10 ms·

Death by vegetable oil: What the studies say (2020)

127 points by btilly 4y ago

derbOac 4y ago
I'm willing to consider and eventually accept the idea that vegetable oil, or some class of oil or fat in general, is causing significant public health problems and increases risk of disease. However, every time I delve into the research on vegetable oil I end up being more confused. This seems to be the case in many of the studies cited in this essay as well. For example, a number of the studies aggregate over margarine and other types of vegetable oil, which seems really difficult or impossible to interpret, especially given that trans fats are now generally accepted to be unhealthy. Other problems arise here in and elsewhere in defining oil composition. I've noticed for instance that safflower and sunflower oil are almost always lumped together in one category, even though there are chemically very different forms of both available. For example, high oleic and other sunflower oils are really different, and sunflower oil in general is generally relatively easily modified genetically speaking. So talking about "sunflower oil" as a single ingredient biochemically is problematic. There's also issues with cooked versus raw oils, which the essay alludes to but seems extremely important given how different fat structures are transformed by heat. I'm not trying to tear down the piece, but I do find this area of research really difficult to interpret.
- alxmng 4y ago
  Agreed. Clearly there are huge chemical differences between coconut oil, sunflower oil, and tallow. The science is too shoddy to draw any conclusions. It’s hard to take seriously studies that don’t consider olive oil a “vegetable oil”.
  - krona 4y ago
    From the article: > “Vegetable oils” in this context refer to oils extracted from seeds, grains, and legumes This excludes olive/avocado/coconut/nut oils.
    - permo-w 4y ago
      but then when you buy “vegetable oil” it invariably contains olive oil edit: okay maybe “invariably” is a bit strong. “often in my country” is perhaps more accurate
      - kragen 4y ago
        around here it's sunflower oil or sometimes soy oil with some sunflower oil in it
        permo-w 4y ago
        in my experience it’s been sunflower oil with canola and then like 10% olive
      - derefr 4y ago
        That's not most places. Vegetable oils are expected to be able to be used as frying oils. Olive oil has too low of a smoke-point to be used in frying.
        jemmyw 4y ago
        That's also a confusing point. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-olive-oil-good-for-cooking https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-olive-oil-good-for-c... says it has a moderately high smoke point and possibly more importantly has a composition that is more resistive to oxidative damage than vegetable oils. I usually fry and cook with olive oil.
        permo-w 4y ago
        >Olive oil has too low of a smoke-point to be used in frying. this is a common myth you also hear stuff about whether extra virgin is better or worse for cooking than just basic, with people coming out strongly on either side
        nogridbag 4y ago
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    That’s why people started using the term “seed oil”. Olive oil is not a seed oil while sunflower and rapeseed oil is. Olives also aren't a vegetable though.
    - canucker2016 4y ago
      I believe the rapeseed marketers/producers would prefer it be called "canola oil".
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        From what I understand, Canola is a more specific product. Like how Flaxseed oil and Linseed oil come from the same plant. Wikipedia mentions Canola as "a version" rather than "also known as"
        lizknope 4y ago
        CANada Oil Low in Acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil Canola was bred from rapeseed cultivars of B. napus and B. rapa at the University of Manitoba, Canada, by Keith Downey and Baldur R. Stefansson in the early 1970s,[9][10] having then a different nutritional profile than present-day oil in addition to much less erucic acid.[11] Canola was originally a trademark name of the Rapeseed Association of Canada, and the name was a condensation of "Can" from Canada and "OLA " meaning "Oil, low acid",[12][13] but is now a generic term for edible varieties of rapeseed oil in North America and Australasia.[14] The change in name serves to distinguish it from natural rapeseed oil, which has much higher erucic acid content.[15]
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      Then what's coconut oil? Coconuts are seeds.
      - speg 4y ago
        Aren’t they nuts? Every time a story about oil comes up on HN I’m so confused. Everyone has different terms and expectations. Is there a one pager somewhere where we can all agree on some common ground?
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  > I'm willing to consider and . eventually accept the idea that vegetable oil, or some class of oil or fat in general, is causing significant public health problems and increases risk of disease. However, every time I delve into the research on vegetable oil I end up being more confused The class of oil you're looking for is called sugar. We all know Big Sugar paid off a couple of researchers to spin the blame on fats, and perception has been baised since. If we reduce sugar (including carbs) and we'll see health outcomes improve.
  - tempsy 4y ago
    excessive sugar consumption is bad, agreed, but vegetable oil is awful for very specific reasons that have nothing to do with macros.
    - TomSwirly 4y ago
      From reading the rest of this page, I can safely say that your claim, "vegetable oil is awful", is just false. No one except you is claiming that. Some people are claiming that a subset of vegetable oils are bad, but so far I haven't seen one conclusive argument either way.
  - wnolens 4y ago
    Big Sugar! gives new meaning to the name of an old band i used to listen to.. haha
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Hey, remember Napster? There was a chat facility so you could chat to people who were poking around in your shared files. Many many years ago - easily 20 years ago - I was downloading stuff off Napster and the person whose computer I was poking at popped up in chat and said "hey if you like that band, you'll probably like this band Big Sugar, try this track Let It Ride". Maybe it was you.
      - wnolens 4y ago
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  A lot of the people pushing these ideas are primarily motivated by being anti-vegan, so that might explain why such articles are all over the place.
belltaco 4y ago
> Amazingly, the group eating repeatedly heated oil was actually consuming slightly fewer calories than the other groups, and still managed to gain significantly more weight. So much for the reductionist and simplistic "calories in and out" trope brought up frequently on here.
- ramenmeal 4y ago
  I've never seen poop included in the "calories in, calories out" diet talk, which seems strange. The argument for it is it's a 0 sum game, but they never mention poop as part of the equation. There seems to be an assumption that all food is absorbed at the same rate and across all people. Seems unlikely to me.
  - alar44 4y ago
    No it isn't the same for everyone. So what you do is: if you're gaining weight, eat less. If you're not, you're good.
  - manmal 4y ago
