6 ms·

Seed oils probably aren't ideal, but I also worry how much this narrative is distracting from the bigger problem of sugar consumption. Humans only have so much

• lithocarpus 5mo ago
  Two things can be harmful at once. I am curious which is worse in terms of contribution to modern chronic metabolic disease. In the case of ultra-processed/refined oils though, there is an argument to be made that these are novel foods that humans never ate until very recently. There aren't any old people who have been eating them their whole lives in the quantities we do now. This is probably true for industrially refined sugar too, but sugar is a more complex story since people have been concentrating plant sugars for a lot longer than they've been industrially refining oil for food. I'm not defending sugar though to be clear - I strictly avoid it and even avoid fruit juice and such. I know empirically for myself I feel terrible if I eat very much sugar. I also feel terrible if I eat much refined oil and I strictly avoid that too.
  • brippalcharrid 5mo ago
    They can also tend to be harmful in combination, such as in the case of relatively unstable unsaturated fatty acids going on to be glycated in the presence of sugars (some moreso than others); it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were examples such as this which fuelled a significant proportion of all "diseases of civilization".
  • sinuhe69 5mo ago
    Really? I don't know exactly how long people have been eating oil from olive, flax seed, sesame, coconut or palm nut, but I believe not under 6000–7000 years. But yeah, not the stuff we eat today.
    • anon84873628 5mo ago
      To add, sunflower seed use predated maíz in some parts of North America, and mustard oil goes back to the Indus Valley Civilization. Yes, the extraction of these oils is "novel" just like factory farms are novel. As the article explains, it is the ultra-processed food products that are the problem, not the seed oil ingredients.
      • basch 5mo ago
        There is also sunflower oil and high oleic sunflower oil, the latter, which after refinement is incredibly heat and shelf stable, and is essentially pure omega-9 monounsaturated fat. The anti refinement process perspective is discounting that the end result is the perfect fat. A similar thing can be said about hydrolyzed collagen with a little tryptophan added.
    • lithocarpus 5mo ago
      Yes, I wasn't talking about unrefined olive, flax, sesame, or coconut. I don't think most people concerned about "seed oils" are concerned about those. It's the refined soybean oil, canola/rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, sunflower seed oil, corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil - these are the modern refined oils I'm referring to that were never eaten until very recently. I'd be dubious of refined / ultra processed olive and avocado oil too, which is a different thing from fresh cold pressed olive or avocado oil.
      • bryanlarsen 5mo ago
        ~10,000 years is also evolutionary recent. It's enough time for fast evolution to weed out stuff that is very directly maladaptive, but not enough time to weed out more subtle effects. And given that a bad diet tends to kill people well past their prime childbearing years, evolution might consider a bad diet a good thing.
        • lithocarpus 5mo ago
          Good point, there are a lot of diseases of civilization that have been with us since large scale agriculture, that did not afflict most hunter gatherers.
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• perrygeo 5mo ago
  Yep. If there was one single thing that literally every person should do for their health, that is to greatly reduce or completely eliminate sugar. The evidence is overwhelming. The evidence against seed oils is not quite as convincing. I see seed oils as a low quality food to be avoided - goes rancid too easily, requires chemical processing, etc. - but it's not strictly poison. These oils are in virtually every industrial "food product" which makes them unhealthy by association. Stop eating highly processed crap and you'll see the benefits - cutting out seed oils is a side effect.
  • stringfood 5mo ago
    wonder which is worse sugar or alcohol, 2 drinks a day vs 2 cans of coke a day
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • CyberDildonics 5mo ago
      Probably alcohol, but they will both make you overweight, alcohol is metabolized in a similiar way. When you see how much sugar it takes to make alcohol it starts to make sense.
      • soco 5mo ago
        The sugar used to make alcohol is not found in the alcohol itself. Like the oil used to make plastics is not found in the food packaging. Don't mix two very different end products with very different effects - what gets killed by alcohol is not what gets killed by refined sugars. And overweight is not caused by sugar or by alcohol directly, or alone, so again it's a third discussion. Long story short: don't overuse anything. If you want only the simplest answer.
        • CyberDildonics 5mo ago
          The sugar used to make alcohol is not found in the alcohol itself. Not relevant. what gets killed by alcohol is not what gets killed by refined sugars This has nothing to do with the discussion. very different end products with very different effects In this case they share the effects being talked about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8G8tLsl_A4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8G8tLsl_A4 And overweight is not caused by sugar or by alcohol directly, They are the major contributing factors to obesity. This is not generally disputed. It is a systemic problem and trying to deny the problems by saying the primary factor isn't "the direct cause" (without any detail, nuance or information of your own) is the kind of hand waving people have been doing to obscure people understanding these problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fermentation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fermentation https://thep53.com/how-alcohol-is-metabolized-and-its-relationship-to-sugar-production-in-the-body/ https://thep53.com/how-alcohol-is-metabolized-and-its-relati... https://scitechdaily.com/the-sugar-pathway-that-links-alcohol-addiction-and-liver-damage/ https://scitechdaily.com/the-sugar-pathway-that-links-alcoho... The difference between out two comments is that what I said is relevant and sourced.
• Analemma_ 5mo ago
  My half-believed conspiracy theory is that "seed oils bad" is a psy-op from the corn/HFCS industries. I don't have hard data here, but it seemed like in the late 2010s people were converging on added sugar and especially HFCS as the thing which is truly messing up health. I can't help but wonder if the corn industry saw this, panicked, and began seeding (no pun intended) the seed oil meme among influencers. I don't have evidence for this specifically, but there's certainly a long and documented history of both a) influencers suddenly adopting a new party line in response to a paid campaign and b) shitty policy specifically for the influential corn industry (ethanol subsidies, e.g.)
  • robertlagrant 5mo ago
    I was reading things[0] about sugar a lot earlier than that - maybe 2007? And it made a lot of sense back then. [0] https://nosdiet.com https://nosdiet.com
    • rsynnott 5mo ago
      Oh, I mean people have known that high-sugar diets are a bad idea for about a century, but you could argue that it started coming more into the public consciousness in the early 21st century.
• basch 5mo ago
  >Seed oils probably aren't ideal Except they are. A refined monounsaturated fat is in the upper tier of perfect calorie. It makes a lot of sense for omega-9's to be a major part of caloric consumption. The omega-3 and omega-6 when fresh and uncooked are also unnecessary demonized by the idea that they are immediately rancid. Like many things the problems arise from the implementation or how they are used, not the chemical itself.
  • ballenf 5mo ago
    Ideally, yes. But the failure modes in seed oil manufacturing are what scare me. How many accidental hexane exposures would it take to outweigh a lifetime of the benefits of seed oils over more natural, but less healthy, oils?
    • basch 5mo ago
      I remain unconvinced that hexane in the oil poses any serious risk. It has such a low boiling point, it’s heated. It all evaporates out. What’s the mechanism keeping hidden undetected hexane in the product.