7 ms·

Fatty acid found in palm oil linked to spread of cancer

178 points by lonelyasacloud 5y ago

swader999 5y ago
Unite folks, they are coming for our Nutella!
DiabloD3 5y ago
This kind of smells of bad science reporting, the paper itself does not seem to be bad science, but I haven't read the paper yet (DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-04075-0); a quote from the abstract basically, indicates they were force-fed unrealistically high palmitic acid content combined with the standard lab mouse fake feed diet. It also indicates the palmitic acid did not cause the cancer, but only increased its growth. "Here we show that dietary palmitic acid (PA), but not oleic acid or linoleic acid, promotes metastasis in oral carcinomas and melanoma in mice. Tumours from mice that were fed a short-term palm-oil-rich diet (PA), or tumour cells that were briefly exposed to PA in vitro, remained highly metastatic even after being serially transplanted (without further exposure to high levels of PA)." Mammals produce palmitic acid as the primary fatty acid during de novo lipogenesis (humans are estimated to have about 1/3rd of their body fat stored as palmitic, possibly more in strict vegetarians than everyone else), and palmitic acid is required for building the membranes of cells and subcellular structures (palmitoylation, a process that is used in the production of several thousand chemicals in the body). Fundamentally, if they would have not had this outcome, then it would indicate we don't understand something fundamental about biochemistry. If you put fuel on a fire, the fire will grow. If you feed a cancer the ingredients it requires, then it will grow. Cancer does not really do anything special that any other cell doesn't already do (the form of "high copper" anaerobic metabolism it uses not withstanding); palmitic acids, and saturated fatty acids in general, are required for cellular growth, hormone construction, energy production, and an otherwise endless list of functions required for life. The paper isn't saying "don't eat palmitic acid rich diets", which the science news seems to be trying to imply the paper says, and if it had said so, would be bad science in of itself; what it's saying is we should look into short term low palmitic acid diets as an adjunct therapy for cancer treatment. That said, if you're looking into keeping cancer from starting in the first place, the semi-traditional human diet of one meal a day, sometimes with intermittent fasting thrown on top, seems to make sure cancer is kept at bay with our normal apoptosis cycle; apoptosis in humans only can re-engage after the postprandial insulin spike after 12 to 24 hours, depending on the individual. Saturated fats, including palmitic acid, are required to keep an individual functioning without being hungry all day long, but also to replace damaged cells garbage collected by apoptosis and also drive apoptosis itself.
Olumde 5y ago
I think the "science" is dubious. Do the authors realize that there are parts of the world (e.g. West Africa) where Palm oil is the only type of oil that has been used in cooking for ever??
lonelyasacloud 5y ago
Study on mice found palmitic acid promoted metastasis in mouth and skin cancers ...
7thaccount 5y ago
Some quick googling tells me this is in nearly all of American food.
- lcfcjs 5y ago
  It is naturally present in butter, cheese, milk, and meat, as well as cocoa butter, soybean oil, and sunflower oil.
- marpstar 5y ago
  This and soybean oil.
  - gremloni 5y ago
    Pretty much every oil except olive oil is supposed to be bad for you. Looks like we’re getting to a point where we have to reevaluate all of our traditional foods, even those that have been around for millennia.
    - pvarangot 5y ago
      Olive oil is not not bad as much as it has good essential aminos, but it still has a lot of palmitic oil. Another not not bad oil commonly sold as a health product is coconut butter, which also has a lot of palmitic oil. There's a lot of evidence that any fat and any cholesterol is worse than none at all. That means you just have to choose the lesser evil if you want to eat fat, and according to most big population studies that's just eating it raw from plants, like seeds and fruits. The main problem is getting the essential aminos other than ALA, those are found in seaweed or you need to supplement them.
      - phonypc 5y ago
        Might want to refresh your understanding here. You've confused oils, amino acids, fatty acids and essential acids of each kind. The only essential fatty acids are linoleic and alpha-linolenic. It's virtually impossible to be deficient on anything like a normal diet. Oils/fats contain effectively no amino acids, essential or otherwise. I would call both olive oil and coconut oil moderate sources of palmitic acid. It's present in greater proportion than in most other vegetable oils, but substantially less than in animal fats and palm oil. Re: seaweed and supplements, you're thinking of DHA, which is non-essential but probably beneficial to consume in amounts greater than can be synthesized. Seaweeds however, containing very little fat overall, are not a very good source.
goda90 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid Seems like a common saturated fatty acid in animal based fats too
- isbn 5y ago
  > Palmitic acid is the first fatty acid produced during fatty acid synthesis and is the precursor to longer fatty acids. As a consequence, palmitic acid is a major body component of animals. In humans, one analysis found it to make up 21–30% (molar) of human depot fat, and it is a major, but highly variable, lipid component of human breast milk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid#Biochemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid#Biochemistry
hprotagonist 5y ago
There are lots of reasons why palm oil is a bad idea, but mouse data isn't high on my list.
- pvarangot 5y ago
  Yeah this is more of a cancer study than a nutrition study, everyone in nutrition agrees ingesting palmitic oil is stupid as our body makes palmitic acid out of excess carbs so it's just fat to store without the extra steps, and hence bad for cardiovascular health. It's the main reason why excess coconut products and olive oil are not recommended on a vegan diet if you are doing it for the life extension and cancer-protective benefits.
SirensOfTitan 5y ago
