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With 15 minutes of effort typing commands into a large bioinformatics database, you too can convince yourself that these contaminants may be behind the Diabetes

With 15 minutes of effort typing commands into a large bioinformatics database, you too can convince yourself that these contaminants may be behind the Diabetes epidemic. https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to-plastic-measures-500cdf1fe528 https://medium.com/@InfinoMe/diabetes-time-to-resort-to-plas...

teslabox 8y ago
IMHO, the contamination of the food supply with rancid vegetable oil is a more important factor in the diabetes epidemic. Almost all of the vegetable oils at grocery stores are refined so customers don't realize they're using rancid oils. Vegetable oil is useful as biodiesel, and for making paints and stains. A drying oil is an oil that hardens to a tough, solid film after a period of exposure to air. The oil hardens through a chemical reaction in which the components crosslink (and hence, polymerize) by the action of oxygen (not through the evaporation of water or other solvents). Drying oils are a key component of oil paint and some varnishes. Some commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, tung oil, poppy seed oil, perilla oil, and walnut oil. Their use has declined over the past several decades, as they have been replaced by alkyd resins and other binders. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil
- stone-monkey 8y ago
  This process sounds similar to seasoning a cast iron pan. Does that mean using a seasoned cast iron pan can play a factor in diabetes, since you're in taking more rancid fats?
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    It’s a very different process “seasoning” creates a thin carbon layer on the surface of them metal and essentially what it does is to fill all the small gaps that normally would allow food to get into and stick it’s essentially very simmilar to Teflon and other non-stick coatings.
  - UpshotKnothole 8y ago
    Putting aside the fact that the claim made about rancid oil is pure fiction, the answer to your question is no. A cast iron pan is seasoned by carbonizing and polymerizing the oil under high heat, and what’s left can’t go rancid and isn’t really oil anymore.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    That is exactly what pan seasoning is. It's why the oil you use matters. The patina on a seasoned pan is a crosslinked polymer. The chemicals that make rancid oils taste and smell bad are generally the smaller bits that come off the molecule when its double bonds are attacked by oxygen: the aldehydes and ketones, and the short saturated fatty acids like butyric acid.
- Aloha 8y ago
  What does the blocktext and link have to do with your supposition?
  - teslabox 8y ago
    Most so-called "vegetable oils" were traditionally used as drying oils. This was before the paint industry figured out how to use petroleum distillates in their products in the mid-20th century. Linseed oil was renamed "flaxseed oil" when the market for stain made with linseed oil dried up. Containers of vegetable oils typically develop a sticky film on them, due to the drying oil effect.
    - birken 8y ago
      Maybe I'm not viewing this with the proper historical context, but I don't understand why you are saying the market for linseed oil has "dried up" for non-food uses. Boiled linseed oil, which contains linseed oil, is probably the most common oil based finish for woodworking. I also looked at this website about "Linseed oil market analysis" [1], which shows that Paints & Varnishes is still the largest user of linseed oil. Then processed foods, then pharma, then cosmetic, then flooring (which is probably also as a finish). I'm eye-balling the graphs because they don't have a table, but it looks like processed foods is only about 20% of the market. That might be a lot, I don't know, but it doesn't seem fair to say all this excess linseed oil is going into foods because there is no other use for it. 1: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/linseed-oil-market https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/linseed-...
      - teslabox 8y ago
        ... strictly speaking you’re certainly correct that there is still a significant non-food use for linseed and the other vegetable oils. But there were only limited food uses for polyunsaturated oils before deodorization and hydrogenation techniques were figured out in the early-mid 20th century. People might [have] measured out a tablespoon for their cooking pan, whereas today people use these oils prolifically.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Refined oils have nothing to do with being rancid it’s an extraction technique that uses heat instead of pressing. Refined oil will go rancid in the kitchen just as easily as cold pressed and you will noticed since it will smell sweet and then putrid. Common cooking oils including canola do not oxidize well nor do they dry well which is why you would not use them on say wood because they will not dry and will just go rancid.
  - teslabox 8y ago
