[HN Gopher] Palm oil favors tumor expansion
___________________________________________________________________
Palm oil favors tumor expansion
Author : kleiba
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-11-18 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.irbbarcelona.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.irbbarcelona.org)
| jszymborski wrote:
| Well, this study passes the "we dumped a bunch of X on cancer
| cells in a petri dish and they did a funny thing" red flag test.
|
| Xenographs (implanting human cancer cells into mice) have their
| own caveats (the immune system is almost always severely
| compromised), but this seems like a cool study. I'm no expert on
| oral cancers however.
|
| Curious to see the implication of the neuronal cells here, I'm
| looking forward to reading the whole manuscript.
| Quatih wrote:
| Cancer cells can consume multiple energy sources, not exactly
| news here. Concluding that dietary palmitic acid is a problem
| is questionable. Palmitate is produced endogenously and dietary
| palmitic acid does not even influence tissue concentration [1].
|
| [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5682332/#B81
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Palmitate is produced endogenously and dietary palmitic
| acid does not even influence tissue concentration [1]._
|
| If there's no uptake by tissue, then wouldn't the tumor have
| a plentiful energy source once it vascularizes? (Assuming
| they can metabolize palmitic acid)
| Quatih wrote:
| Yes, in addition to other free fatty acids, glucose and
| ketones.
| csours wrote:
| Is nerve growth commonly considered critical in tumor growth
| and metastasis?
|
| So much of this sounds weird to me and I'm not sure if it's my
| ignorance or if this is some wacky theory.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I've personally not come across it, but it just might be a
| blind spot for me (I've mostly studied breast and ovarian
| cancers).
|
| It's why I'm interested to read the manuscript closely and
| see what they reference re: this neuronal growth.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| Interesting article. One thing to note is that this study seemed
| to (correct me if I'm wrong) focus on palmitic acid, which can be
| found primarily in palm oil, but can also be found in meat,
| cheese, and butter, to name a few other sources.
| laluser wrote:
| Palm oil seems to be in everything.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| It's a cheap oil in Asia due to a bunch of countries trying
| to develop their agriculture by planting palm (Indonesia
| etc.)
|
| Makes me think twice about having yan yan snacks and pocky's.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| And in parts of West Africa, palm oil is the principal oil
| used in many recipes. Before Western vegetable oils were
| introduced to that part of the world, palm oil was the
| number one oil used in cooking, followed by groundnut
| (peanut) oil. A place like that would be the ideal place to
| study the effects of palm oil.
| gambiting wrote:
| The reason why palm oil is so widespread nowadays is
| because about 30 years ago it was widely promoted as THE
| best oil to grow - it has much higher yield than many other
| oils, and was seen as a "green" alternative since
| comparatively it takes less land than say, peanut oil.
|
| The problem is that yes, it takes less land, but the land
| that it can be suitably grown on is very important for
| other things.
| Nition wrote:
| To be fair, so is much of our other land, but we have the
| excuse that we already destroyed it many years ago.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well that's the most horrifying sentence I've read in the past
| few months.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Why is it horrifying? That a naturally occurring long-chain
| fatty acid is found in multiple natural sources? The parent
| comment is NOT indicating that palm oil is in these things.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well the article was about palm acid, not palm oil.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| Starting from about 6 years ago, Palm Oil began showing up in
| practically everything, even those foods you wouldn't expect to
| find it. Check the ingredient list in that jar of peanut or
| almond butter. I make a point of buying peanut or almond butter
| that has only one ingredient.
| vmception wrote:
| _Everything at this market contains substances known to the
| State of California to cause cancer_
| QuercusMax wrote:
| To clarify - you're not saying that meat, cheese, and butter
| include _palm oil_ , but rather just one particular naturally-
| occurring chemical component of palm oil which occurs naturally
| in many sources. Palmitic acid is just a long-chain fat
| molecule.
| Vetch wrote:
| The study is primarily about palmitic acid, claiming that it
| promotes a prometastatic memory via Schwann cells. Palmitic
| acid is found in many foods, oils, lotions and occurs
| naturally in the body. That fact and also the artificial
| environment required to get the mouth and skin cancer cells
| grafted into the fragile mice makes it difficult to form any
| meaningful conclusions regarding diet.
|
| What is interesting about the study is it adds to a growing
| body of work on how tumors hijack nerve pathways to promote
| metastasis. The claim of this work is that the presence of
| palmitic acid potentiates a robust cancer partly by stable
| epigenetic changes in the tumors, recruiting a type of glia
| and promoting a regenerative environment via the neural
| network which forms about the tumor cells, even after changes
| in the availability of the fatty acid.