I don't really trust this kind of science reporting. The link to the nature article doesn't even link to it for me: https://10.0.4.14/s41586-021-04075-0 https://10.0.4.14/s41586-021-04075-0, the real link is: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04075-0#citeas https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04075-0#citeas I also cannot access the study on SciHub, but one should keep eyebrows raised with alarmist reporting like this. Palmitic acid is in everything. Ask questions like: 1. What's the strength of effect? Is it 50x more likely to see metastasis? 15%? 2. Is the diet a realistic diet? Are the mice or rats eating a significant amount more of palmitic acid than what would be reasonable in a human participant? 3. How does the mouse model differ from humans? 4. What are the systemic effects? People don't eat fatty acids alone, they eat them as (ideally) part of a diet composed of whole foods. Might the effect hold in a realistic diet with more palmitic acid? ... and so on and so forth. Without access to the actual article and some folks' willingness to critically look at methodology, this kind of writing just encourages people to draw simplistic conclusions about incredibly complex systems.
- Ginden 5y ago
  > What's the strength of effect? You are acting like anyone cares about effect sizes. As civilization, we transcended past such nuances, you can write alarmistic abstract about 3% effect size, as long magic p < 0.05.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    My favorite in the breathless overreporting genre is when debate wins are described as "evisceration."
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I never know how to interpret the phrase "linked to" in various news headlines. Is it just shorthand for some relationship that's truly significant and meaningful in the context of the article? Or is it a weasel-phrase to click-bait people into reading a less significant finding and/or to impute guilt by association?
Kessler83 5y ago
Nature is a world leading journal with a very rigorous review process. They publish less than a tenth of the (proper) submissions they get. So the science here is likely to have high quality. As for the Guardian article, there are some pretty heavy direct quotes in there, in case you don't trust the journalist's assessment (I don't see any strong reason why you wouldn't).
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  At this point, it's well known that journals are broken. The whole replication crisis is a product of journals like Nature and NEJM. Their authority has always been a sham, and will continue to be, because "Science" is not about gatekeeping. These journals are rent seeking, avaricious entities profiting by selling the illusion of quality and exclusivity to universities and research institutions that should know better. Science is not about publish or perish. It's not about making the most money from patents and royalties and residuals. It is process which research papers contribute to, but those papers are just like any other arbitrary metric imposed on groups of people - when the metric becomes the goal, the output will be exploited and gamified. The people playing by the rules will lose when everyone else is cheating, and the cheating among science journals has been going on for more than 3 decades. Trusting any paper is a naive thing to do, but trusting a paper because of the supposed reputation of the journal is just silly. Trust collections of research that uses reproducible experimentation and rigorous scientific methodology that reinforces ideas over a broad spectrum of literature. These journals are a toxic influence and the sooner they die off the better.
  - Kessler83 5y ago
    Wow, tell me how you really feel :). It's not a "supposed reputation" though. Nature is listed as a world-leading journal (class 2) by the internationally widely acknowledged research register "Norwegian Register". The double blind reviews aren't performed by Nature, but by peer scientists. And it isn't gate-keeping. You have every opportunity to publish your stuff in another journal or simply on the internet if you want to. A lot of scientists do the latter before trying to get it into prominent journal. Even in the case of a rejection, the feed-back you get from reviewers is often of very high quality, as in really helping you make your article better, as most journals give the review jobs to experienced scientists in your field. In other words, a world leading journal generally contributes greatly to what you say in your last paragraph. That said, I agree with most of your statements in the third paragraph (publish and perish etc.). It's not like I'm claiming that the current system is fine without side-effects, fake-journals etc.. I just don't think there is cause for the kind of suspicions voiced in the thread, in relation to Nature or the OP article.
zwieback 5y ago
The interesting part, to me as a outsider, is that they used human cancer cells, exposed them to PA and then those cells had some kind of "memory" after being transplanted into mice.
fasteo 5y ago
This is maybe one of the mechanistic cause of cancer progression, but let's take a step back and see what would cause an excess PA concentration in our bodies [1], that is, other than force feeding mice with an enormous amount of dietary PA. >>> in presence of other factors such as positive energy balance, excessive intake of carbohydrates (in particular mono and disaccharides), and a sedentary lifestyle, the mechanisms to maintain a steady state of PA concentration may be disrupted leading to an over accumulation of tissue PA ... Business as usual. [1] Palmitic Acid: Physiological Role, Metabolism and Nutritional Implications (https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2017.00902 https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2017.00902)
timwaagh 5y ago
What I find pretty interesting is that this stuff is in most of those 'natural' foods that aren't considered healthy. And it's already listed as a potential heart health hazard. Now add this cancer evidence on top of it and it really doesn't look too good for this stuff. But I guess more research is necessary.
ekianjo 5y ago
Study on Mice... again. And reported by the Guardian, which regularly misunderstands scientific publications. That is all you need to know.
stevespang 5y ago
DHA found in fish oils kills cancer cells: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401200441.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401200441.h...
throwawaysea 5y ago
Palm oil also has major deforestation implications. Congress recently introduced a bill to target the trade of palm oil called the Forest Act of 2021 (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-democrats-target-palm-oil-beef-trade-deforestation-bill-2021-10-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-democrats-targe...), which has a low chance of passing but is worth attention. I wonder if there is cancer attributable to the environmental impacts of large scale palm oil harvesting, apart from the alleged issues with the fatty acid here.
camelboy 5y ago
There is no doubt that all highly processed with extereme heat are toxic to the body. It is better to stick with cold pressed oils such as Extra Virgin Olive oil, butter or use animal fat.