    > Refined oils have nothing to do with being rancid it’s an extraction technique that uses heat instead of pressing. The petroleum distillate hexane is used to extract the oil from seed meal, then is boiled off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Solvent_extraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Solvent_extracti... The specific step I'm referring to is "steam deodorization": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Deodorization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Deodorization
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      And this has nothing to do with the oil being rancid deodorization is used to remove any water soluble solvents that may have been used in the process of extracting the oil. If you are going to link to Wikipedia at least bother reading the damn article. If you want to talk about the potential health impact of oils then erucic acid consumption might be a topic for discussion despite the lack of conclusive research on the subject so excessive canola oil consumption might be an issue despite it being capped at 2% in the US and 5% in the EU if you consume enough of it you might cause cardio vascular damage if the existing correlated data also indicates causation. But vegetable oils in general are not bad and are not sold as rancid that’s wrong, if you want to be on the extreme edge of the safe line then you can substitute canola oil with coconut, sunflower or peanut oil quite easily and these days also without paying a premium.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
fredsir 8y ago
I'm intrigued, still the sceptic in me thinks that most victims of type 2 diabetes are probably just victims of the simpler answer, which is occupying a body that has been exposed to too great amounts of fat (from especially oils and other processed foods) over too great a time period. However, I can only imagine the amount of harm continued consumption of plastic over a long period of time will do to a body, and I foresee that it will become clear that an increasing amount of people will be dealing with problems from precisely that in the next couple of decades.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Type 2 Diabetes is caused by carbs/sugar overconsumption, not fats. A ketogenic diet (high fat, moderate protein, low carb) diet reverses T2D in most people.
  - fredsir 8y ago
    Carbs nor sugar causes T2 diabetes. Simply put, sugar (refined or in food with a high glycemic level) becomes dangerous when you are diabetic because you body can't handle it because the arteries are plagued (from overconsumption of fat) so the sugar becomes trapped in the blood instead of escaping and being processed as it should, and as it's trapped in the blood it will build up to dangerous levels. The reason a ketogenic diet reverses type 2 diabetes in some people are because either a) those people go from eating extremely unhealthy to following a specific diet or b) they eat less calories than their bodies use thus they loose weight and thus the plague built-up can reverse. A ketogenic diet that allows too much fat will give you type 2 diabetes just like any other diet that allows for too high fat consumption.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      It is much much harder to consume enough fats to have the same caloric intake as carbs. That’s the whole reason keto works.
      - fredsir 8y ago
ams6110 8y ago
I think it's much more likely that the diabetes epidemic is linked to the insane levels of carb/sugar intake and obesity of so many adults.
- subcosmos 8y ago
  We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X12003617?via%3Dihub#fig0015 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...
  - timr 8y ago
    "We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics." Yes, let's ignore 50+ years of established science that is parsimonious with everything we know about the molecular biology of insulin resistance, and dump it in favor of a fringe theory, based on a single paper about a mouse study, where there's not even a plausible explanatory mechanism. Folks, stop downvoting simply because someone provides a link. The parent is spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense.
    - subcosmos 8y ago
      There are literally hundreds of papers on BPA and its links with diabetes. The only difference now is that we have the molecular culprit behind the trend. https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/bisphenol-a.html https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy...
      - timr 8y ago
        "There are literally hundreds of papers on BPA and its links with diabetes." There are literally not. The review you've linked to cites a handful of papers involving minor effects observed in mouse studies. Moreover, the paper you originally cited proves nothing even approximating a mechanism. I'm not suggesting anything about the safety of BPA, but it's utter nonsense to claim that it is a more plausible explanation for the diabetes epidemic than sugar consumption. A few mouse studies do not change 50+ years of established science on the relationship between sugar and diabetes.
qbrass 8y ago
Packaging food in plastic containers provides easier access to snackfoods, and allows you to carry them in more places to allow opportunistic snacking. While the plastic itself may not be directly causing diabetes, the increased availability of food might be allowing people to overeat and give themselves diabetes.