    I wonder where/when this calories-in-calories-out trope ever made sense. Metabolism is so complex that the energy lost during reactions between and into metabolites cannot be measured - they happen inside cells mostly, at an insane rate. The mere presence of increased active thyroid hormone (T3) will elevate body temperature, leading to increased heat loss. Muscles become more efficient when used often. Muscles load glycogen after sports. Energy is conserved by warm clothing. Low room temperature leads to extra energy loss. Etc How is one supposed to even approximate the energy balance without a fully body composition (dexa) scan every week?
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I think calories in/out is just propaganda used to help the average person not overeat. Like most of the medical stuff were taught, it's a half truth because the systems are so complex that even the experts don't truly know.
Nifty3929 4y ago
I don't know. Seems sensationalist. So I picked one of their referenced studies to look at, and to my untrained eye it doesn't seem to support the paper's position at all. What it says in the linked article: HEART DISEASE In another study, the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, participants who increased their consumption of corn oil and margarine had 86% more heart attacks, and for those aged 65 or older, a higher risk of death after four years What the linked study says: Conclusions: Available evidence from randomized controlled trials shows that replacement of saturated fat in the diet with linoleic acid effectively lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes. Findings from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment add to growing evidence that incomplete publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  nutrition science is right up there with social science in the competition for ironic names
- prohisto 4y ago
  that's because troglodytes who don't read research still have the backward notion that Cholesterol causes heart disease.
- ricardobeat 4y ago
  I read the linked study out of curiosity [1]. The study is from the other perspective, that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oil would lead to reduced mortality. I couldn't figure out exactly where they got the 86% figure from, but the study found a significant negative effect: "There was a 22% higher risk of death for each 30 mg/dL (0.78 mmol/L) reduction in serum cholesterol" [resulting from vegetable oil consumption]. This is in accordance with what the article says. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246 https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246
Scalene2 4y ago
If your opening paragraph presents only a vague correlation then I'm going to suspect that the rest of your evidence is even more tenuous and not bother reading on.
- ewanmcteagle 4y ago
  But in fact anyone who reads the article will see that your assumption is incorrect.
darth_avocado 4y ago
Okay. I bite. What’s the alternative though? Even if I don’t eat fried chicken every day, I still need to cook with something. 0 fat cooking is very tough unless you go on a raw diet. What are the options? Olive oil? Animal fats?
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Ghee is a good option.
- BjorksEgo 4y ago
  Both those. And butter, avocado oil, coconut oil and numerous other more niche
  - wackget 4y ago
    Avocado oil is about 15x as expensive as vegetable oil. Other oils (including animal fats) have too strong a taste to be used in applications where a neutral oil is required (e.g. salad dressings, emulsions).
    - tedunangst 4y ago
      Unless you're deep frying everything, which arguably unhealthy regardless of chosen fat, it's hard to believe avocado oil is a significant component to meal cost. I just pan fried some vegetables, and I may have spent 5c on oil?
      - balfirevic 4y ago
        > Unless you're deep frying everything, which arguably unhealthy regardless of chosen fat Why would it be unhealthy if the fat used is not unhealthy?
      - trillic 4y ago
        I'm with you. Even using the most expensive Avocado I could find at the Whole Foods in the smallest container I'd still only be spending $0.30 on a tablespoon, which is enough to cook a meal for 1-4 people in a cast iron pan. Doing this makes me feel a lot better than having to worry about the temperature of a teflon-coated pan.
vouaobrasil 4y ago
I think there should be a distinction between heated and raw oils. According to (DOI: 10.1016/j.vph.2014.02.004), "Prolonged consumption of the repeatedly heated oil has been shown to increase blood pressure and total cholesterol, cause vascular inflammation as well as vascular changes which predispose to atherosclerosis." When I was a teenager, I worked in fast food where there was a deep fryer, and the policy of the restaurant was to use the oil until it turned a deep brown (or customers complained). Believe me, that oil was reheated dozens of times. I can only imagine what it's like in a chip factory. On the other hand, if you're just putting it in a salad dressing, the effects might be different, and there actually seems to be relatively few studies on this topic. Anyway, this is definitely not the whole picture, but something to think about.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  It was nice to see the article include some studies with reheated oils - not sure if they're the same as the one you mentioned. I'm curious on what chemical changes and stuff occur after re/heating
- sixstringtheory 4y ago
  I spent a short stint while cooking in my early twenties doing a second job at a wing joint, and they regularly added oil stabilizer to the deep fryers: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/noble-chemical-9-5-lb-2g-fryclone-fryer-oil-stabilizer-and-filter-powder-case/147FCPWDR4G.html https://www.webstaurantstore.com/noble-chemical-9-5-lb-2g-fr... Main ingredient: aluminum silicate. Not exactly something I want to sprinkle on my salad.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Main ingredient: aluminum silicate. Not exactly something I want to sprinkle on my salad. It's pretty obvious you're trying to imply that it's harmful in some way, but I checked wikipedia and I can't see anything bad about it aside from the generic "eww chemicals" feeling. Sure, technically speaking I wouldn't sprinkle that on my salad either, but that encompasses a wide variety of substances that aren't exactly bad for you. I wouldn't sprinkle sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) on my salad either, but it's not exactly bad for me.
kragen 4y ago
