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Harvard study finds seed oils healthier than butter
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoIs ghee better than seed oil?
- groos 2y agoGiven that humans have been eating ghee for thousands of years, and seed oils for mainly the last several decades, my bet is on ghee.
- timmytokyo 2y agoRight, because lifespans were notoriously longer 1000 years ago.
- groos 2y agoDying from heart disease is an entirely modern phenomenon.
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoAppeal to tradition fallacy, also known as "smokers' logic".
- thrill 2y agoProbably. But, buyer beware. There have been studies in the US that it is not "uncommon" (whatever quantity that entails) to find ghee sold that contains as much as half vegetable oil, so it's just the usual unchecked food fraud that's rampant in this country. Ghee is trivial to make yourself from butter sourced from a local dairy or from a trusted source. I use it, along with Zero Acres oil made from fermented sugar cane, which is better if seeking a neutral flavor.
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoIt's really easy to make ghee. Just get butter and make it. It will be more expensive and take time, but at least you'll know what's in it.
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoIt's just filtered butter. With high temperature cooking yes, otherwise maybe.
- guyzero 2y agoI find it deeply weird that seed oils have become a culture war topics and a tabula rasa onto which people projects all manner of societal ills.
- PaulHoule 2y agoThe John Birch society was into weird ideas about health since the 1960s, I had a friend in the 1980s whose parents were Amway distributors and selling supplements who were introducing my family to anti-abortion and school voucher activists. In Ithaca though we have a population of hypochondriacs who are notoriously left wing. Alternative ideas about the healthiness of fats have circulated a long time https://www.amazon.com/Fats-That-Heal-Kill-Cholesterol/dp/0920470386 https://www.amazon.com/Fats-That-Heal-Kill-Cholesterol/dp/09... is the first one I saw against ‘seed oils’, certainly alternative ideas about the healthiness of cholesterol and saturated fats have been circulating a long time. What is different is the polarization of the post-COVID environment but the polarization is such that you find people who don’t think we are post COVID.
- ceejayoz 2y agoPeople really love the idea of a quick, easy fix; a single solveable problem that explains a vast swath of issues.
- like_any_other 2y agoLike vitamin C to fix everything that goes wrong on long sea voyages, or removing lead and mercury from diets, avoiding alcohol and thalidomide during pregnancy, abstaining from cigarettes, removing cocaine from Coca Cola, or any number of other additives that are perhaps less clear cut: https://time.com/7210717/food-additives-us-fda-banned-europe/ https://time.com/7210717/food-additives-us-fda-banned-europe... Avoiding poison is a "quick, easy fix" to the consequences of that poison (or the opposite in the case of vitamin deficiency). Whether there's any reason to believe seed oils are harmful, I have no clue, but the idea that we could be en-masse consuming something harmful has dozens of precedents.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoNot surprising. I think the argument against seed oils is they are worse than other vegetable oils, not butter. Not sure there is strong evidence for that claim either though.
- azinman2 2y agoExcept those on the crusade (including RFK Jr) want animal fats, like beef tallow, to replace seed oils.
- berbec 2y agoWait, I missed this. They're saying we need to replace peanut oil, which I'm not saying is a multivitamin or anything, with lard? Holy crap... Even McDonald's figured out that's something to skip
- randomNumber7 2y agoNo only processed oil. Cold pressed oil like olive oil is healthy.
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoThe "health and wellness" conspiracy nut influencer fad crowd believes they "know better" than science, which is nothing new. If they say it's "good", probably best to avoid or do the opposite.
- adamnemecek 2y agoWeren’t the original claims about cooking with butter vs cooking with seed oils?
- alexfromapex 2y agoI wish we could get studies without any conflicts of interest to confirm or deny this. This study has a few that we know of: Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Guasch-Ferré reported grants from the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council outside the submitted work. Dr Willett reported grants from the National Institutes of Health during the conduct of the study. Dr Stampfer reported grants from the National Institutes of Health during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.
- mlyle 2y ago> This study has a few that we know of: The International Nut and Dried Fruit Council may or may not be a conflict of interest about seed oils. NIH and Novo Nordisk wouldn't be. > I wish we could get studies without any conflicts of interest You'd need to have a whole lot more public funding of research than we already do, if we're going to have the entire academic world not do any research for industry. In this case, they didn't produce new data and made a relatively straightforward analysis. So the opportunities for shenanigans when other people can reproduce and evaluate the results are limited.