Unite folks, they are coming for our Nutella!

This kind of smells of bad science reporting, the paper itself does not seem to be bad science, but I haven't read the paper yet (DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-04075-0); a quote from the abstract basically, indicates they were force-fed unrealistically high palmitic acid content combined with the standard lab mouse fake feed diet. It also indicates the palmitic acid did not cause the cancer, but only increased its growth. "Here we show that dietary palmitic acid (PA), but not oleic acid or linoleic acid, promotes metastasis in oral carcinomas and melanoma in mice. Tumours from mice that were fed a short-term palm-oil-rich diet (PA), or tumour cells that were briefly exposed to PA in vitro, remained highly metastatic even after being serially transplanted (without further exposure to high levels of PA)." Mammals produce palmitic acid as the primary fatty acid during de novo lipogenesis (humans are estimated to have about 1/3rd of their body fat stored as palmitic, possibly more in strict vegetarians than everyone else), and palmitic acid is required for building the membranes of cells and subcellular structures (palmitoylation, a process that is used in the production of several thousand chemicals in the body). Fundamentally, if they would have not had this outcome, then it would indicate we don't understand something fundamental about biochemistry. If you put fuel on a fire, the fire will grow. If you feed a cancer the ingredients it requires, then it will grow. Cancer does not really do anything special that any other cell doesn't already do (the form of "high copper" anaerobic metabolism it uses not withstanding); palmitic acids, and saturated fatty acids in general, are required for cellular growth, hormone construction, energy production, and an otherwise endless list of functions required for life. The paper isn't saying "don't eat palmitic acid rich diets", which the science news seems to be trying to imply the paper says, and if it had said so, would be bad science in of itself; what it's saying is we should look into short term low palmitic acid diets as an adjunct therapy for cancer treatment. That said, if you're looking into keeping cancer from starting in the first place, the semi-traditional human diet of one meal a day, sometimes with intermittent fasting thrown on top, seems to make sure cancer is kept at bay with our normal apoptosis cycle; apoptosis in humans only can re-engage after the postprandial insulin spike after 12 to 24 hours, depending on the individual. Saturated fats, including palmitic acid, are required to keep an individual functioning without being hungry all day long, but also to replace damaged cells garbage collected by apoptosis and also drive apoptosis itself.