A few weeks ago, I wanted to know whether saturated fat (the kind that makes up most of mammal and bird fat and tropical oils like coconut and palm oil) was better or worse for you than unsaturated fat (the kind that makes up most of fish oil and non-tropical oils of vegetable origin). At this point the evidence strongly suggests that, at least if you live in the rich world, saturated fat is pretty bad for you, and unsaturated fat is much less bad for you (not counting trans fats, which almost don't occur naturally and are very bad for you indeed, but were abundant in margarine until they were outlawed). The Cochrane Collaboration is kind of the gold standard for medical research review studies. In my search I ran across this recent open-access Cochrane review of only randomized clinical trials: Hooper L, Martin N, Jimoh OF, Kirk C, Foster E, Abdelhamid AS. Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2020, Issue 8. Art. No.: CD011737. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3. <https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3/pdf/full https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...> They conclude that over the four or so years in the 16 RCTs they reviewed, the decreases in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality due to lower saturated fat intake, if any, were too small to detect with the usual p-values, but their measure of combined cardiovascular events did decrease significantly, with a RR CI from 0.70 to 0.98. On the face of it, this sounds kind of optimistic for the thesis that saturated fat is fine: are heart attacks really that bad if they don't increase your risk of dying? Maybe there was some countervailing health benefit, like you're more likely to die of a heart attack but less likely to die of cancer or an accident. And they have some quotes with a remarkably low degree of hedging: "Critical importance. Reducing saturated fat intake probably makes little or no difference to cardiovascular mortality." But I don't think it's actually that optimistic, for three reasons. The numbers I've looked at so far don't suggest an actual protective effect; the average death rates and cardiovascular death rates in the intervention groups (with lower saturated fat) were still lower, just not significantly so. Presumably part of the reason for that is that, almost necessarily, fewer experimental subjects had a heart attack and died from it than merely had a heart attack. But that would only account for wider confidence intervals. I think the stronger argument is that the studies were only for (an average of) four years or so, and usually it takes about 50 years for cardiovascular disease to kill you on a standard unhealthy "Western" diet (and this is an aspect of "Westernization" we didn't get from the Song Dynasty). So it's really pretty alarming that lowering saturated fat intake significantly reduces the "combined cardiovascular event" rate over only four years. Presumably there is progressive damage (or recovery) if you continue the intervention for ten or twenty years. The third argument is that a stroke that doesn't kill you can still be pretty bad. I'm not any kind of expert on public health (that would be my ex-wife the epidemiologist) or on nutrition, so I could easily be overlooking something important. In fact, I overlook important things in fields where I am an expert all the time. But I don't think Jeff Nobbs is an expert either; he's a startup founder and restaurateur, and this post seems to be a sales pitch for his vegetable-oil-substitution business (according to https://www.jeffnobbs.com/about https://www.jeffnobbs.com/about). Searching in Google Scholar finds literally zero publications by him in any area, especially including nutrition. And in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34283915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34283915 it looks like Nifty3929 caught him saying that one of the studies said something very different from what it actually did say. So I think I'll trust the Cochrane Collaboration instead.
cute_boi 4y ago
hmm, I think this is mostly about cherry picking some statistics to make vegetable oil bad. It is difficult to research on such topics because there are so many variables. If I ever become test subject, I am sure I will always use fresh vegetables oil, use less oil etc. And, animals have always lied because we all know mice lies and monkey exaggerate.
chmaynard 4y ago
> the first group’s fat came primarily from vegetable oil sources like safflower oil and margarine while the second group’s fat came from sources like olive oil and butter. Apparently the author does not consider olive oil to be a vegetable oil. Huh? As I understand it, a vegetable oil is an oil extracted from a plant and olives are the fruiting body of a plant.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Which is why some prefer to use the term "seed oil" rather than "vegetable oil". The main distinction though is that seed oils are mainly composed of polyunsaturated fats, unlike olive oil, coconut, avocado, butter, etc. Seed oils are often labeled "vegetable oil" on their containers.
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  you need to read the article again, he says what he considers to be vegetable oil and it doesn't include olive oil
  - TomSwirly 4y ago
    Why would I read an article where the author has his own version of the English language? Olives are vegetables. Their oil is a vegetable oil. If the author claims otherwise, they are just factually wrong.
muh_gradle 4y ago
I would be skeptical about claims where there is always one evil villain in food that's causing chronic illnesses. Vegetable oils are fine and the fears are unfounded. Here is a far better explanation. https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-to-seed-oil-sophistry https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...
- prohisto 4y ago
  One of the overlaps between many vegans and the carnivores is the universal repudiation of vegetable seed oils. Healing with Whole Foods covered this nicely.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > One of the overlaps between many vegans and the carnivores is the universal repudiation of vegetable seed oils. What? I know several vegans and none of them think seed oils are bad.
  - muh_gradle 4y ago
    I'm not sure why vegans and "carnivores" are considered an authority on this.
- tempsy 4y ago
  you just linked to a well know “pro seed oil” twitter troll (had no idea that was a thing) but needless to say he is not an unbiased source
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    The claim (in gp's link) that it is unwise to extrapolate from focused studies to claims about populations seems sensible, though.
  - muh_gradle 4y ago
    There really is no such thing as a "pro seed oil" troll. He's pointing out gaps of evidence in the common claims that people who vilify seed oil, which is a real thing. If someone is making the claim that certain foods are deleterious, there has to be strong evidence to back those claims. And on a cursory glance, I'm not convinced that seed oils are deleterious. By all means though do your research. This is one source, but I've read others as well.
siliconc0w 4y ago
This is also an interesting example where a calorie is not just a calorie - as can be seen by the rats getting identical calories but the group with the vegetable oil gaining more weight. I try to stay away from 'seed oils' but it's pretty difficult because they are in everything so most the fats in my diet are from meat (another controversial area).
- FredPret 4y ago
  The overwhelmingly positive experience of eating a nicely cooked slab of fatty meat must be learnt on an enolutionary level
- Beaver117 4y ago
  But when you show the CICO cult people this they put their heads in the sand and shout about thermodynamics
bob29 4y ago
Correlation IS causation
AlexandrB 4y ago
> Vegetable oils, while nearly nonexistent a hundred years ago... Vs. > Such oils have been part of human culture for millennia. Oils such as poppy seed, rapeseed, linseed, almond oil, sesame seed, safflower, and cottonseed were variously used since at least the Bronze Age in the Middle East.[1] Like, I don't know. Maybe seed oils are bad. But every article pushing this idea starts by wildly overstating the case and making assertions like this. To me this seems like another diet fad. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil
- prottog 4y ago
