olive-oil	88.81
Corn-oil	86.47
Peanut-oil	85.87
Lard	73.88
Beef suet	73.66

This places cottonseed-oil, as a healthful food fat, at the head of the list. Dr. George Brown, ex-president of the Anti-Tuberculosis League of America, says of the oil: “Put it on your tables and in your drug-stores, and give it to your children to eat, and you will raise fleshy children, who will be absolutely free from tubercular and scrofulous diseases.”

It is true that olive-oil is the most popular salad-oil known; but the truth is that, with many to-day, the use of the better grades of cottonseed-oil has already superseded that of olive-oil. Best of all, thousands to-day are giving up the use of animal fats, compounds, and solid shortenings, and are using the better grades of the pure cottonseed-oil, which is, indeed, the coming food fat of the better classes.—Selected.