SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



Northern Regional Laboratory of the Department of 

 Agriculture, are eagerly hunting for the secret to better 

 flavor stability. 



Soybean is not without its advantages in this field. 

 Though helpful, none of these are inherent in the oil 

 itself. Soybean is the cheapest of the edible oils but 

 this substantial asset is canceled, more or less, by the 

 greater costs of refining for human consumption and by 

 the multiplicity of grades based upon quality. Soybean 

 oil's best argument is its acceptance by the American 

 housewife. She believes quite implicitly that all that 

 saves the poor rice-fed Chinese from beri-beri, scurvy, 

 leprosy, and starvation are the stores of proteins and 

 vitamins lurking within the versatile soybean. If her 

 family do not like its flavor, she is convinced that they 

 ought to. This tribute to the publicity that has been put 

 behind the soybean is not fanciful. The trained inter- 

 viewers of a great advertising agency, polling house- 

 wives for a client that makes a famous brand of short- 

 ening, collected just such answers by the hundreds. 



On the other hand, this same poll revealed a preju- 

 dice against cottonseed oil. That is not so easy to ex- 

 plain. Judged by nutritional values there is not a 

 crooked sixpence difference in the two oils. The most 

 notable difference revealed by chemical analysis is that 

 cottonseed has more linoleic acid, which is the distinc- 

 tive constituent of all the truly bland oils, while soy- 

 bean oil has more linolenic acid, which gives drying 



88 



