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"Vegetable" Oils aka Seed Oils aka PUFAs: the Most Damaging Food to Your Health of the Past 100 Years? (besides trans fats)
Related: dietary fats, health, ischemia, linoleic acid, nutrition, PUFAs
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty is not qualified to discuss it — Lloyd
Just in time for XMAS and all its processed foods and food-like crap that people eat...
I’ve written about vegetable oils aka seed oils aka PUFAs before. Toxic stuff over time?
Seed oils are the ultimate processed food, bearing no resemblance to the source material. Or any resemblance to any food that the human animal evolved to eat, excluding olive oil and coconut oil and similar, but those oils are quite different.
Today, I am going to red-pill you about vegetable oils
2023-12-21, by Dr. Simon Goddek
Emphasis added.
Today, I am going to red-pill you about vegetable oils. Make sure you bookmark and share this post:
1. Unnatural Extraction Process: Unlike coconut or olive oil, which can be extracted through pressing, seed oils like canola, soybean, and corn oil require unnatural methods for extraction. They undergo processes involving high heat and chemical solvents like petroleum, leading to oxidation and the formation of trans fats even before they reach your kitchen
[WIND: cold-pressed seed oils might not have this heat-damage concern, though “cold” is a marketing term, 120°F not being cold at all. But cooking with seed oils heats them up for sure]2. A Modern Dietary Addition: Industrial seed oils are a recent addition to our diet, exploding in consumption from virtually zero in the early 1900s to 70 lbs per year per person today. This dramatic increase corresponds with a surge in chronic health issues, suggesting a link between seed oil consumption and modern diseases
[WIND: hard to separate seed oil effects from sugar and other dietary nasties]3. Omega-6 and Inflammation: Vegetable oils are high in Omega-6 fatty acids, especially linoleic acid, which is a precursor to pro-inflammatory eicosanoids. These molecules can cause chronic inflammation and contribute to autoimmune diseases. The excessive consumption of Omega-6, without the balance of Omega-3, exacerbates these health issues.
[WIND: do not confuse linoleic acid with alpha linolenic acid, though to be good]4. Oxidative Stress and Cancer: Studies have shown that diets high in vegetable oils, particularly linoleic acid, lead to oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and genetic damage. These factors are instrumental in promoting cancer, with some studies revealing a fourfold increase in metastasis in diets high in these oils.
[WIND: unsure just how solid these studies are or are not]5. Increased Mortality Rate: Over a seven-year study, groups consuming high amounts of vegetable oil had a 62% greater all-cause mortality rate compared to those with lower consumption. This risk increase is more significant than that associated with heavy smoking or obesity.
[WIND: correlation is not causation]6. Heart Disease Risk: The Minnesota Coronary Experiment found that participants who increased their intake of corn oil and margarine had an 86% higher incidence of heart attacks. Despite lower cholesterol levels, the vegetable oil group had a significantly higher mortality rate from heart attacks.
[WIND: this I deem likely, but I am unsure of the evidence]7. Cardiovascular Deaths: The MARGARIN Study revealed that the group consuming margarine high in linoleic acid from vegetable oils had a 700% higher rate of strokes, heart attacks, and cardiovascular deaths compared to a group consuming Omega-3-rich fish oil. This stark difference underscores the health risks of high vegetable oil consumption.
[WIND: one reader states that this claim is FALSE, the opposite of the finding, I have not yet read the study]Remember, the key to a healthier life is understanding what you're putting into your body. Rethink your oil choices and opt for natural, minimally processed fats.
WIND: if this heresay takes root, expect the heavy guns to come out from the food industry, but of course through their various proxies that appear legitimate: the AHA and other doctors groups, publications and studies from bought-off “researches”, etc. No—don’t expect it—that’s been done at least 40 years now—it’s how the gears of the machine work.
IMO: SHUN "vegetable" aka seed oils, which means a total re-evaluation of your food choices, particularly prepared foods of all kinds: most restaurant food, packaged, fast food, all sorts of foods on the grocery store shelf, etc).
And... the nitwit version which leaves out everything you need to know, and doesn’t even mention seed oils: Is That Food Ultra-Processed? How to Tell.
Seed oils and processed foods
No human could ever have eaten anything remotely resembling the typical sunflower oil in one serving of french fries. You could gag down many tablespoons of flax seesd or sunflower seeds or a few pounds of corn, but then you’d get the entire natural biomix (fiber, nutrients, etc) of the whole food, not some extracted, filtered, processed derivative.
Debate over the effects harms of eating them will take decades to resolve. I’ll be dead by then. You? In life you make decisions based on very low quality information eg “science”. You can pretend that highly dubious science is the Truth, or you can accept its likely bullshit nature and do your best. For myself, the rule is simple: at best, processed food might be health-neutral, but I’d bet that almost always it is bad for you, meaning inferior to eating whole unprocessed foods grown without chemicals.
You could also take the approach that follow the money will never lead you wrong, even if it seemingly should not work. There are enormous sums ($trillions) riding on seed oils from production to a long chain of food products . Thus you can be assured that any 'research' on seed oils is guaranteed to be bullshit.
For rampant speculation, could highly toxic linoleic acid** (high levels in seed oils, not to be confused with alpha linolenic acid) could be what killed a lot of people with COVID? Meaning from excessive levels in the bloodstream release by the infectious process.
I don’t necessarily sign-on to every point here, as the evidence in some areas is weak, and there are generalizations with exceptions—but I call it “directionally accurate” in that seed oils likely have few to no benefits, and as actually used in food** quickly turn seed oils into varnish and frankenfats aka trans fats.
** In particular, heat extraction and/or high-heat and/or repeated heating eg all restaurants.