  The citation for that sentence in the Wikipedia page is given as this news article: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2014-12-17/ty-article/.premium/8-000-year-old-olive-oil-found-in-galilee/0000017f-e09f-d7b2-a77f-e39fbbbd0000 https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2014-12-17/ty-article/.p... Curiously, that article only mentions olive oil, which is not a seed oil under discussion, and actually makes no mention of "poppy seed, rapeseed, linseed, almond oil, sesame seed, safflower, and cottonseed" at all.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  Oil painting show a well established and extensive production of vegetable oils since 15 century at least.
  - skrbjc 4y ago
    For non food purposes.
vaporup 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUADs-CK7vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUADs-CK7vI
Wolfenstein98k 4y ago
Crucial to also read SMTM's investigation, to which the OP is partially a response, and their reply. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/01/05/n1-introduction/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/01/05/n1-introduction/
fierro 4y ago
Where do you commonly find seed oils? - fast food - nearly all processed snacks (chips, cookies, etc) Cutting out seed oils is a good heuristic even if only to serve as a compass for avoiding foods that are widely accepted to be unhealthy. If you dig deeper, you may come to the conclusion, as I have, that these foods are unhealthy because of the seeds oils in them (in part).
- tootie 4y ago
  Yeah I think the actual distinction he is drawing is between the cheapest fats (soy, corn oil) and the classic and relatively expensive fats (butter or olive oil). It's correlation between cheap ingredients used in cheap, low-quality, often deep-fried or highly-processed foods. I'm sure a salad with extra virgin corn oil would be fine but nobody eats that.
  - fierro 4y ago
    they are cheap due to the scalable industrial processes than enable seed oils to be extracted from comparatively cheap raws (seeds vs. olives/avos) and it's this process that contributes to the negative health outcomes associated with these oils. The extraction process oxidizes the oils and makes them essentially rancid.
- joe-collins 4y ago
  A "processed" food is simply one that has any amount of added salt, sugar, or fat. Many snacks include seed oils, I'm sure, but "nearly all" processed foods certainly do not. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods...
  - weakfortress 4y ago
    [dead]
  - fierro 4y ago
    sure if that's a technicality you want to call out. What I meant is -- go down the grocery store snack aisles. Look at the chips, popcorns, cookies, etc. Anything in a brightly colored box in those snack aisles. 100% of the things I'm talking about have seed oils in them.
deleted 4y ago
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zabzonk 4y ago
oh dear, another HN post on diet. no doubt someone will start a comment saying you can eat what you like provided you go to the gym every day. why are americans so obsessed with these things? you can't live forever, and the older i get (nearly 70, now) the the less i feel like carrying on, and the less i worry about things like oils.
- stonecharioteer 4y ago
  Are you still in the tech world? I'd love to hear your experiences working in the industry.
  - zabzonk 4y ago
    only for recreational purposes :-) but i am still interested in programming language design and such.
- BrianKamrany 4y ago
  Hahaha, thank you for the comment! It made me laugh, and it's honestly a perspective worth considering.
- timbit42 4y ago
  I think the idea is that if you eat healthier, when you are nearly 70 you will feel more like carrying on.
whywhywhydude 4y ago
Not sure who upvotes these bro-science articles with cherry picked data and obnoxious titles.
peanut-walrus 4y ago
Yikes. This is what happens when people "do their own research"?
richardhod 4y ago
While I don't disagree with the general tenor of the article and the apparent real issues with these oils, Regarding the section quoted below: this doesn't appear to have any statistical coherence, since naive calculations like this tend to make many implicit unwarranted assumptions. 'If heavy smoking (a pack of cigarettes per day) increases risk of death by 80% and increasing vegetable oil consumption (by 12% of calories) increases risk of death by 62%, we can use some back-of-the-napkin math to infer that every 5% increase in daily calories from vegetable oil is as dangerous as smoking 7 cigarettes per day. Another way of looking at it: each additional teaspoon of vegetable oil you consume could increase your risk of death as much as smoking 2 cigarettes. '
fithisux 4y ago
Is the study valid for cold pressed sunflower oil? I switched to this one from margarine to make apple pie.
m0llusk 4y ago
A potentially relevant data point that doesn't often come up in this discussion is the evidence produced from housecleaning. As a housecleaner I deal with all kinds of materials including pee, poop, and puke from people and their animals and other stuff like used machine oil from engines and physical things like sand and pine needles. By far the absolute worst is residue from cooking with seed oils. There are many special products out for dealing with this because simply scrubbing with hot water and concentrated soap is often not enough. The residues are most similar to glue or shellac. If a substance like heated seed oil generates material that is among the greatest challenges a housecleaner can encounter then how is ingesting it okay?
- pvaldes 4y ago
  > simply scrubbing with hot water and concentrated soap is often not enough. This is because you aren't using hydrochloric acid to clean the stain, as our guts do all the time.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I suppose that this sort of article is useful, but seriously, doesn’t just about everyone know how unhealthy seed oils are? I have a few friends who have unhealthy eating habits, they know about seed oils and don’t care. One reason people don’t care about consuming unhealthy seed oils is the simplicity of eating packaged foods - cheap and convenient. I try to almost 100% avoid packaged foods and this system of eating is a HUGE hassle and time sink. I will compromise and for example use a Falafel mix instead of grinding fava beans and chickpeas, but otherwise buy whole grains in bulk, fresh vegetables, meat, and fruit. I only bake bread a few times a month so I also buy bread from a local bakery. This takes a lot of effort so I would not necessarily recommend this system to other people.
- boppo1 4y ago
  Is coconut oil a seed oil?
  - mark_l_watson 4y ago
    Coconut oil is OK and when I rarely cook with oil I use coconut oil. Usually I convert “fried food” recipes to simmer in water or vegetable broth, then add a tablespoon of olive oil after the food has been removed from cooking heat. Easy to do, and I think tastes better.
    - boppo1 4y ago
      If you can tell me how to cook eggs in stainless steel without oil, I'll convert.
kuba-orlik 4y ago
I think the research mentioned in this article points more to bad influence of margarine, not vegetable oils in general. In the first study, the group that did better consumed more olive oil, which is a vegetable oil
Merovius 4y ago
The Author of this article is the founder of a startup trying to make "cultured oil" happen. Not a particularly trustworthy and neutral source for "the studies". He's certainly not going to be very motivated to tell y'all about studies showing that he is staking his time and money and reputation on a nonsense product. It's embarrassing that y'all upvoted this.