Olumde 5y ago

I think the "science" is dubious. Do the authors realize that there are parts of the world (e.g. West Africa) where Palm oil is the only type of oil that has been used in cooking for ever??

lonelyasacloud 5y ago

Study on mice found palmitic acid promoted metastasis in mouth and skin cancers ...

7thaccount 5y ago

Some quick googling tells me this is in nearly all of American food.

lcfcjs 5y ago
It is naturally present in butter, cheese, milk, and meat, as well as cocoa butter, soybean oil, and sunflower oil.
marpstar 5y ago
This and soybean oil.
- gremloni 5y ago
  Pretty much every oil except olive oil is supposed to be bad for you. Looks like we’re getting to a point where we have to reevaluate all of our traditional foods, even those that have been around for millennia.
  - pvarangot 5y ago
    Olive oil is not not bad as much as it has good essential aminos, but it still has a lot of palmitic oil. Another not not bad oil commonly sold as a health product is coconut butter, which also has a lot of palmitic oil. There's a lot of evidence that any fat and any cholesterol is worse than none at all. That means you just have to choose the lesser evil if you want to eat fat, and according to most big population studies that's just eating it raw from plants, like seeds and fruits. The main problem is getting the essential aminos other than ALA, those are found in seaweed or you need to supplement them.
    - phonypc 5y ago
      Might want to refresh your understanding here. You've confused oils, amino acids, fatty acids and essential acids of each kind. The only essential fatty acids are linoleic and alpha-linolenic. It's virtually impossible to be deficient on anything like a normal diet. Oils/fats contain effectively no amino acids, essential or otherwise. I would call both olive oil and coconut oil moderate sources of palmitic acid. It's present in greater proportion than in most other vegetable oils, but substantially less than in animal fats and palm oil. Re: seaweed and supplements, you're thinking of DHA, which is non-essential but probably beneficial to consume in amounts greater than can be synthesized. Seaweeds however, containing very little fat overall, are not a very good source.

goda90 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid Seems like a common saturated fatty acid in animal based fats too

isbn 5y ago
> Palmitic acid is the first fatty acid produced during fatty acid synthesis and is the precursor to longer fatty acids. As a consequence, palmitic acid is a major body component of animals. In humans, one analysis found it to make up 21–30% (molar) of human depot fat, and it is a major, but highly variable, lipid component of human breast milk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid#Biochemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmitic_acid#Biochemistry

hprotagonist 5y ago

There are lots of reasons why palm oil is a bad idea, but mouse data isn't high on my list.

pvarangot 5y ago
Yeah this is more of a cancer study than a nutrition study, everyone in nutrition agrees ingesting palmitic oil is stupid as our body makes palmitic acid out of excess carbs so it's just fat to store without the extra steps, and hence bad for cardiovascular health. It's the main reason why excess coconut products and olive oil are not recommended on a vegan diet if you are doing it for the life extension and cancer-protective benefits.

SirensOfTitan 5y ago

I don't really trust this kind of science reporting. The link to the nature article doesn't even link to it for me: https://10.0.4.14/s41586-021-04075-0 https://10.0.4.14/s41586-021-04075-0, the real link is: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04075-0#citeas https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04075-0#citeas I also cannot access the study on SciHub, but one should keep eyebrows raised with alarmist reporting like this. Palmitic acid is in everything. Ask questions like: 1. What's the strength of effect? Is it 50x more likely to see metastasis? 15%? 2. Is the diet a realistic diet? Are the mice or rats eating a significant amount more of palmitic acid than what would be reasonable in a human participant? 3. How does the mouse model differ from humans? 4. What are the systemic effects? People don't eat fatty acids alone, they eat them as (ideally) part of a diet composed of whole foods. Might the effect hold in a realistic diet with more palmitic acid? ... and so on and so forth. Without access to the actual article and some folks' willingness to critically look at methodology, this kind of writing just encourages people to draw simplistic conclusions about incredibly complex systems.

Ginden 5y ago
> What's the strength of effect? You are acting like anyone cares about effect sizes. As civilization, we transcended past such nuances, you can write alarmistic abstract about 3% effect size, as long magic p < 0.05.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  My favorite in the breathless overreporting genre is when debate wins are described as "evisceration."
CoastalCoder 5y ago
I never know how to interpret the phrase "linked to" in various news headlines. Is it just shorthand for some relationship that's truly significant and meaningful in the context of the article? Or is it a weasel-phrase to click-bait people into reading a less significant finding and/or to impute guilt by association?

