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Finish on a cutting board or spoon or bowl should not be poisonous obviously, so considering nut allergies, is Walnut oil 'food safe'? Wouldn't almost anything else be better? It's a question of dosage. Nobody is going to eat much finish but nut allergies are sensitive to very low exposure.
I wouldn't use walnut oil because most vegetable and nut oils will turn rancid after a while.
Mineral oil and beeswax are food safe, and stable, so they're what I use for kitchen things. The cutting board world can get pretty silly, in some parts, and the silly people will do whatever will get social media likes. Walnut oil seems to be trendy, but in a year or two it will be something even more obscure and goofy.
I remembered there being a thread on this many years ago.
Walnut oil is a polymerizing finish like tung oil or BLO and is one of the go-to finishes for turners making salad bowls. It does not become rancid when used as a finish. If the oil has been heat treated and filtered any proteins will have been precipitated out and removed rendering allergenicity a non-issue. I suppose it's theoretically possible for someone with an extreme allergy to have a reaction to the tiny amount of protein that might sneak through, but by any reasonable definition it is food safe-- you can buy it at the grocery store and pour it on your salad. I would not use grocery store walnut oil as a finish as it probably has not gotten the heat treatment and filtration that the finishes get, the grocery store oil will go rancid in the bottle. I have a decade old bottle of Mike Mahoney's walnut oil that he sells to turners and it is still fine.
My personal salad bowl gets coated in olive oil on a daily basis and looks very nice. No untoward odors coming from it.
Because mineral oil is volatile and evaporates it needs to be refreshed regularly. It's fine as a way to get wax into the wood, but contributes little to the finish over time.
People make cutting boards, bowls, and all manner of kitchen utensils out of walnut wood. Not saying that's good practice, but it's common. Walnut oil seems like a minor concern in comparison.
I've taken to using pure Tung oil lately. It's zero VOC, food safe, polymerizes, and is very durable. Someone on YouTube did a review not too long ago, comparing mineral oil, Tung Oil, and I'm not sure what else. Tung oil was the only thing to stand up to his testing.
John
Tung, walnut, and linseed oils are great food-safe options, as long as they've cured 100%
Walnut oil can be fine. Though it might not be worth the risk. People with tree nut allergies are allergic to a protein found in the nut. If the walnut oil is properly refined, then it shouldn't have any (or so little as to not cause a concern) walnut protein in it, so it should be safe. You might want to check with the manufacturer first to make sure it's free of allergens and toxins.
Boiled linseed oil is not food safe. At least the commercially produced "boiled linseed oil", which isn't really boiled. They contain heavy metals like cobalt and manganese. If you make your own, then it's probably fine so long as you don't add any heavy metal dryers to it. Raw linseed oil, or flaxseed oil, should not be used either, as it can go rancid.
I prefer mineral oil, as it doesn't flavor the food. It has to be reapplied, but not too often and it's easy and cheap to do. I get my mineral oil from the pharmacy in the laxative section. It's usually much cheaper than the food safe mineral oil they sell for cutting boards and has to pass a higher standard, so it's as good or better yet cheaper. Though the cutting board oil might have waxes and stuff in it that you may prefer, and that's fine if you do.
That's true about common BLO, Jimmy. Polymerized linseed oil, such as Tried and True that does not have the metallic driers is a better choice for food contact applications where this kind of oil is desired.