teslabox 8y ago

IMHO, the contamination of the food supply with rancid vegetable oil is a more important factor in the diabetes epidemic. Almost all of the vegetable oils at grocery stores are refined so customers don't realize they're using rancid oils. Vegetable oil is useful as biodiesel, and for making paints and stains. A drying oil is an oil that hardens to a tough, solid film after a period of exposure to air. The oil hardens through a chemical reaction in which the components crosslink (and hence, polymerize) by the action of oxygen (not through the evaporation of water or other solvents). Drying oils are a key component of oil paint and some varnishes. Some commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, tung oil, poppy seed oil, perilla oil, and walnut oil. Their use has declined over the past several decades, as they have been replaced by alkyd resins and other binders. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil

stone-monkey 8y ago
This process sounds similar to seasoning a cast iron pan. Does that mean using a seasoned cast iron pan can play a factor in diabetes, since you're in taking more rancid fats?
- dogma1138 8y ago
  It’s a very different process “seasoning” creates a thin carbon layer on the surface of them metal and essentially what it does is to fill all the small gaps that normally would allow food to get into and stick it’s essentially very simmilar to Teflon and other non-stick coatings.
- UpshotKnothole 8y ago
  Putting aside the fact that the claim made about rancid oil is pure fiction, the answer to your question is no. A cast iron pan is seasoned by carbonizing and polymerizing the oil under high heat, and what’s left can’t go rancid and isn’t really oil anymore.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  That is exactly what pan seasoning is. It's why the oil you use matters. The patina on a seasoned pan is a crosslinked polymer. The chemicals that make rancid oils taste and smell bad are generally the smaller bits that come off the molecule when its double bonds are attacked by oxygen: the aldehydes and ketones, and the short saturated fatty acids like butyric acid.
Aloha 8y ago
What does the blocktext and link have to do with your supposition?
- teslabox 8y ago
  Most so-called "vegetable oils" were traditionally used as drying oils. This was before the paint industry figured out how to use petroleum distillates in their products in the mid-20th century. Linseed oil was renamed "flaxseed oil" when the market for stain made with linseed oil dried up. Containers of vegetable oils typically develop a sticky film on them, due to the drying oil effect.
  - birken 8y ago
    Maybe I'm not viewing this with the proper historical context, but I don't understand why you are saying the market for linseed oil has "dried up" for non-food uses. Boiled linseed oil, which contains linseed oil, is probably the most common oil based finish for woodworking. I also looked at this website about "Linseed oil market analysis" [1], which shows that Paints & Varnishes is still the largest user of linseed oil. Then processed foods, then pharma, then cosmetic, then flooring (which is probably also as a finish). I'm eye-balling the graphs because they don't have a table, but it looks like processed foods is only about 20% of the market. That might be a lot, I don't know, but it doesn't seem fair to say all this excess linseed oil is going into foods because there is no other use for it. 1: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/linseed-oil-market https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/linseed-...
    - teslabox 8y ago
      ... strictly speaking you’re certainly correct that there is still a significant non-food use for linseed and the other vegetable oils. But there were only limited food uses for polyunsaturated oils before deodorization and hydrogenation techniques were figured out in the early-mid 20th century. People might [have] measured out a tablespoon for their cooking pan, whereas today people use these oils prolifically.
dogma1138 8y ago
Refined oils have nothing to do with being rancid it’s an extraction technique that uses heat instead of pressing. Refined oil will go rancid in the kitchen just as easily as cold pressed and you will noticed since it will smell sweet and then putrid. Common cooking oils including canola do not oxidize well nor do they dry well which is why you would not use them on say wood because they will not dry and will just go rancid.
- teslabox 8y ago
  > Refined oils have nothing to do with being rancid it’s an extraction technique that uses heat instead of pressing. The petroleum distillate hexane is used to extract the oil from seed meal, then is boiled off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Solvent_extraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Solvent_extracti... The specific step I'm referring to is "steam deodorization": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Deodorization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil#Deodorization
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    And this has nothing to do with the oil being rancid deodorization is used to remove any water soluble solvents that may have been used in the process of extracting the oil. If you are going to link to Wikipedia at least bother reading the damn article. If you want to talk about the potential health impact of oils then erucic acid consumption might be a topic for discussion despite the lack of conclusive research on the subject so excessive canola oil consumption might be an issue despite it being capped at 2% in the US and 5% in the EU if you consume enough of it you might cause cardio vascular damage if the existing correlated data also indicates causation. But vegetable oils in general are not bad and are not sold as rancid that’s wrong, if you want to be on the extreme edge of the safe line then you can substitute canola oil with coconut, sunflower or peanut oil quite easily and these days also without paying a premium.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

