Interesting, kind of raises the stakes for the anti seed oil campaign since it shows that they are being accumulated in our bodies. I’m trying to go to evoo, acocado, peanut and butter as a precaution.
It depends on what you are cooking. While I use plenty of EVOO, I also use a fair amount of refined avocado oil (high temp, neutral flavor) and butter. There are many cooking contexts where the latter two are quite arguably the superior choice, either for flavor or performance reasons.
Right tool for the job and all that. There isn't one cooking oil that serves all purposes adequately.
I cooked with nothing but beef tallow for a few years, I used to render it myself, lately I've been using coconut oil and butter, it's just much easier. I no longer render the fat from beef I eat and just eat it with the meat to get more fat in my diet.
With EVOO there is at least a certification seal from the COOC for California-based olive oils. Not only does that certify oil quality and safe storage practices-- it certifies that it is actually olive oil. This is necessary because, according to various sources I've read, there's a better chance than a coin flip that the EVOO bought at the grocery store is a) some other oil (and dyed green), b) cut with other cheaper oils, or c) substandard non-virgin olive oil.
So I guess my question is-- how do you know that the avocado oil isn't fake? Is there a certification body? Without one, it seems like the current popularity of it would push manufacturers to use the same tricks as with EVOO. But again, I'm not even talking about quality or storage-- just whether it is actually the oil claimed by the label on the bottle.
I mean-- there's a oil manufacturer literally called "California Olive Ranch" that does an oil with a little graphic that says something like "Global Blend!" And apparently they used to be COOC certified manufacturer but got the cert revoked because there's rule that putting "California" on the label requires all the olives to be from California (obviously).
Hell, there was even a story about a mysterious proposal to change some of the language in the certification guidelines to soften this rule, but a lot of the members petitioned against that.
Given this weirdo shady oil environment I'm just assuming everything is either dyed vegetable oil or some other trick unless I can get my hands on a really good reason to believe otherwise.
Yes, it tends to lose its olive flavor once cooked so it works for a lot of things. I think saturated fats do crisp up foods better. I cook steaks and ground beef in ghee which gives a great crust.
That's a great start but sadly most of those seed oils can still find a way into your body through through much of the food people eat. It's insane how much cotton seed, canola, rapeseed, corn, sunflower, Safflower, soy, rice bran oils are found in all processed and prepared food like breads, sauces, salad dressings, snack foods, and basically any every other packaged or processed food. Unless you are eating extremely clean, you're ingesting seed oils. Most pork and chicken that is bought is raised on seed oils but from what I understand ruminant animals are able to filter it out through their urine. One has to be extremely diligent in their food choices to eliminate seed oils from their diet and it takes years to get it out of your body. Ray Peat has some interesting stuff and has basically preaching long before it was popular to get PUFA's out of your diet. If you eat out, all restaurants and fast food is either cooked in it or it's in the food they are serving.
Check your pantry and read the ingredients on everything. I basically use Costco Organic EVOO and the big tub of Coconut oil you can buy there for everything and never go out to eat anymore for at least the last 4-5 years. My diet is so simple that I lost 100 pounds and kept it off just eating clean and doing some fasting.
Yeah it really is in almost everything. I cook from scratch all but a few times a month so I’m hoping to reduce exposure, but going to any restaurant or fast food place it is pretty much a given that they will use cheap oils.
> If you eat out, all restaurants and fast food is either cooked in it or it's in the food they are serving.
Was recently searching for information about the restaurant industry’s switch from classic fryer oils to seed oils. I ran across something about Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) getting sued by a vegetarian because they’d assumed BWW used ‘vegetable’ oil in their fryers. BWW’s attorneys got the suit thrown out.
On learning this, I added BWW to my list of restaurants to patronize.
Had a friend buy me lunch last Thursday. She ordered fried shrimp from the appetizer menu. They were very greasy - I pulled off the breading to hopefully avoid the oil. The next day I cautioned her about eating foods fried in vegetable oil. We went to BWW that night. I ordered wings and French fries. Would order again.
"Vegetable" oils weren't commonly used as food until it was figured out how to deodorize them. Mostly they were used to preserve wood (as paints and stains), then the paint industry figured out how to use petroleum distillates. The moniker 'vegetable oil' is a marketing term to trick people into thinking these products are edible.
McDonald's formerly used a blend of tallow, lard and coconut oil, iirc. The Tipping Point guy... .. . Malcolm Gladwell, had a podcast about this, McDonald's Broke My Heart: https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/mcdonalds-broke-my-heart/
Ok thats good to know but the amount of oil absorbed in breading would be more of a concern for me. At some point I just admit fried chicken is probably never going to be perfect and enjoy it sparingly.
Good point, thanks. The fried shrimp I had was soaked in oil. My understanding is that unsaturated oils are somewhat stabilized by saturated fats. Maybe I'll take some coconut oil chasers if I go to BWW again.
My 2 oils of choice are EVOO - fresh, for salad - and rice bran oil for frying. When researching smoke points and other oil related health issues I found bran and grapeseed to be the best for high heat cooking, with bran winning the tie break by affordability. What did I miss?
Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) and other common cooking oils were heated up to [460 degrees F] and exposed to [350 degrees F] for 6 hours, with samples assessed at various times, testing smoke point, oxidative stability, free fatty acids, polar compounds, fatty acid profiles and UV coefficients. EVOO yielded low levels of polar compounds and oxidative byproducts, in contrast to the high levels of byproducts generated for oils such as canola oil.
Was this actual (tested to be) EVOO or stuff in a bottle labelled EVOO? Apparently, much of the latter isn’t extra virgin and quite a bit isn't even olive oil, so it's important to distinguish...
You’re right theres not a lot to show seed oils are really bad for you, thats why I mentioned avoiding them as a precaution. Its completely unscientific but frying with highly processed canola makes your kitchen smell vaguely like paint thinner which is unpleasant if not unhealthy.
I thought the issue with Lard was the trans fats, but since I didn't know I double checked and apparently Lard has no trans fats, so I then wanted to know why we quit using it.
It seems that Lard was very popular up to WWII, but then we had supply issues due to the war effort so people switched over to vegetable shortenings, and afterwards pork fats like Lard were considered unhealthy compared to the "pure vegetable oils" which were often hydrogenated and filled with Trans Fats which were worse for you health-wise than Lard is.
So, yeah, WWII and food purity aesthetic might be responsible for some measurable portion of the modern obesity crises!
Basically the argument is that plant fats are kind of new in our diet and used in huge quantities when compared to historic levels (with perhaps exception of olive oil) and their introduction correlates with rise in diseases that we believe are caused by western diet.
First of all, this article is about seed oils, not plant fats.
Secondly, does the world in which this argument exists consist only of the west? Your mention of olive oil as the exception and a “western diet” seems to indicate so given that plant fats (such as in nuts or coconut oil) have been consumed for thousands of years. Would any of this generalize to humanity?
Was coconut oil manufactured and consumed in large quantities before industrial age? Was it a staple of local diet? Were people there healthy and not unusually prone to various diseases and not overweight? In some island nations being overweight was beneficial for travel and times of scarcity. So tradeoffs of their diet might not fit us so well as it fitted them.
Plant fats consumed with their respective plants are probably tolerable, because your stomach has limited volume. Only after they are squeezed out do that you can have oil out of 20 kilos of plants in each single meal then it might not suit your body.
So let me restate the question.
Do you any plant fats that were extracted from plants before industrial age and used as a staple meal ingredient by themselves?
Olive oil is one. Is coconut oil the second? What else?
> Was coconut oil manufactured and consumed in large quantities before industrial age? Was it a staple of local diet?
Probably? Coconuts were certainly cultivated and used in prominent societies dating back to 1500 BCE or earlier, and the oil has been used for nearly as long, although it's unclear to what extent this was for culinary purposes.
> Were people there healthy and not unusually prone to various diseases and not overweight? In some island nations being overweight was beneficial for travel and times of scarcity. So tradeoffs of their diet might not fit us so well as it fitted them.
This is also unclear, although I assume the same ambiguity applies to animal-sourced fats which were consumed in cultures very different to our own.
I've seen a couple of mentions to avocado oil in this thread. For those unaware, see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105062 ("Study finds 82% of avocado oil rancid or mixed with other oils")
Seems like a lot of people on this thread assume high LA fats are bad for you or somehow cause obesity. It would be interesting to investigate the LA concentration in adipose tissue of populations with differing body fat percentages. E.g., do we see people with high body fat have higher portions of that fat as LA than in leaner people? This study doesn’t really tell us anything beyond increasing LA consumption increases concentration in adipose tissue, which seems like a pretty straightforward and unsurprising conclusion.
The omega6 contents of seed oils are ridiculously high in a way not found in nature.
Omega6s are inflammatory.
It'll go down in history, eventually, that seed oils are more responsible for cancer, heart disease and even autoimmune issues in a way that exceed sugar could only hope to aspire to.
But in combination with our 200-400g of carb a day diets? It's no wonder America is so sick
Also there seems to be some evidence that the imbalance of Poly-unsaturated Fatty Acids and Saturated Fatty acids in our foods combined with high carbohydrate intake that may be contributing to overeating by turning our body fat into a sort of parasite that preferentially consumes calories to make more fat rather than allowing our organs first pick.
I am aware this site is trying to sell you something but the 3 part dive into research literature makes me feel like they might be onto something with this.
Omega6s are necessary. Absolutely. But we're not meant to consume pufa's at the level we do
The poison is the dose.
Even omega3s which are great for you, can give you heart arrhythmias. While omega3 is typically protective of the cardiovascular system, 4-7g of EPA can cause heart issues is taken for sustained periods.
Seed oils (canola, soybean oil,stuff like Crisco, grapeseed oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, sun flower oil etc) are high in omega6s in a way you could never get in nature.
In fact most couldn't exist without modern industry. Most of it is industrial byproduct repuroosed to maximize profits.
And its in everything. If you shop for any processed foods - boxed foods, potato chips, crackers, most granola and cereals, most breads (excluding butter breads), salad dressings, sauces and pre-made marinades, it's in everything.
In fact, factory farming changed what they feed chickens, pigs and cows and radically increased the omega6s in those as well (grass fed beef withstanding)
companies have risen up to make alternative foods (Primal Kitchen being one)
The dangers of our high seed oil intake has been of concern for decades. And it's well studied. If I wasn't typing from my phone I'd link to studies.
Olive oil should be safe-ish right? It's not modern invention. People used it for cooking in Mediterranean area before the industry happened and they were fine.
Do you know any other plant oils with similar traditions?
> People used it for cooking in Mediterranean area before the industry happened and they were fine
Argument from tradition is not sufficient; all sorts of traditional foods have health caveats that have only been discovered in the modern era. Arsenic in rice, for example.
56 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadNo reason to use any other type IMO for (most) cooking.
Right tool for the job and all that. There isn't one cooking oil that serves all purposes adequately.
> What percentage MCTs do your coconut oils have?
> Our Liquid Coconut oil has 80 to 85% MCT.
https://louana.com/faq/
Cod liver oil is mostly omega3 pufa.
Omega3s oxidize really easily under heat.
Use coconut, ghee, butter, macademia nut, avocado or maybe even olive oil. Or any kind of animal fat (duck fat, beef tallow, etc)
So I guess my question is-- how do you know that the avocado oil isn't fake? Is there a certification body? Without one, it seems like the current popularity of it would push manufacturers to use the same tricks as with EVOO. But again, I'm not even talking about quality or storage-- just whether it is actually the oil claimed by the label on the bottle.
I mean-- there's a oil manufacturer literally called "California Olive Ranch" that does an oil with a little graphic that says something like "Global Blend!" And apparently they used to be COOC certified manufacturer but got the cert revoked because there's rule that putting "California" on the label requires all the olives to be from California (obviously).
Hell, there was even a story about a mysterious proposal to change some of the language in the certification guidelines to soften this rule, but a lot of the members petitioned against that.
Given this weirdo shady oil environment I'm just assuming everything is either dyed vegetable oil or some other trick unless I can get my hands on a really good reason to believe otherwise.
Check your pantry and read the ingredients on everything. I basically use Costco Organic EVOO and the big tub of Coconut oil you can buy there for everything and never go out to eat anymore for at least the last 4-5 years. My diet is so simple that I lost 100 pounds and kept it off just eating clean and doing some fasting.
Was recently searching for information about the restaurant industry’s switch from classic fryer oils to seed oils. I ran across something about Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) getting sued by a vegetarian because they’d assumed BWW used ‘vegetable’ oil in their fryers. BWW’s attorneys got the suit thrown out.
On learning this, I added BWW to my list of restaurants to patronize.
Had a friend buy me lunch last Thursday. She ordered fried shrimp from the appetizer menu. They were very greasy - I pulled off the breading to hopefully avoid the oil. The next day I cautioned her about eating foods fried in vegetable oil. We went to BWW that night. I ordered wings and French fries. Would order again.
[0] BWW lawsuit report: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-buffalo-wild-lawsuit-idUS...
What is classic fryer oil made of for you? Perhaps a country/region difference but for me fryer oil is sunflower oil?
