Vegetable oils: Cure or Poison?
First, this article isn’t meant to limit, my goal is to empower you with knowledge, so you can make the right choices that can positively impact your quality of life.
As a rehab coach by heart, the advice in this article is outside my scope of practice. I am not a nutritionist, but I do feel that the more we know outside our profession, the better we can help our clients. So I even made an extra effort to find a dietician to read over it. She made me redo it completely, to make sure I give you the best advice possible. Enjoy!
I heard about this topic on a podcast and I came across some interesting points while digging deeper into this topic. Writing about nutrition is extremely difficult and frustrating. There is a lot of misinformation out there and the reason for that has to do with the food industry. They care about making profit, they do not care about our health, that’s a fact.
I told you before that I will not speak kind of anything that could possibly harm your body, and that is a promise I will keep. Chronic overuse of toxic vegetable oils can cause disease, and I am here to make you more aware, so we can put an end on this overuse.
What are vegetable oils? Why could they be toxic for us as humans? Why are we as consumers deceived and tricked into buying this? How come big companies are filling their wallets selling this, while we are filling hospital beds?
A couple important numbers to make sure I have your full attention!
The number one dead cause in the world is cardiovascular disease and in the past 20 years it has killed more people than ever (each 39 seconds a person will die in the US because of this).
The problem with those numbers is that A LOT of them can be prevented if we are willing to change our lifestyle for the better.
So what previous lifestyle changes could be one of the reasons in this HUGE increase in cardiovascular death?
First, I am not going into detail on saturated and unsaturated fats. The rabbit hole is too deep, and I really don’t want to mess with your mind like it is messing with mine. But what is true is that we have changed our nutritional choices in the last +50 years, especially if we talk about butter, margarine and vegetable oils. Before the industrial overload of vegetable oils we were eating fatty animal butters and cardiovascular disease was rare. But when science hypothesized that eating fatty animal products could be harmful for our body they concluded that these products could increase cardiovascular disease (which is not completely true).
When this hypothesis was out we started consuming more margarine (hydrogenized vegetable oils) and vegetable oils and thanks to some state-of-the-art advertisement, every body is using it. At this point in time we are consuming somewhere around 4.5 liters of vegetable oils a year. The business is growing, the money is flowing and more people are dying…
These oils are made of plants, seeds and nuts and are produced under high temperature with industrial machinery. Examples are sunflower oils, canola oil, soy bean oils, … Vegetable oils are widely used for everything and can also be found in almost every non-fresh food we eat/drink. I dare you to check the nutrition labels on packaged food you are consuming. Take-outs and restaurants use them, premade meals have them, processed foods are full of them. They are literally taking over the food we consume. But vegetables are healthy, so we automatically think that these oils are healthy too.
An important note on the graph above. It is not because we are consuming more oils that we have more cardiovascular deaths. They do correlate but that doesn’t mean that this is the actual cause. There are many more variables that should be included. But let me first explain what could be part of the cause before you stop reading.
Vegetable oils are loaded with omega-6 fatty acids (pro inflammatory), yes we need this but not in the quantities of today. Chronic overuse of omega-6 could lead to chronic inflammatory diseases (autoimmune disease, diabetes, Alzheimer, cancers,…). Chronic inflammation really f*cks up your arteries and increases your chances of getting arteriosclerosis (which will lead to cardiovascular disease and death). Please don’t think that consuming this one time will cause a heart attack the day after, it is the chronic overuse of those toxic oils that could decrease your health span. So what can we do?
The intake of another fatty acid omega-3 actually diminish a lot of damage done by omega-6. The higher your intake in omega-6, the more omega-3 you should consume to make sure the ratio is somewhat in the normal ranges. The ratio I use here is the one BEFORE the start of the vegetable oil industry, when cardiovascular disease was rare. Omega-6 to omega-3, between 4:1 and 1:4, right now we are at somewhere between 10:1 and 25:1… Do you see my concern?
These fatty acids are not produced by your body, we will need to take them in through food or supplements. Omega-3 has 3 forms (EPA, DHA, ALL), good sources can be found in most fishes like mackerel, tuna, salmon, … Unfortunately most plant based omega-3 sources only provide ALA (is converted to EPA & DHA in very small percentage), so make sure you eat enough or supplement with a good vegan source like algae oil. Omega-3 has a lot of benefits that I will not discuss today.
Below is a graph illustrating which sources could be less harmful and are lower in omega-6. Cold pressed oils like coconut oil, olive oil (only extra virgin, some olive oils are even added with canola oil, WHAT?) and avocado oils could be less harmful. Animal butters (lard, ghee, butterfat,…) have less omega-6 as well, but always remember, moderation is key.
I really only scratched the surface of what is actually going on in our body when vegetable oils are consumed. Each human body is one of a kind and will react different to various foods. But are you making the right choices?
Are you aware of eating too much of these oily substances? Are you a restaurant person? Do you rather take-out than cook for yourself? Microwave premade meals for dinner? Are you cooking with these oils? Are you using margarine for your bread? These are the questions you should ask yourself. And only then we can start making the right decisions for ourselves.
For myself, I use olive oil (extra virgin, high cooking temperature) for everything. A good decision, maybe, maybe not. Am I eating salmon twice a week? Yes. Do I supplement with omega-3? Yes. Do I stay away as much as possible from processed foods? Yes. Small changes can have big outcomes over a longer period.
Keep in mind that this is not medical advice, I am not a doctor (yet). Always visit your up-to-date dietician or doctor to make sure you make the right choices for your body. But I am pretty sure if you decrease usage of those vegetable oils, you will feel better, I promise.
RCK
#OneLove #VegetableoilIsNOTMedicine #HealthIsWealth
Research you should read:
