The $300 Billion Ingredient Making Your Food Toxic

Why Is the Right So Obsessed with Seed Oils?

Image from Pexels

Okay, this rant was triggered by Rolling Stone's gem of an article, "Why is the right so obsessed with Seed Oils?"

Good God. Even our health has become a precious battleground in the never-ending culture war. Apparently, if you dare to suggest that maybe we should lay off the Twinkies and KFC, you're automatically labeled as some kind of right-wing nutjob. Seriously, what the fuck?

In my debut book, "Mind and Muscle," I discovered a bitter truth: obesity is not solely a consequence of calorie intake. It's also about what we put in our mouths.

Over the last 20 years, our caloric intake has stayed relatively the same at 2200 calories, yet nearly one-half of adults and one-fifth of children are considered overweight or obese.

Perspective: Obesity — an unexplained epidemic

Something in our “intake” is causing obesity and a lot of evidence points toward seed and vegetable oils.

So what are they and why are they slowly killing us?

They Call Them Vegetable Oils to Trick You

“Vegetable” oil sounds so wholesome, like broccoli and carrots. It’s not. If you’re eating most dressings, marinades, sauces, mayo, cookies, or fried foods, you’re getting your fill of seed oils. They include:

• Rapeseed Oil (another term for Canola Oil)

• Soybean Oil

• Cottonseed Oil

• Sunflower Oil

These oils were once considered useless for anything other than machine lubricants and soap ingredients. Cottonseed oil was even called “toxic waste.”

Then, a company called Procter & Gamble found a way to transform cottonseed into a lard-like cooking fat through a process called hydrogenation. Thus, the first mainstream vegetable oil, Crisco, was born in 1911 and became a booming market success.

They tricked consumers into eating industrial waste products instead of natural foods all because P&G found a way to lower toxicity to “safe” levels.

So What’s Toxic About Them?

It’s insane that these companies have the cash to create nutritious food for everyone yet they opt for unhealthy options because of their greed.

For example, it is recommended to consume a balanced ratio of omega-3 fatty acids to omega-6s, with some nutritionists suggesting a 4:1 ratio. A lack of omega-3s can lead to skin issues like rough, scaly skin and dermatitis.

Moreover, omega-3s play a crucial role in brain functioning.

Unfortunately, seed oils are high in omega 6, throwing this ratio off and resulting in an inflammatory response by the body. Something like this is literally liquid inflammation; the entirety of it is omega-6.

There is a reason it's 1/3rd the price of olive oil. Brands know that olive oil is too expensive for most consumers to afford it. So they whip out all this seed oil that was never intended to be a food item. It’s really sad and despicable. The body also has trouble breaking oils like this down. The breakdown of fats depends on several key factors:

1. The saturation level — unsaturated fats with double bonds like olive oil are more easily broken down.

2. How does it oxidize, or how does it react to oxygen when you are cooking?

3. Omega 6 oils are particularly susceptible to breakdown because they are polyunsaturated, making them highly prone to break.

4. As highly processed oils, they are easily damaged during cooking and even oxidize in your stomach, creating an aldehyde called 4HNE — which causes diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.

5. Seed oils are clear, allowing light to penetrate them and cause them to break down further. They often remain in the cupboard for extended periods.

As a result, seed oils are more likely to become rancid when left in the cupboard, and when heated, they break down more easily, producing toxic aldehydes. These issues are most pronounced in deep frying, where there is both high heat and ample oxygen present.

---

3 More Studies to Check Out

People with a higher ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids and lower levels of omega-3 are shown to have higher levels of depression.

And there’s also some connection to lower testosterone levels, albeit in rodents.

Today, seed oils make up around 10% of our diet, up from 0% in 1900 — marking it the largest dietary change of the last century and leading to unprecedented levels of obesity, heart disease, and other chronic diseases.

It may also interest you that canola oil was first named LEAR, for lower erucic acid rapeseed, but it was changed to canola for marketing purposes…

Huh.

After all, who will buy a product with an ingredient called “rapeseed” in it?

---

The Best Alternative

The modern world has a hidden underbelly, which is, by design, opposed to your good health. Fish should be the go-to for most of your fat needs, thanks to those omega-6s being everywhere.

But if you’re a vegan or vegetarian, or fancy yourself a chef, coconut oil, avocado oil, and olive oil are great alternatives.

Fish is the key, though. Without it, olive oil can even cause problems for you. A recent study published in the American Academy of Neurology revealed that eating a fish-rich diet had the greatest protective effect on people younger than 75 years old. Healthy older people who eat two or more servings of fish a week, including salmon, tuna and sardines, may have a lower risk of developing vascular brain disease later in life.

Just like the Japanese can eat all their sesame oils, which are high in omega-6s, they also eat a lot of fish and remain one of the healthiest societies on the planet.

Final Thought

You're out on a nice date with your lady. How do you avoid seed oils?

You don’t.

I take dietary breaks, just like anyone else. Last week, I wolfed down an egg McMuffin and some coffee out of sheer hunger. And the weekend before that, I devoured an entire pizza all by myself.

(granted it was after a 12-mile run)

I think why radical leftist Reddit-types get offended by dietary restriction articles is they immediately think of some internet Nazi opposing their lifestyle.

I get it. Honestly, I do.

But it's okay to have knowledge and strive for moderation instead of going overboard, accusing everything of being a right-wing conspiracy.

The fact is that today’s manufactured foods lack nutrients due to seed oils, which provide an abundance of omega-6 fatty acids but little else.

Sugar and lack of exercise are equally harmful or even worse for our health, but if we want to lower the obesity rate, we can start by cutting back on seed oils. But that’s not likely to happen until we address society’s rampant poverty, industry transgressions, and a slew of other access-to-healthy-food problems.

So we have our work cut out for us.

---