McDonald's formerly used a blend of tallow, lard and coconut oil, iirc. The Tipping Point guy... .. . Malcolm Gladwell, had a podcast about this, McDonald's Broke My Heart: https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/mcdonalds-broke-my-heart/
And in all the dry rubs.(no shit.. I have some aging shakers of it here in the house and soybean oil is an ingredient on all 3)
So they fry in tallow but then slather it in seed oils anyways
Also, bc of what we feed chickens has changed radically over the years, chickens are themsleves particularly high in omega6s. .
And they store most of it in their skin. A skinless breast isn't so bad.
Wings? Even without sauce or being fried, you might as well be taking a shot of canola oil
Here is some info on EVOO
https://fat.gold/guide/
Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) and other common cooking oils were heated up to [460 degrees F] and exposed to [350 degrees F] for 6 hours, with samples assessed at various times, testing smoke point, oxidative stability, free fatty acids, polar compounds, fatty acid profiles and UV coefficients. EVOO yielded low levels of polar compounds and oxidative byproducts, in contrast to the high levels of byproducts generated for oils such as canola oil.
It seems that Lard was very popular up to WWII, but then we had supply issues due to the war effort so people switched over to vegetable shortenings, and afterwards pork fats like Lard were considered unhealthy compared to the "pure vegetable oils" which were often hydrogenated and filled with Trans Fats which were worse for you health-wise than Lard is.
So, yeah, WWII and food purity aesthetic might be responsible for some measurable portion of the modern obesity crises!
Secondly, does the world in which this argument exists consist only of the west? Your mention of olive oil as the exception and a “western diet” seems to indicate so given that plant fats (such as in nuts or coconut oil) have been consumed for thousands of years. Would any of this generalize to humanity?
Plant fats consumed with their respective plants are probably tolerable, because your stomach has limited volume. Only after they are squeezed out do that you can have oil out of 20 kilos of plants in each single meal then it might not suit your body.
So let me restate the question.
Do you any plant fats that were extracted from plants before industrial age and used as a staple meal ingredient by themselves?
Olive oil is one. Is coconut oil the second? What else?
Probably? Coconuts were certainly cultivated and used in prominent societies dating back to 1500 BCE or earlier, and the oil has been used for nearly as long, although it's unclear to what extent this was for culinary purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut#Origin
> Were people there healthy and not unusually prone to various diseases and not overweight? In some island nations being overweight was beneficial for travel and times of scarcity. So tradeoffs of their diet might not fit us so well as it fitted them.
This is also unclear, although I assume the same ambiguity applies to animal-sourced fats which were consumed in cultures very different to our own.
* https://www.reddit.com/r/StopEatingSeedOils/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/SaturatedFat/
* http://yelling-stop.blogspot.com/
Omega6s are inflammatory.
It'll go down in history, eventually, that seed oils are more responsible for cancer, heart disease and even autoimmune issues in a way that exceed sugar could only hope to aspire to.
But in combination with our 200-400g of carb a day diets? It's no wonder America is so sick
https://fireinabottle.net/the-scd1-theory-of-obesity-part-1-...
I am aware this site is trying to sell you something but the 3 part dive into research literature makes me feel like they might be onto something with this.
Excuse me for dismissing the latest internet theory on diet.
Omega6s are necessary. Absolutely. But we're not meant to consume pufa's at the level we do
The poison is the dose.
Even omega3s which are great for you, can give you heart arrhythmias. While omega3 is typically protective of the cardiovascular system, 4-7g of EPA can cause heart issues is taken for sustained periods.
Seed oils (canola, soybean oil,stuff like Crisco, grapeseed oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, sun flower oil etc) are high in omega6s in a way you could never get in nature.
In fact most couldn't exist without modern industry. Most of it is industrial byproduct repuroosed to maximize profits.
And its in everything. If you shop for any processed foods - boxed foods, potato chips, crackers, most granola and cereals, most breads (excluding butter breads), salad dressings, sauces and pre-made marinades, it's in everything.
In fact, factory farming changed what they feed chickens, pigs and cows and radically increased the omega6s in those as well (grass fed beef withstanding)
companies have risen up to make alternative foods (Primal Kitchen being one)
The dangers of our high seed oil intake has been of concern for decades. And it's well studied. If I wasn't typing from my phone I'd link to studies.
Do you know any other plant oils with similar traditions?
Argument from tradition is not sufficient; all sorts of traditional foods have health caveats that have only been discovered in the modern era. Arsenic in rice, for example.
And in specific case of olive oil I think that we have enough data about it's safety, both modern and historic.