It’s Not Saturated Fats Making Us Sicker & Fatter– It’s the Unsaturated Vegetable Oils
What (Not) To Eat (1) – Unsaturated Vegetable Seed Oils (1)
This clearly is not what we have been told, repeatedly, and for a century or so; unsaturated oils are ‘supposed to be good for you’. Countless billion$ have been spent on advertising for a good reason, say ten times that in profits. It is amazing what a ‘good image’ and bright shiny pictures can do to human feelings and behaviour concerning eating something that we have accepted as ‘good’ in ‘our mind’. For me, it’s been a bit of a journey, and then a ‘watershed moment’, a real turning point that I didn’t expect. Like most people, I had never looked into it too closely and went along with the narrative.
For those readers who have been following the last many weeks of more ‘science-dense’ discussion around the key deficiencies of vitamin D, iodine, and zinc, this is a bit of a return to the previous post ‘format’ on Sleep and When to Eat and probably something of a ‘break’. The ‘dense format’ was needed to try to establish something of a ‘reference section’, and I will update them where and when needed. From now on, I plan to mix things up to keep things a bit more ‘digestible’ (pardon the pun).
To give a bit of background, I should probably confess that as a child I never bought into using margarine and preferred butter as it tasted ‘yummier’. My mother similarly, I think, but my father was really sold on those old war-time margarine ads. My mother used ‘vegetable shortening’ (hydrogenated vegetable oil) and margarine in baking, but there was always lard and beef dripping (tallow), and fat from Sunday roasts was poured off and kept in the fridge. I think I saw it as a war-time ‘waste not, want not’ thing at the time, but actually it’s just good old-fashioned sensible practice (for some reason, bread fried in beef dripping (tallow) used to fry bacon has just come to mind as a fond childhood memory). Anyway, and back on point, I think it is fair to say that children go with their instincts more than adults.
As adults, we have stayed with butter including in baking, and joked for years that the 3 secrets of French cooking are ‘butter, butter, and butter’! Still, we used vegetable oils for nearly everything else. I think I had read somewhere that animal fats were better for frying and ‘high heat’, but we stayed on the fence, and it is ‘easier’ to pour oil. Besides, they must be right, no?
So what changed? I mentioned in the second part of When to Eat that I’d lost around 20% of my bodyweight (fat) when I started eating no later than 6pm, but had not changed what I ate. It is fair to say I didn’t lose all my ‘middle-aged spread’, but I figured that it was still good for my age.
What changed was that we were now reading up on matters of interest, seeking our own information, then going to the original scientific papers being (often mis-) quoted, and then to ‘non-traditional’ media sources including videos. One needs a good ‘filter’ or perhaps a good ‘nose’, and one needs to review, retain the good (bits) and put parts that ‘don’t fit’ to one side (sometimes ‘for now’). I think it also helped that I had previously researched, we had changed when we ate, and it succeeded more than we anticipated – we were more receptive to the idea of using scientific knowledge in an empirical way - i.e. to experiment (without harm) and observe – for measurably better health.
We first watched a video by Dr Paul Mason[1] from a conference in the same month it was held (October 2022), and it made sense to me
Around that time we also watched a video by Dr Chris Knobbe (kon-oh-bee)[2] taken from the same series of conferences three years earlier (June 2020)
As you may see from the video (timestamp around 9:44) he is an ophthalmologist whose interest in this area began with his tracking the huge rise in age-related macular degeneration (blindness) to the increased use of unsaturated vegetable seed oils[3], particularly those with high linoleic acid (omega-6 fatty acid) content.
I’ll come back to some of the scientific evidence behind the more reasonable hypothesis that natural saturated fats are good for you (and which fits in with our ‘food philosophy’ of starting with as close to an ‘ingredient’s’ natural state as we can get), but plan to only make a few points in this post.
Back to our ‘story’ for a bit: we decided after considering the scientific evidence presented in the videos above to (mostly) give up ‘unsaturated vegetable seed oils’. We stopped using maize (corn) oil and sunflower oil (the most common here) for anything. Bearing in mind the ‘healthy Mediterranean diet’, we continued to use olive oil for making mayonnaise and salad dressing. We cooked more with lard, butter, ghee (an Indian ‘clarified butter’ made from fermented milk), beef dripping (tallow), and any fat from roasts.
The first thing I noticed was that things smelt more ‘yummy’ when they were being prepared or fried. I realised that things frying in unsaturated vegetable oils don’t really smell of much, almost like one put a litre of car engine oil on to heat. Food tasted richer, more (hunger) satisfying, I was more sated, a feeling that took me right back.
Some months later (not long after Christmas), I stepped on some digital scales at a friend’s house, and was astounded to see that I’d lost around a further 5kg (11 lbs, over ¾ st). I think I’ll have to come back to a fuller explanation of this in the next post, but the short version is I think that my body could manage more optimally with natural saturated fat, and a ‘more normal’ minimal level of unsaturated oils (in their natural state as actual seeds). There is more to this ‘story’ as well.
So, what are the major ‘take homes’ on unsaturated vegetable seed oils? I think the following graph demonstrates the main point made in the videos (there are many others besides):
Clearly, heart disease death correlates with unsaturated vegetable oil intake, and not with saturated fat. I’ll discuss more concerning research findings in the future posts, including important points concerning the huge rises in obesity and diabetes, and considerations of sugar consumption.
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This post is based on ongoing well-being research, but is not medical advice. Please consult your Primary Care Provider before using any medicines or supplements.
Selected References
[1] Mason, P., (2022). 'Hard science on the real cause of heart disease - why you should avoid seed oils'. Presentation at the Low Carb Down Under Gold Coast Conference, October 2022. https://rumble.com/v3li1w0-dr-paul-mason-chapter-33-la-enfermedad-cardaca-y-los-aceites-de-semilla.html (Accessed 20240308)
[2] Knobbe, C. (2020). 'Diseases of Civilization: Are Seed Oil Excesses the Unifying Mechanism?' Presentation at the Low Carb Down Under Denver Colorado Conference, June 2020. https://rumble.com/v28pwti-dr.-chris-knobbe-diseases-of-civilization-are-seed-oil-excesses-the-unifyin.html (Accessed 20240308)
[3] Knobbe CA, Stojanoska M. The 'Displacing Foods of Modern Commerce' Are the Primary and Proximate Cause of Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Unifying Singular Hypothesis. Med Hypotheses. 2017 Nov;109:184-198. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2017.10.010. Epub 2017 Oct 14. PMID: 29150284. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29150284/