fredsir 8y ago

I'm intrigued, still the sceptic in me thinks that most victims of type 2 diabetes are probably just victims of the simpler answer, which is occupying a body that has been exposed to too great amounts of fat (from especially oils and other processed foods) over too great a time period. However, I can only imagine the amount of harm continued consumption of plastic over a long period of time will do to a body, and I foresee that it will become clear that an increasing amount of people will be dealing with problems from precisely that in the next couple of decades.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Type 2 Diabetes is caused by carbs/sugar overconsumption, not fats. A ketogenic diet (high fat, moderate protein, low carb) diet reverses T2D in most people.
- fredsir 8y ago
  Carbs nor sugar causes T2 diabetes. Simply put, sugar (refined or in food with a high glycemic level) becomes dangerous when you are diabetic because you body can't handle it because the arteries are plagued (from overconsumption of fat) so the sugar becomes trapped in the blood instead of escaping and being processed as it should, and as it's trapped in the blood it will build up to dangerous levels. The reason a ketogenic diet reverses type 2 diabetes in some people are because either a) those people go from eating extremely unhealthy to following a specific diet or b) they eat less calories than their bodies use thus they loose weight and thus the plague built-up can reverse. A ketogenic diet that allows too much fat will give you type 2 diabetes just like any other diet that allows for too high fat consumption.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    It is much much harder to consume enough fats to have the same caloric intake as carbs. That’s the whole reason keto works.
    - fredsir 8y ago

ams6110 8y ago

I think it's much more likely that the diabetes epidemic is linked to the insane levels of carb/sugar intake and obesity of so many adults.

subcosmos 8y ago
We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics. Check out this study, where they fed mice water, water+fructose, or water+fructose+BPA. At the end of the experiment, only the BPA containing solutions had elevated liver fat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X12003617?via%3Dihub#fig0015 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X1...
- timr 8y ago
  "We can keep running on the macronutrient treadmill, like we've been doing for 50 years, or we can find molecular evidence that jives with genetics." Yes, let's ignore 50+ years of established science that is parsimonious with everything we know about the molecular biology of insulin resistance, and dump it in favor of a fringe theory, based on a single paper about a mouse study, where there's not even a plausible explanatory mechanism. Folks, stop downvoting simply because someone provides a link. The parent is spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense.
  - subcosmos 8y ago
    There are literally hundreds of papers on BPA and its links with diabetes. The only difference now is that we have the molecular culprit behind the trend. https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/promoting-scientific-integrity/bisphenol-a.html https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy...
    - timr 8y ago
      "There are literally hundreds of papers on BPA and its links with diabetes." There are literally not. The review you've linked to cites a handful of papers involving minor effects observed in mouse studies. Moreover, the paper you originally cited proves nothing even approximating a mechanism. I'm not suggesting anything about the safety of BPA, but it's utter nonsense to claim that it is a more plausible explanation for the diabetes epidemic than sugar consumption. A few mouse studies do not change 50+ years of established science on the relationship between sugar and diabetes.

qbrass 8y ago

Packaging food in plastic containers provides easier access to snackfoods, and allows you to carry them in more places to allow opportunistic snacking. While the plastic itself may not be directly causing diabetes, the increased availability of food might be allowing people to overeat and give themselves diabetes.