- hollerith 2y agoIf the anti-seed-oil narrative is correct, then Novo Nordisk would have a conflict of interest because the narrative says that seed oils cause metabolic disease, of which type-2 diabetes is an important one.
- mlyle 2y agoYou're saying that Novo wants to obscure the true causes of metabolic disease to make, decades from now, marginally more from metabolic disease treatments? There's far more lucrative shenanigans that pay off much sooner :P
- hollerith 2y agoIn one of the narratives against seed oils (a large fraction of the linoleic acid molecules will be oxidized by the time they are ingested; oxidized LA is a potent cause of free-radical damage) it only takes a few months of avoiding seed oils to significantly reverse metabolic disease (by improving the function of the mitochondria). In one of the other narratives (LA makes cell membranes less flexible) it takes about 5 years of avoiding seed oils for enough LA to leave the cell membranes to reverse metabolic disease.
- mmastrac 2y agoI'm clearly out of the loop on this, how did seed oils become a big news topic? I've seen random posts on Reddit and now this.
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y agoSeed oils are part of RFK's agenda, he doesn't like them. I'm not sure that position is informed by facts though. He recently did a publicity stunt with a restaurant that replaced their fry oil with beef tallow.
- JohnTHaller 2y agoMost of what RFK (and MAGA as a whole) does is without any sort of peer reviewed science behind it. They're against masks, mRNA vaccines, vaccines in general, seed oils, wind, solar, etc.
- davidmurdoch 2y agoI think the source is that years and years ago someone plotted seed oil consumption and heart disease on a graph, probably attempting to show a correlation. And now we've got claims of causation.
- ceejayoz 2y agoThat'd be a good one to add to https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations.
- aggie 2y agoI've seen it discussed on Twitter for a while, mostly on the right. As best I can tell it is related to a general trend toward distrust of big agriculture, big pharma, big institutions in general as seed oils are painted as a product of that whereas animal fats are a "retvrn" type of diet (or from another POV, a Michael Pollan diet). Funny to see the political factions shifting around and the horseshoe connecting left and right on nutrition.
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- amelius 2y ago> Social media is currently awash with influencers promoting butter as a health food and claiming that seed oils are deadly Ok, I guess soon there will be no buying options then.
- wanderr 2y agoI wish articles like this would engage in a bit of critical analysis of the studies they are reporting on. It's no wonder people are confused as hell about the latest science about what foods are healthy when there are seemingly new contradicting studies coming out all the time and the news about them just parrots the contents of the study with no critical analysis why this new understanding might be better, or worse, than what we had before. That said, I hope this is right. As someone who is allergic to dairy it would be nice to know that the substitutes I'm consuming aren't significantly worse for me, and it would be great to see more dairy free options for foods although the trend seems to be going in the opposite direction (for example, the amount of "dark" chocolate with milk in it is astounding, and brands that were reliably true dark chocolates have started adding milk too)
- thumbsup-_- 2y agoThe real test is to just test the quantity of trans fats in all oils under various conditions. Like when they are cold and at various temperatures. Why don't just do that and share data.
- pton_xd 2y agoI grew up in a period when eggs went from bad for you to healthy to probably fine in moderation. In the same time period there was a huge push toward low fat diets which were supposed to reduce the risk of heart disease. Then it was low carb diets, then healthy fat diets. It's unfortunate but now I have little faith in health studies related to food.
- CSMastermind 2y agoI remember growing up everyone told me that I should be using margarine instead of the butter I preferred. Years later everyone went crazy banning trans fat. I'll stick with butter and live with the health consequences (if any). > It's unfortunate but now I have little faith in health studies related to food. As someone who was taught the "food pyramid" in school, I'm firmly on the side of trust body builders and 'bro science' not the government.
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago> I'm firmly on the side of trust body builders and 'bro science' not the government You're in luck. Here's a strong bald man to tell you about seed oils: https://youtu.be/18jNJvfFR6k?si=499sHZpvZjjAbOGh https://youtu.be/18jNJvfFR6k?si=499sHZpvZjjAbOGh
- tengbretson 2y ago> Participants in the three studies filled out surveys every four years on how often they ate certain foods. I don't have a dog in this fight, but this data is nearly useless.