| phonypc wrote:
| There's some amount of palmitic acid in pretty much every
| dietary fat. Animal sources tend to be higher than seed oils,
| but e.g. olive oil, that many people like to tout as the
| healthiest, is something like 10-20% palmitic acid.
|
| It's also the most abundant fatty acid in _you_ , even if you
| don't eat any.
|
| There's also a skeleton inside you right now! Spooky.
| r00fus wrote:
| It's the most common saturated fatty acid. So this isn't just
| about palm oil, this is about saturated fats causing cancer.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| more reason to limit saturated fat intake.
|
| i say that as i consume primarily meat and cheese on a daily
| basis.
| scythe wrote:
| Title is bad.
|
| The article says _palmitic acid_ , formally hexadecanoic acid,
| which is one of the most common -- if not _the_ most common --
| saturated fatty acids. It 's named for palm oil, where it is
| predominant, but it is also found in coconut oil, lard, butter,
| cacao, and in _smaller_ amounts in practically all liquid oils,
| with higher concentrations generally in solid fats.
|
| Better to say "Palmitic acid favors tumor expansion" or even just
| "Common saturated fat favors tumor expansion".
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| A nice quote[0]:
|
| > Nutella maker, Ferrero, launched an advertising campaign in
| response to reassure customers that their product is safe. The
| company insists on keeping their recipe the same, claiming that
| "making Nutella without palm oil would produce an inferior
| substitute for the real product, it would be a step backward,"
| according to Fererro's purchasing manager, Vincenzo Tapella. The
| smooth texture Tapella is referring to could be achieved by more
| expensive oils like sunflower or rapeseed but would increase the
| cost of production by as much as $22 million.
|
| This was basically the same BS that Johnson & Johnson used to
| defend BPA baby bottles before the ban.
|
| [0] https://www.prescouter.com/2017/02/dangers-palm-oil-
| nutella-...
| debacle wrote:
| Funny, because hazelnut spread without palm oil tastes 500%
| better than with.
| f6v wrote:
| For everyone spooked by this. Cancer thrives on many things. And
| there's little survival advantage for people who can effectively
| fight cancer after their reproductive age. All novel carcinogens
| aside(radiation, air pollution, baby powder), humans often are
| just not equipped to fight cancer. Certain diets probably can
| make it a bit better or worse, but they might not be the game
| changer. Our best bet is technology, like CAR T cells and
| whatever is invented next.
| clairity wrote:
| > "humans often are just not equipped to fight cancer."
|
| blanket statements like this are almost never correct. our
| bodies are certainly equipped to fight cancer, having evolved a
| number of mechanisms in that regard, it's just that cancer is
| relentless and the cumulative probabilities tend to catch up
| with a number of us eventually, which necessarily skews
| mortalities older.
|
| with that said, we're certainly unlikely to naturally evolve
| ourselves out of cancer risk in the next few millenia, so yes,
| technology is one of our best bets (along with developing tech
| to reduce novel carcinogen risks).
| f6v wrote:
| There's a big difference between "often" and "not at all".
| outworlder wrote:
| > humans often are just not equipped to fight cancer
|
| But we are? The immune system is constantly at work killing
| malignant (or otherwise dysfunctional) cells. Cells themselves
| have mechanisms to commit suicide (apoptosis) if they are not
| working properly.
|
| It's only when the _several_ mechanisms we have get defeated at
| the same time (often due to mutations) that cancer can even
| develop.
|
| If you mean, we are not as equipped as elephants or whales to
| fight cancer, then that's true.
|
| > there's little survival advantage for people who can
| effectively fight cancer after their reproductive age
|
| There's some advantage, but as far as nature's concerned,
| there's indeed diminishing returns. As in, for the individual
| that has already reproduced there's no reason to stay alive,
| but this is beneficial for the offspring - until they are
| adults. So there's some selective pressures there, specially if
| you are competing against another group.
| f6v wrote:
| I'm not disputing that, just stating that there's no
| evolutionary pressure on keeping adults cancer-free. There is
| a big pressure at eliminating child cancers from the
| population.
| dtech wrote:
| > If you mean, we are not as equipped as elephants or whales
| to fight cancer, then that's true.
|
| There's some debate as to whether they have better cancer
| fighting mechanisms, or whether their size means they are
| less fast affected by cancers, and/or whether they are large
| enough that their cancers split into competing cancers before
| they are affected.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| My understanding is there are cancer cells in all adults.
