Oils Ain’t Oils
Everyone knows that polyunsaturated fats are healthier for you than saturated fats, right? But hang on, how does everyone know that? Like, where are the randomised control trial papers? Where’s the actual evidence? Where is the data? Well, there is none. Absolutely none. It’s just accepted wisdom, and nothing more. Seed oils (aka polyunsaturated fats) do lower cholesterol. Absolutely they do. There’s no denying that. And the way they do it is via their high concentration of cholesterol-like molecules called plant sterols, which lower the cholesterol in your blood. Winner winner, tofu dinner, right? And if the ultimate goal were to lower your cholesterol levels, then replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated vegetable oils would be the way to do it.
But isn’t the real goal here to improve our health? To live a longer, and healthier life? As I spoke about in my ejo, Countdown For What, high cholesterol isn’t the villain it’s made out to be. In fact, it is inversely associated with mortality in people over the age of 60. In other words, the higher your cholesterol, the longer you’re expected to live. And the lower your cholesterol, the quicker you’re expected to die.
So, why on earth would you want to lower your cholesterol? Well, you wouldn’t. And you shouldn’t. But, for argument’s sake, let’s say you think I’m full of shit and you do want to get (or keep) your cholesterol numbers down. Seed oils can help you do that. Whoop-de-doo, you know what else they can do? Increase your risk of heart disease. So, please take the time to think about your objective here. Is it to lower your cholesterol, just for the arbitrary sake of it? Or is it to have a healthy heart? I, personally, pick Option B, but a lot of us have been fooled into thinking that high cholesterol causes heart disease, and that lowering your cholesterol helps you to avoid it. However there isn’t a skerrick of evidence to support that hypothesis. Not one single gold standard study has ever shown a direct cause between cholesterol and heart disease. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that consuming industrial seed oils actually does cause heart disease. For instance, a recent meta-analysis of the Sydney Diet Heart study conducted in 1966–73 showed that the subjects who replaced the saturated fat in their diet with seed oils had a significantly higher rate of death than the control group (including from all-mortality, cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease).
Another study showed that “omega-6 polyunsaturated fat linoleic acid promotes oxidative stress, oxidised LDL, chronic low-grade inflammation and atherosclerosis, and is likely a major dietary culprit for causing coronary heart disease, especially when consumed in the form of industrial seed oils commonly referred to as vegetable oils”. Damning.
Yet another study, conducted in 2016, re-evaluated the data collected during the famous Minnesota Coronary Experiment and concluded that replacing butter and tallow with seed oils resulted in a 22% higher risk of death for each 30 mg/dL (0.78 mmol/L) reduction in cholesterol. Once again, the results conclusively show that lower cholesterol equals more death. The reason the study is so famous is that these were not the results that the scientists were looking for. So instead of publishing them, they buried the data, hiding it in a garage where it collected dust for years.
So, the problem with polyunsaturated fats is that they are unstable, which makes them prone to oxidation (usually occurring within days of the oil being produced). All of those pretty, golden bottles of canola oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, rice bran oil and peanut oil that you see on the supermarket shelves, with a “Heart Healthy” label slapped on them are chock-full of rancid shit. And simply put, consuming rancid shit, i.e. oxidised oil, causes oxidative stress in your blood, which causes your blood to clot, which causes thickening and hardening of your arteries, which causes heart disease.
So, my suggestion to you is that if you want to avoid heart disease, you might want to think about avoiding oxidative stress in your blood. And that means avoiding things like pollution, smoking and industrial vegetable oil, which is widely used as an ingredient in most processed foods, from baby formula to salad dressing to anything that’s been deep fried.
If we were to do a “This is Your Life” retrospective of the seed oils that we are so fanatically encouraged to shovel down our gobs, we would have to take a long trip back in time to the 1870s when William Procter, an English candle-maker, and James Gamble, an Irish soap-maker went into business together making, you guessed it, candles and soap, both of which at the time were produced using rendered pork fat. When the price of pork fat got too expensive they started looking around for cheaper alternatives, and their enterprising gazes settled on cottonseed oil, a waste product of industrial cotton farming which had previously only been used to light lamps and lubricate industrial machinery. It was a brilliant innovation and they started mass producing cheap bars of soap using the stuff. Then one night, Bill and Jim obviously scored some pretty good drugs and got high as fuck, because they decided that hey man, this shit kinda looks like lard, maybe we could make a cooking oil out of it. And thus was born Crisco, the world’s first cooking oil. Yum, yum.
So let’s talk about why these seed oils are commonly referred to as industrial oils. From plant to bottle, the product goes through several synthetic chemical processes that include hydrogenation, which uses high pressure, high heat and a petroleum based solvent to ensure the oil remains liquid at room temperature. The end product of hydrogenation is a rancid oil that needs to be deodorised to remove the bad smell, it needs to be bleached to remove the sludgy colour, and it needs to be winterised to keep it all stable and to extend its shelf life. Then they have to inject vitamins into it, because all of the above just stripped the oil of any nutritional value it might once have had. And then you’re supposed to eat this shit.