127 points by btilly 4y ago

I'm willing to consider and eventually accept the idea that vegetable oil, or some class of oil or fat in general, is causing significant public health problems and increases risk of disease. However, every time I delve into the research on vegetable oil I end up being more confused. This seems to be the case in many of the studies cited in this essay as well. For example, a number of the studies aggregate over margarine and other types of vegetable oil, which seems really difficult or impossible to interpret, especially given that trans fats are now generally accepted to be unhealthy. Other problems arise here in and elsewhere in defining oil composition. I've noticed for instance that safflower and sunflower oil are almost always lumped together in one category, even though there are chemically very different forms of both available. For example, high oleic and other sunflower oils are really different, and sunflower oil in general is generally relatively easily modified genetically speaking. So talking about "sunflower oil" as a single ingredient biochemically is problematic. There's also issues with cooked versus raw oils, which the essay alludes to but seems extremely important given how different fat structures are transformed by heat. I'm not trying to tear down the piece, but I do find this area of research really difficult to interpret.

alxmng 4y ago
Agreed. Clearly there are huge chemical differences between coconut oil, sunflower oil, and tallow. The science is too shoddy to draw any conclusions. It’s hard to take seriously studies that don’t consider olive oil a “vegetable oil”.
- krona 4y ago
  From the article: > “Vegetable oils” in this context refer to oils extracted from seeds, grains, and legumes This excludes olive/avocado/coconut/nut oils.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    but then when you buy “vegetable oil” it invariably contains olive oil edit: okay maybe “invariably” is a bit strong. “often in my country” is perhaps more accurate
    - kragen 4y ago
      around here it's sunflower oil or sometimes soy oil with some sunflower oil in it
      - permo-w 4y ago
        in my experience it’s been sunflower oil with canola and then like 10% olive
    - derefr 4y ago
      That's not most places. Vegetable oils are expected to be able to be used as frying oils. Olive oil has too low of a smoke-point to be used in frying.
      - jemmyw 4y ago
        That's also a confusing point. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-olive-oil-good-for-cooking https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/is-olive-oil-good-for-c... says it has a moderately high smoke point and possibly more importantly has a composition that is more resistive to oxidative damage than vegetable oils. I usually fry and cook with olive oil.
      - permo-w 4y ago
        >Olive oil has too low of a smoke-point to be used in frying. this is a common myth you also hear stuff about whether extra virgin is better or worse for cooking than just basic, with people coming out strongly on either side
        nogridbag 4y ago
- Gigachad 4y ago
  That’s why people started using the term “seed oil”. Olive oil is not a seed oil while sunflower and rapeseed oil is. Olives also aren't a vegetable though.
  - canucker2016 4y ago
    I believe the rapeseed marketers/producers would prefer it be called "canola oil".
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      From what I understand, Canola is a more specific product. Like how Flaxseed oil and Linseed oil come from the same plant. Wikipedia mentions Canola as "a version" rather than "also known as"
      - lizknope 4y ago
        CANada Oil Low in Acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil Canola was bred from rapeseed cultivars of B. napus and B. rapa at the University of Manitoba, Canada, by Keith Downey and Baldur R. Stefansson in the early 1970s,[9][10] having then a different nutritional profile than present-day oil in addition to much less erucic acid.[11] Canola was originally a trademark name of the Rapeseed Association of Canada, and the name was a condensation of "Can" from Canada and "OLA " meaning "Oil, low acid",[12][13] but is now a generic term for edible varieties of rapeseed oil in North America and Australasia.[14] The change in name serves to distinguish it from natural rapeseed oil, which has much higher erucic acid content.[15]
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Then what's coconut oil? Coconuts are seeds.
    - speg 4y ago
      Aren’t they nuts? Every time a story about oil comes up on HN I’m so confused. Everyone has different terms and expectations. Is there a one pager somewhere where we can all agree on some common ground?
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> I'm willing to consider and . eventually accept the idea that vegetable oil, or some class of oil or fat in general, is causing significant public health problems and increases risk of disease. However, every time I delve into the research on vegetable oil I end up being more confused The class of oil you're looking for is called sugar. We all know Big Sugar paid off a couple of researchers to spin the blame on fats, and perception has been baised since. If we reduce sugar (including carbs) and we'll see health outcomes improve.
- tempsy 4y ago
  excessive sugar consumption is bad, agreed, but vegetable oil is awful for very specific reasons that have nothing to do with macros.
  - TomSwirly 4y ago
    From reading the rest of this page, I can safely say that your claim, "vegetable oil is awful", is just false. No one except you is claiming that. Some people are claiming that a subset of vegetable oils are bad, but so far I haven't seen one conclusive argument either way.
- wnolens 4y ago
  Big Sugar! gives new meaning to the name of an old band i used to listen to.. haha
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Hey, remember Napster? There was a chat facility so you could chat to people who were poking around in your shared files. Many many years ago - easily 20 years ago - I was downloading stuff off Napster and the person whose computer I was poking at popped up in chat and said "hey if you like that band, you'll probably like this band Big Sugar, try this track Let It Ride". Maybe it was you.
    - wnolens 4y ago
TomSwirly 4y ago
A lot of the people pushing these ideas are primarily motivated by being anti-vegan, so that might explain why such articles are all over the place.

belltaco 4y ago

> Amazingly, the group eating repeatedly heated oil was actually consuming slightly fewer calories than the other groups, and still managed to gain significantly more weight. So much for the reductionist and simplistic "calories in and out" trope brought up frequently on here.

ramenmeal 4y ago
I've never seen poop included in the "calories in, calories out" diet talk, which seems strange. The argument for it is it's a 0 sum game, but they never mention poop as part of the equation. There seems to be an assumption that all food is absorbed at the same rate and across all people. Seems unlikely to me.
- alar44 4y ago
  No it isn't the same for everyone. So what you do is: if you're gaining weight, eat less. If you're not, you're good.
- manmal 4y ago
  I wonder where/when this calories-in-calories-out trope ever made sense. Metabolism is so complex that the energy lost during reactions between and into metabolites cannot be measured - they happen inside cells mostly, at an insane rate. The mere presence of increased active thyroid hormone (T3) will elevate body temperature, leading to increased heat loss. Muscles become more efficient when used often. Muscles load glycogen after sports. Energy is conserved by warm clothing. Low room temperature leads to extra energy loss. Etc How is one supposed to even approximate the energy balance without a fully body composition (dexa) scan every week?
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I think calories in/out is just propaganda used to help the average person not overeat. Like most of the medical stuff were taught, it's a half truth because the systems are so complex that even the experts don't truly know.

