I was re-lubing my snow bike and couldn't find my tube of Phil's so I used some soy based axle grease I found in my in-laws garage on the bottom bracket and headset. Seemed to hold up fine. Can't say how it holds up to hot weather or whether or not bears are attracted to it though.

Vegetable oil sounds terrible... that crap will gum up in a heartbeat. I've had to completely tear apart several meat slicers to clean them because some moron decided to use veggie/olive oil on the slides instead of buying a $5 tube of food grade grease.