And let’s not forget about the dimethylpolysiloxane, which is a silicone polymer ingredient commonly used as an anti-foaming agent in frying oil. Oh, and it’s also used in cosmetics, industrial lubrication, caulk, shampoo, condom lubricant and Play-Doh. So healthy.
Just knowing how these industrial oils are produced is sufficiently gross that I don’t think I really need to talk too much about their inflammatory effects. Or that most of them are GMO, and sprayed with glyphosate, a known carcinogen. Or that heating seed oils produces aldehydes which actually fuck with your DNA, and are associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Or that strokes are far more common in people who have diets that are low in saturated fat. Or that they are ridiculously high in omega-6. I’m just going to stick with the fact that they’re not even something your body recognises as food.
But, since I mentioned it, what is this omega-6 that people are worried about, anyway? It’s an essential fatty acid, something that we need to consume a little bit of in our diet because our body doesn’t make it. Humans are designed to consume omega-6 and omega-3 (found in eggs, and fatty fish like salmon and tuna) in a ratio of 1:1 in order for our bodies to function properly. But, thanks to the proliferation of seed oils, the standard human diet has seen that ratio balloon out to as high as 20:1, with seed oils making up a whopping 10% of all calories consumed in the standard American diet. Dr. Artemis Simopoulos, President of The Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health, in Washington, D.C. says, “A lower ratio of omega-6/omega-3 fatty acids is desirable in reducing the risk of many of the chronic diseases in Western societies.” And she’s right. Consumption of omega-6 fatty acids has been shown to increase cardiovascular diseases, inflammatory diseases and autoimmune diseases.
Oh, and cancer. Researchers have recently observed a disturbing trend in the uptick of cancer cases, especially amongst young people, with an astonishing 79% rise in diagnoses in the last thirty years. And they estimate that the global number of new, early-onset cancer cases will increase by another hefty 31% in the next six years. Sadly (weirdly), the British Medical Journal thinks that the cause of this cancer trend is a diet “high in red meat and salt, and low in fruit and milk”. So, less meat and more milk would reverse this trend? For real? Never mind that the average consumption of red meat is down in the last thirty years. Never mind that the production of industrial seed oils over the same period is up. Coincidence? Maybe. But probably not. Doesn’t it make sense that putting something so chemical and synthetic into your body, would do it damage?
The LA Veterans Administration Study published in 1969, was originally designed to determine whether a diet that lowers cholesterol also prevents atherosclerosis. But what they actually found was that the group replacing animal fat with seed oils had an 82% higher chance of dying of cancer than the control group. This result was alarmingly replicated in a number of other randomised controlled clinical trials over the years, causing the National Institutes of Health to review the data in the 1980s. And despite the overwhelming evidence pointing to industrial seed oils as the culprit, the official conclusion from the NIH was that the mandate to lower cholesterol was of such high importance that it overrode the cancer results from the studies. I shit you not.
So, I have some questions. If consuming seed oils causes all this drama, why on earth are they touted as a healthier alternative to saturated fats like butter and lard? Well, how about $335 billion dollars? Coz that’s the expected global market share of seed oils in 2025. Fun fact: in 1948, Proctor & Gamble donated $1,740,000 (worth $17 million today) to the fledgling American Heart Association. And in 1961, the AHA returned the favour by making the world’s first public health recommendation to replace animal fats with seed oils. Ain’t capitalism grand?
Apart from following the money trail, there is another, quite significant, reason for the widespread misconception that industrial seed oils are a healthier alternative to natural animal fat. And his name is Walter Willett. As head of nutrition at the Harvard T. H Chan School of Public Health from 1991 to 2017, Willett, a lifelong vegetarian, and an outspoken critic of red meat, has exerted considerable influence over the school’s curriculum, partnerships, research direction and policy advocacy.
I think most of us would assume that an institution like Harvard University would practise scientific integrity, transparency and objectivity, right? I mean, they have a reputation to uphold. But when we scratch the surface we find that, over a period of decades, Harvard has continuously promoted Willett’s academic papers, despite none of his anti-meat hypotheses ever being confirmed or backed up by a single experiment.
Critics argue that Willett’s research methodology lacks scientific rigor, heavily relying as it does on epidemiological studies, and regularly dismissing evidence that doesn’t suit his biased objective. Furthermore, Willett’s personal beliefs, advocacy for a plant-based diet, financial ties to vegetarian-aligned groups, compromised objectivity and numerous conflicts of interest raise concerns about his undue influence, also calling into question the credibility of the Harvard School of Public Health. Willett is known for aggressively pressuring scientific journals to retract opposing papers, as well as bullying his pro-meat peers and colleagues, further undermining the school’s academic integrity. So when you see a headline from Harvard stating “Scientists Debunk Claims of Seed Oil Health Risks”, you now know not to take that at face value. You now know that large corporations and large institutions do not necessarily have your best interests at heart. You now know better.
Yes, seed oils are convenient (they’re cheap, easy to cook with and readily available), but the rate of their consumption consistently parallels the increasing rates of chronic disease. And if I’ve introduced even a shadow of a doubt in your mind about the risks of consuming these oils (and I hope I have), then my work here is done. And you are welcome.