Nifty3929 4y ago

I don't know. Seems sensationalist. So I picked one of their referenced studies to look at, and to my untrained eye it doesn't seem to support the paper's position at all. What it says in the linked article: HEART DISEASE In another study, the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, participants who increased their consumption of corn oil and margarine had 86% more heart attacks, and for those aged 65 or older, a higher risk of death after four years What the linked study says: Conclusions: Available evidence from randomized controlled trials shows that replacement of saturated fat in the diet with linoleic acid effectively lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes. Findings from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment add to growing evidence that incomplete publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid.

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readthenotes1 4y ago
nutrition science is right up there with social science in the competition for ironic names
prohisto 4y ago
that's because troglodytes who don't read research still have the backward notion that Cholesterol causes heart disease.
ricardobeat 4y ago
I read the linked study out of curiosity [1]. The study is from the other perspective, that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oil would lead to reduced mortality. I couldn't figure out exactly where they got the 86% figure from, but the study found a significant negative effect: "There was a 22% higher risk of death for each 30 mg/dL (0.78 mmol/L) reduction in serum cholesterol" [resulting from vegetable oil consumption]. This is in accordance with what the article says. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246 https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246

Scalene2 4y ago

If your opening paragraph presents only a vague correlation then I'm going to suspect that the rest of your evidence is even more tenuous and not bother reading on.

ewanmcteagle 4y ago
But in fact anyone who reads the article will see that your assumption is incorrect.

darth_avocado 4y ago

Okay. I bite. What’s the alternative though? Even if I don’t eat fried chicken every day, I still need to cook with something. 0 fat cooking is very tough unless you go on a raw diet. What are the options? Olive oil? Animal fats?

germinalphrase 4y ago
Ghee is a good option.
BjorksEgo 4y ago
Both those. And butter, avocado oil, coconut oil and numerous other more niche
- wackget 4y ago
  Avocado oil is about 15x as expensive as vegetable oil. Other oils (including animal fats) have too strong a taste to be used in applications where a neutral oil is required (e.g. salad dressings, emulsions).
  - tedunangst 4y ago
    Unless you're deep frying everything, which arguably unhealthy regardless of chosen fat, it's hard to believe avocado oil is a significant component to meal cost. I just pan fried some vegetables, and I may have spent 5c on oil?
    - balfirevic 4y ago
      > Unless you're deep frying everything, which arguably unhealthy regardless of chosen fat Why would it be unhealthy if the fat used is not unhealthy?
    - trillic 4y ago
      I'm with you. Even using the most expensive Avocado I could find at the Whole Foods in the smallest container I'd still only be spending $0.30 on a tablespoon, which is enough to cook a meal for 1-4 people in a cast iron pan. Doing this makes me feel a lot better than having to worry about the temperature of a teflon-coated pan.

vouaobrasil 4y ago

I think there should be a distinction between heated and raw oils. According to (DOI: 10.1016/j.vph.2014.02.004), "Prolonged consumption of the repeatedly heated oil has been shown to increase blood pressure and total cholesterol, cause vascular inflammation as well as vascular changes which predispose to atherosclerosis." When I was a teenager, I worked in fast food where there was a deep fryer, and the policy of the restaurant was to use the oil until it turned a deep brown (or customers complained). Believe me, that oil was reheated dozens of times. I can only imagine what it's like in a chip factory. On the other hand, if you're just putting it in a salad dressing, the effects might be different, and there actually seems to be relatively few studies on this topic. Anyway, this is definitely not the whole picture, but something to think about.

dieselgate 4y ago
It was nice to see the article include some studies with reheated oils - not sure if they're the same as the one you mentioned. I'm curious on what chemical changes and stuff occur after re/heating
sixstringtheory 4y ago
I spent a short stint while cooking in my early twenties doing a second job at a wing joint, and they regularly added oil stabilizer to the deep fryers: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/noble-chemical-9-5-lb-2g-fryclone-fryer-oil-stabilizer-and-filter-powder-case/147FCPWDR4G.html https://www.webstaurantstore.com/noble-chemical-9-5-lb-2g-fr... Main ingredient: aluminum silicate. Not exactly something I want to sprinkle on my salad.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Main ingredient: aluminum silicate. Not exactly something I want to sprinkle on my salad. It's pretty obvious you're trying to imply that it's harmful in some way, but I checked wikipedia and I can't see anything bad about it aside from the generic "eww chemicals" feeling. Sure, technically speaking I wouldn't sprinkle that on my salad either, but that encompasses a wide variety of substances that aren't exactly bad for you. I wouldn't sprinkle sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) on my salad either, but it's not exactly bad for me.