- aaaioididiid 2y agoIt’s not explicitly seed oil vs not. It’s the more modern processed oils (of which many seed oils you’ll find are) that you can’t create without modern tech. Olive oil, sesame, etc are fine. People have been using these for thousands of years. Regardless, the science behind this is so political and complex none of us will get a definitive answer in our lifetimes. RFK jr has just as much of an agenda and the large corps profiting from these oils. Keep an open mind and try things out. I’ve personally benefited from eating simpler. Nothing overly processed and trying to eat the way my ancestors likely did. Chestertons fence applies just as much to diet and nutrition as it does software.
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago> It’s the more modern processed oils (of which many seed oils you’ll find are) that you can’t create without modern tech. Such as? The conclusion of the study mentions a few specific oils for what it's worth. > ...replace animal fats like butter with nonhydrogenated vegetable oils that are high in unsaturated fats, especially olive, soy, and canola oil.
- tengbretson 2y agoTaking canola oil as an example– pressed canola oil is too impure and has a nasty stink to it, so in order to be used in food it has to be refined. This refining usually involves: Extracting it using hexane, degumming with maleic anhydride and/or citric acid, neutralizing with sodium hydroxide, bleaching with clay, activated charcoal, and/or hydrogen peroxide. Then dewaxed with some combination of methyl ethyl ketone, toluene, dipropylene glycol and ethylene glycol, and finally deoderized via steam distillation.
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- jjice 2y agoAm I wrong, or do we already know a good diet for the majority of people is? Get a mix of fruits, vegetables, lean meats, grains, and fats in reasonable distribution. That distributions seems to have a pretty flexible range and each person can shift it around a bit. Maybe you skip out of meat and dairy - that works too. Same with taking out a piece of these in any way you want. Oh, and go ahead and break that once and a while and don't think it's a big deal - a day of state fair food won't kill you. Except for specific cases that are not common (dietary restrictions of all kinds), it seems like you should mostly consume the things you traditionally associate with being "healthy", but also give yourself some wiggle room. Get your blood work done and see a doctor regularly - if there are no issues, you're probably fine. If you're not, I doubt the reduction of seed oils in your diet would've remedied that.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago[dead]
- giardini 2y agoI thought the "Cholesterol Hypothesis" was dead! What is all this whoop-ti-do?
- jrs235 2y agoWhat is healthier to consume raw and what is healthier to cook with (consume cooked/oxidated)?
- cantrecallmypwd 2y agoThis changes nothing. Cook with: Avocado oil or butter as a secondary alternative Consume raw: Extra virgin olive, flaxseed, or walnut oil
- randomNumber7 2y agoYou should not heat fat/oil until it oxidizes. The temperature depends on the specific fat.
- mushroomba 2y ago[dead]
- tritipsocial 2y agoThis is extremely low quality data, if you can even call it data. They used survey results from the Nurses Health Study (NHS), which are decades long studies, still running, where participants fill out a food frequency questionnaire once every few on how often they ate various foods. Not only do these questionnaires rely on memory, they rely on memory of a perception, because people don't actually measure how many cups of broccoli they eat each day. It's the worst quality of data. It's a memory of a guess, there is no measurement involved whatsoever, which is why I hesitate to even call it data. Not only is the data itself low quality, it is compounded by lifestyle factors that are impossible to fully correct for. As an example, people that eat red meat are more likely to smoke and have diabetes, more likely to eat fast food, more likely to exercise less, etc etc. Eating foods that are perceived as healthy is correlated with healthy lifestyles. Butter has been "unhealthy" for years, so it is almost certainly correlated with an unhealthy lifestyle. The nurses health study has led to many incorrect conclusions for these very reasons: - It suggested hormone replacement therapy reduced heart disease risk, but randomized trials later proved it increased it due to confounding factors like healthy user bias. - It linked vitamin E to lower heart disease risk, but trials found no benefit, showing the association came from health conscious behavior. - It linked beta carotene to reduced cancer risk, but trials revealed supplements could increase lung cancer risk in smokers, not prevent it. Many weak associations from the study, like diet and disease, were overstated as causal but didn’t hold up in trials due to confounding and noise. If you are interested in how often studies like this are wrong, see "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by Ioannidis (spoiler: 70%).