Kessler83 5y ago

Nature is a world leading journal with a very rigorous review process. They publish less than a tenth of the (proper) submissions they get. So the science here is likely to have high quality. As for the Guardian article, there are some pretty heavy direct quotes in there, in case you don't trust the journalist's assessment (I don't see any strong reason why you wouldn't).

robbedpeter 5y ago
At this point, it's well known that journals are broken. The whole replication crisis is a product of journals like Nature and NEJM. Their authority has always been a sham, and will continue to be, because "Science" is not about gatekeeping. These journals are rent seeking, avaricious entities profiting by selling the illusion of quality and exclusivity to universities and research institutions that should know better. Science is not about publish or perish. It's not about making the most money from patents and royalties and residuals. It is process which research papers contribute to, but those papers are just like any other arbitrary metric imposed on groups of people - when the metric becomes the goal, the output will be exploited and gamified. The people playing by the rules will lose when everyone else is cheating, and the cheating among science journals has been going on for more than 3 decades. Trusting any paper is a naive thing to do, but trusting a paper because of the supposed reputation of the journal is just silly. Trust collections of research that uses reproducible experimentation and rigorous scientific methodology that reinforces ideas over a broad spectrum of literature. These journals are a toxic influence and the sooner they die off the better.
- Kessler83 5y ago
  Wow, tell me how you really feel :). It's not a "supposed reputation" though. Nature is listed as a world-leading journal (class 2) by the internationally widely acknowledged research register "Norwegian Register". The double blind reviews aren't performed by Nature, but by peer scientists. And it isn't gate-keeping. You have every opportunity to publish your stuff in another journal or simply on the internet if you want to. A lot of scientists do the latter before trying to get it into prominent journal. Even in the case of a rejection, the feed-back you get from reviewers is often of very high quality, as in really helping you make your article better, as most journals give the review jobs to experienced scientists in your field. In other words, a world leading journal generally contributes greatly to what you say in your last paragraph. That said, I agree with most of your statements in the third paragraph (publish and perish etc.). It's not like I'm claiming that the current system is fine without side-effects, fake-journals etc.. I just don't think there is cause for the kind of suspicions voiced in the thread, in relation to Nature or the OP article.

zwieback 5y ago

The interesting part, to me as a outsider, is that they used human cancer cells, exposed them to PA and then those cells had some kind of "memory" after being transplanted into mice.

fasteo 5y ago

This is maybe one of the mechanistic cause of cancer progression, but let's take a step back and see what would cause an excess PA concentration in our bodies [1], that is, other than force feeding mice with an enormous amount of dietary PA. >>> in presence of other factors such as positive energy balance, excessive intake of carbohydrates (in particular mono and disaccharides), and a sedentary lifestyle, the mechanisms to maintain a steady state of PA concentration may be disrupted leading to an over accumulation of tissue PA ... Business as usual. [1] Palmitic Acid: Physiological Role, Metabolism and Nutritional Implications (https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2017.00902 https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2017.00902)

timwaagh 5y ago

What I find pretty interesting is that this stuff is in most of those 'natural' foods that aren't considered healthy. And it's already listed as a potential heart health hazard. Now add this cancer evidence on top of it and it really doesn't look too good for this stuff. But I guess more research is necessary.

ekianjo 5y ago

Study on Mice... again. And reported by the Guardian, which regularly misunderstands scientific publications. That is all you need to know.

stevespang 5y ago

DHA found in fish oils kills cancer cells: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401200441.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401200441.h...

throwawaysea 5y ago

Palm oil also has major deforestation implications. Congress recently introduced a bill to target the trade of palm oil called the Forest Act of 2021 (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-democrats-target-palm-oil-beef-trade-deforestation-bill-2021-10-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-democrats-targe...), which has a low chance of passing but is worth attention. I wonder if there is cancer attributable to the environmental impacts of large scale palm oil harvesting, apart from the alleged issues with the fatty acid here.

camelboy 5y ago

There is no doubt that all highly processed with extereme heat are toxic to the body. It is better to stick with cold pressed oils such as Extra Virgin Olive oil, butter or use animal fat.