kragen 4y ago

A few weeks ago, I wanted to know whether saturated fat (the kind that makes up most of mammal and bird fat and tropical oils like coconut and palm oil) was better or worse for you than unsaturated fat (the kind that makes up most of fish oil and non-tropical oils of vegetable origin). At this point the evidence strongly suggests that, at least if you live in the rich world, saturated fat is pretty bad for you, and unsaturated fat is much less bad for you (not counting trans fats, which almost don't occur naturally and are very bad for you indeed, but were abundant in margarine until they were outlawed). The Cochrane Collaboration is kind of the gold standard for medical research review studies. In my search I ran across this recent open-access Cochrane review of only randomized clinical trials: Hooper L, Martin N, Jimoh OF, Kirk C, Foster E, Abdelhamid AS. Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2020, Issue 8. Art. No.: CD011737. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3. <https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3/pdf/full https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...> They conclude that over the four or so years in the 16 RCTs they reviewed, the decreases in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality due to lower saturated fat intake, if any, were too small to detect with the usual p-values, but their measure of combined cardiovascular events did decrease significantly, with a RR CI from 0.70 to 0.98. On the face of it, this sounds kind of optimistic for the thesis that saturated fat is fine: are heart attacks really that bad if they don't increase your risk of dying? Maybe there was some countervailing health benefit, like you're more likely to die of a heart attack but less likely to die of cancer or an accident. And they have some quotes with a remarkably low degree of hedging: "Critical importance. Reducing saturated fat intake probably makes little or no difference to cardiovascular mortality." But I don't think it's actually that optimistic, for three reasons. The numbers I've looked at so far don't suggest an actual protective effect; the average death rates and cardiovascular death rates in the intervention groups (with lower saturated fat) were still lower, just not significantly so. Presumably part of the reason for that is that, almost necessarily, fewer experimental subjects had a heart attack and died from it than merely had a heart attack. But that would only account for wider confidence intervals. I think the stronger argument is that the studies were only for (an average of) four years or so, and usually it takes about 50 years for cardiovascular disease to kill you on a standard unhealthy "Western" diet (and this is an aspect of "Westernization" we didn't get from the Song Dynasty). So it's really pretty alarming that lowering saturated fat intake significantly reduces the "combined cardiovascular event" rate over only four years. Presumably there is progressive damage (or recovery) if you continue the intervention for ten or twenty years. The third argument is that a stroke that doesn't kill you can still be pretty bad. I'm not any kind of expert on public health (that would be my ex-wife the epidemiologist) or on nutrition, so I could easily be overlooking something important. In fact, I overlook important things in fields where I am an expert all the time. But I don't think Jeff Nobbs is an expert either; he's a startup founder and restaurateur, and this post seems to be a sales pitch for his vegetable-oil-substitution business (according to https://www.jeffnobbs.com/about https://www.jeffnobbs.com/about). Searching in Google Scholar finds literally zero publications by him in any area, especially including nutrition. And in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34283915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34283915 it looks like Nifty3929 caught him saying that one of the studies said something very different from what it actually did say. So I think I'll trust the Cochrane Collaboration instead.

cute_boi 4y ago

hmm, I think this is mostly about cherry picking some statistics to make vegetable oil bad. It is difficult to research on such topics because there are so many variables. If I ever become test subject, I am sure I will always use fresh vegetables oil, use less oil etc. And, animals have always lied because we all know mice lies and monkey exaggerate.

chmaynard 4y ago

> the first group’s fat came primarily from vegetable oil sources like safflower oil and margarine while the second group’s fat came from sources like olive oil and butter. Apparently the author does not consider olive oil to be a vegetable oil. Huh? As I understand it, a vegetable oil is an oil extracted from a plant and olives are the fruiting body of a plant.

colordrops 4y ago
Which is why some prefer to use the term "seed oil" rather than "vegetable oil". The main distinction though is that seed oils are mainly composed of polyunsaturated fats, unlike olive oil, coconut, avocado, butter, etc. Seed oils are often labeled "vegetable oil" on their containers.
lost_tourist 4y ago
you need to read the article again, he says what he considers to be vegetable oil and it doesn't include olive oil
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  Why would I read an article where the author has his own version of the English language? Olives are vegetables. Their oil is a vegetable oil. If the author claims otherwise, they are just factually wrong.

muh_gradle 4y ago

I would be skeptical about claims where there is always one evil villain in food that's causing chronic illnesses. Vegetable oils are fine and the fears are unfounded. Here is a far better explanation. https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-to-seed-oil-sophistry https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...

prohisto 4y ago
One of the overlaps between many vegans and the carnivores is the universal repudiation of vegetable seed oils. Healing with Whole Foods covered this nicely.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > One of the overlaps between many vegans and the carnivores is the universal repudiation of vegetable seed oils. What? I know several vegans and none of them think seed oils are bad.
- muh_gradle 4y ago
  I'm not sure why vegans and "carnivores" are considered an authority on this.
tempsy 4y ago
you just linked to a well know “pro seed oil” twitter troll (had no idea that was a thing) but needless to say he is not an unbiased source
- tuatoru 4y ago
  The claim (in gp's link) that it is unwise to extrapolate from focused studies to claims about populations seems sensible, though.
- muh_gradle 4y ago
  There really is no such thing as a "pro seed oil" troll. He's pointing out gaps of evidence in the common claims that people who vilify seed oil, which is a real thing. If someone is making the claim that certain foods are deleterious, there has to be strong evidence to back those claims. And on a cursory glance, I'm not convinced that seed oils are deleterious. By all means though do your research. This is one source, but I've read others as well.

siliconc0w 4y ago

This is also an interesting example where a calorie is not just a calorie - as can be seen by the rats getting identical calories but the group with the vegetable oil gaining more weight. I try to stay away from 'seed oils' but it's pretty difficult because they are in everything so most the fats in my diet are from meat (another controversial area).

FredPret 4y ago
The overwhelmingly positive experience of eating a nicely cooked slab of fatty meat must be learnt on an enolutionary level
Beaver117 4y ago
But when you show the CICO cult people this they put their heads in the sand and shout about thermodynamics

bob29 4y ago

Correlation IS causation

AlexandrB 4y ago

> Vegetable oils, while nearly nonexistent a hundred years ago... Vs. > Such oils have been part of human culture for millennia. Oils such as poppy seed, rapeseed, linseed, almond oil, sesame seed, safflower, and cottonseed were variously used since at least the Bronze Age in the Middle East.[1] Like, I don't know. Maybe seed oils are bad. But every article pushing this idea starts by wildly overstating the case and making assertions like this. To me this seems like another diet fad. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil

prottog 4y ago
The citation for that sentence in the Wikipedia page is given as this news article: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2014-12-17/ty-article/.premium/8-000-year-old-olive-oil-found-in-galilee/0000017f-e09f-d7b2-a77f-e39fbbbd0000 https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2014-12-17/ty-article/.p... Curiously, that article only mentions olive oil, which is not a seed oil under discussion, and actually makes no mention of "poppy seed, rapeseed, linseed, almond oil, sesame seed, safflower, and cottonseed" at all.
pvaldes 4y ago
Oil painting show a well established and extensive production of vegetable oils since 15 century at least.
- skrbjc 4y ago
  For non food purposes.

