>> I would assume that peanut oil and corn oil are right out.  How about
>> canola, sesame and flax oils?
>
>Canola is frowned on, since the rapeseed from which it is
>extracted is not, as far as I know, a human food.

Huh. "Frowned on"?

"Canola" is just a N. American marketing label
stuck on extract of low-erucic "oilseed rape", as it's
known just about everywhere else. Since rapeseed is a
culturally repugnant name in this era, some better
moniker had to be found.

Its other industrial uses include a possible replacement
for diesel oil, burning in lamps, plastics manufacture
and pesticide! 

It is a commodity in Global Free Trade
-- a dirty phrase here in Seattle -- and is produced
using transgenic methods. It is up there with
cottonseed oil in being an unnatural food for
any animal without significant high-tech processing.
The former being loaded with gossypol, a reproductive
sterilizing toxin, and the latter with erucic acid and
glucosinolates, more plant-defense toxins. Huge
expenditures are made by industry in studying how
oilseeds can be made *less* toxic to animals, and
in lobbying governments to set "acceptable" levels
so they can market the stuff to humans.

From http://www.canola-council.org/manual/canvarys.htm

"The term "canola" is now a trademark registered with the
Canola Council of Canada and is applied to varieties with
less than two percent erucic acid and less than 30 micromoles
of glucosinolates per gram of air-dried oil-free meal...

"In order to maintain Canada's reputation in an increasingly
competitive world market, it is important that canola growers
recognize the significant differences between rapeseed and canola,
and understand the importance of producing only Canola varieties."


So "canola" is just a selectively-bred, genetically-
manipulated, economically significant, high-tech
industrial oil and animal feed crop being pandered as a
human foodstuff.


Here's what the Oilseed Marketers must have thought:

Rapeseed? You crazy? Get that outta my face, rapist!
Mmmm ... now "canola" -- that sounds warm & fuzzy; just
makes me want to run out and chug a bottle of it!

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/bbep/bp/rapeseed.html
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/nexus/Brassica_rapeseed_nex.html

A little digging would probably turn up some dirt on
the big flaxseed, aka linseed, marketing initiative,
and how good it's supposed to be -- especially for flaxseed growers.

Look for stooge "scientists" with ties to the oilseed industry
panning Paleo. Widespread embrace of Paleodiet would put a
big dent in the corporate "canola" profits, due not only to
a drop in oil consumption, but in our refusal to eat the
flesh of animals fattened with the toxic oilseed meal (another
industrial byproduct).

Canola is quintessentially, excruciatingly non-paleo. Avoid it!
Same for cottonseed oil... and soy, and corn etc etc.