vaporup 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUADs-CK7vI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUADs-CK7vI

Wolfenstein98k 4y ago

Crucial to also read SMTM's investigation, to which the OP is partially a response, and their reply. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/01/05/n1-introduction/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/01/05/n1-introduction/

fierro 4y ago

Where do you commonly find seed oils? - fast food - nearly all processed snacks (chips, cookies, etc) Cutting out seed oils is a good heuristic even if only to serve as a compass for avoiding foods that are widely accepted to be unhealthy. If you dig deeper, you may come to the conclusion, as I have, that these foods are unhealthy because of the seeds oils in them (in part).

tootie 4y ago
Yeah I think the actual distinction he is drawing is between the cheapest fats (soy, corn oil) and the classic and relatively expensive fats (butter or olive oil). It's correlation between cheap ingredients used in cheap, low-quality, often deep-fried or highly-processed foods. I'm sure a salad with extra virgin corn oil would be fine but nobody eats that.
- fierro 4y ago
  they are cheap due to the scalable industrial processes than enable seed oils to be extracted from comparatively cheap raws (seeds vs. olives/avos) and it's this process that contributes to the negative health outcomes associated with these oils. The extraction process oxidizes the oils and makes them essentially rancid.
joe-collins 4y ago
A "processed" food is simply one that has any amount of added salt, sugar, or fat. Many snacks include seed oils, I'm sure, but "nearly all" processed foods certainly do not. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/processed-foods...
- weakfortress 4y ago
  [dead]
- fierro 4y ago
  sure if that's a technicality you want to call out. What I meant is -- go down the grocery store snack aisles. Look at the chips, popcorns, cookies, etc. Anything in a brightly colored box in those snack aisles. 100% of the things I'm talking about have seed oils in them.

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zabzonk 4y ago

oh dear, another HN post on diet. no doubt someone will start a comment saying you can eat what you like provided you go to the gym every day. why are americans so obsessed with these things? you can't live forever, and the older i get (nearly 70, now) the the less i feel like carrying on, and the less i worry about things like oils.

stonecharioteer 4y ago
Are you still in the tech world? I'd love to hear your experiences working in the industry.
- zabzonk 4y ago
  only for recreational purposes :-) but i am still interested in programming language design and such.
BrianKamrany 4y ago
Hahaha, thank you for the comment! It made me laugh, and it's honestly a perspective worth considering.
timbit42 4y ago
I think the idea is that if you eat healthier, when you are nearly 70 you will feel more like carrying on.

whywhywhydude 4y ago

Not sure who upvotes these bro-science articles with cherry picked data and obnoxious titles.

peanut-walrus 4y ago

Yikes. This is what happens when people "do their own research"?

richardhod 4y ago

While I don't disagree with the general tenor of the article and the apparent real issues with these oils, Regarding the section quoted below: this doesn't appear to have any statistical coherence, since naive calculations like this tend to make many implicit unwarranted assumptions. 'If heavy smoking (a pack of cigarettes per day) increases risk of death by 80% and increasing vegetable oil consumption (by 12% of calories) increases risk of death by 62%, we can use some back-of-the-napkin math to infer that every 5% increase in daily calories from vegetable oil is as dangerous as smoking 7 cigarettes per day. Another way of looking at it: each additional teaspoon of vegetable oil you consume could increase your risk of death as much as smoking 2 cigarettes. '

fithisux 4y ago

Is the study valid for cold pressed sunflower oil? I switched to this one from margarine to make apple pie.

m0llusk 4y ago

A potentially relevant data point that doesn't often come up in this discussion is the evidence produced from housecleaning. As a housecleaner I deal with all kinds of materials including pee, poop, and puke from people and their animals and other stuff like used machine oil from engines and physical things like sand and pine needles. By far the absolute worst is residue from cooking with seed oils. There are many special products out for dealing with this because simply scrubbing with hot water and concentrated soap is often not enough. The residues are most similar to glue or shellac. If a substance like heated seed oil generates material that is among the greatest challenges a housecleaner can encounter then how is ingesting it okay?

pvaldes 4y ago
> simply scrubbing with hot water and concentrated soap is often not enough. This is because you aren't using hydrochloric acid to clean the stain, as our guts do all the time.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I suppose that this sort of article is useful, but seriously, doesn’t just about everyone know how unhealthy seed oils are? I have a few friends who have unhealthy eating habits, they know about seed oils and don’t care. One reason people don’t care about consuming unhealthy seed oils is the simplicity of eating packaged foods - cheap and convenient. I try to almost 100% avoid packaged foods and this system of eating is a HUGE hassle and time sink. I will compromise and for example use a Falafel mix instead of grinding fava beans and chickpeas, but otherwise buy whole grains in bulk, fresh vegetables, meat, and fruit. I only bake bread a few times a month so I also buy bread from a local bakery. This takes a lot of effort so I would not necessarily recommend this system to other people.

boppo1 4y ago
Is coconut oil a seed oil?
- mark_l_watson 4y ago
  Coconut oil is OK and when I rarely cook with oil I use coconut oil. Usually I convert “fried food” recipes to simmer in water or vegetable broth, then add a tablespoon of olive oil after the food has been removed from cooking heat. Easy to do, and I think tastes better.
  - boppo1 4y ago
    If you can tell me how to cook eggs in stainless steel without oil, I'll convert.

kuba-orlik 4y ago

I think the research mentioned in this article points more to bad influence of margarine, not vegetable oils in general. In the first study, the group that did better consumed more olive oil, which is a vegetable oil

Merovius 4y ago

The Author of this article is the founder of a startup trying to make "cultured oil" happen. Not a particularly trustworthy and neutral source for "the studies". He's certainly not going to be very motivated to tell y'all about studies showing that he is staking his time and money and reputation on a nonsense product. It's embarrassing that y'all upvoted this.