| They are constantly killed off and never develop into tumors
| or anything of significance until ... they do in some people.
|
| So to say we are not equipped to fight them is incorrect.
| wongarsu wrote:
| We have selective pressure to survive cancer for the first 40
| years of our life (and not just barely survive but be
| unhindered by it). After that there are more subtle selective
| forces at work: having grandparents that are in good health and
| helping find food or care for children can certainly improve
| your survival chances. And of course the machinery we have
| developed to survive the first 40 years doesn't suddenly stop
| working after that.
|
| But you're right insofar as there's fairly little selective
| pressure to prevent cancer over the entire lifespan of a human.
| We probably could have much better protection from cancer, but
| the energy investment for that isn't worth it from an
| evolutionary perspective.
| caeril wrote:
| > having grandparents that are in good health and helping
| find food or care for children
|
| Maybe, certainly since the advent of nuclear families. But
| our much longer genetic lineage selects around tribes, such
| that direct grandparents' longevity may not be as critically
| important. Third-and-fourth cousins likely easily filled this
| role.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If your great-great-grandfather has a random genetic
| mutation, he can pass that down to both you and your third
| cousin. If that mutation helps your third cousin help you
| bring children to the world, you have a selective
| advantage. Of course that chain grows exponentially less
| likely the further you are from each other on the family
| tree, as the gene has to spread far enough by pure chance.
| podgaj wrote:
| Palmitic acid affects oxidative stress. This is not only
| important in cancer, but in heart disease as well.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00144...
|
| https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/354235
|
| On the role of Oxidative Stress and cancer, it's complicated,
| but it is there:
|
| https://www.med.or.jp/english/pdf/2001_12/535_539.pdf (PDF)
|
| Go to Trader Joe's and look at the ingredients, everything has
| Palm Oil as an ingredient.
|
| This is important, and having a diet that suits your oxidative
| stress profile is important. And I do not care what anyone
| tells me, these oils are not something the body can handle well
| and are probably healthy only at low levels.
| humanrebar wrote:
| > And there's little survival advantage for people who can
| effectively fight cancer after their reproductive age.
|
| I don't know how to quantify it, but having healthy
| grandparents in the picture is a survival advantage.
| f6v wrote:
| Having old grandparents who can't hunt or forage and need to
| be fed is a big handicap. I'd like to see a cost/benefit
| analysis if there's any.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Its different when your grandparents are in their late 30's,
| early 40's. Modern reproductive ages are much, much later
| than they have been both historically and prehistorically.
|
| Grandparents 600-4k years ago would have been in their late
| thirties, mid forties for all but a very few. Still unlikely
| to generate significant selection pressure considering that
| the vast majority of cancers are late in life.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK97292/
| humanrebar wrote:
| OK. Replace "grandparents" with "elderly relatives".
| btown wrote:
| > there's little survival advantage for people who can
| effectively fight cancer after their reproductive age
|
| While there's _less_ evolutionary advantage, it 's far from
| trivial. See, for instance,
| https://www.pnas.org/content/100/16/9637 :
|
| > In some species, postreproductive females make substantial
| contributions to their descendants, either through direct
| parental care or through grandparental care. Such contributions
| continue after birth in all mammals (most notably primates),
| all birds, many insects, and some fish (15). Postreproductive
| bottle-nose dolphins and pilot whales baby-sit, guard, and even
| breastfeed their grand-children (15). Selection against the
| mortality of postreproductive individuals in such species would
| be expected to continue.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Palmitic acid also has tomes of evidence pointing towards its
| consumption contributing to the development of cardiovascular
| disease, as well.
| dt3ft wrote:
| Who sponsored this study?
| mleonhard wrote:
| The sponsors are listed at the end of the article. In the
| future, please read the article before commenting. Please
| refrain from posting low-effort comments.
| deusum wrote:
| "Big Coconut" and the Keto Kids.
| goboronshka wrote:
| I suggest you read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
| before spending more time mocking keto. Ketogenic diets have
| lots of backing in science and have changed many lives and
| posts like these can be very hurtful.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Palmitic acid is a major constituent of coconut oil.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Take one look at the modern production process for vegetable oil
| and this sort of effect is starting you right in the face.
|
| Palm, Canola, Rapeseed, Soybean, etc, they're all terrible. I
| avoid this shit like the plague.
| tpush wrote:
| What effect are you talking about? And what does the production
| process for vegetable oils have to do with anything? This
| article is about palmitic acid which apart from obviously palm
| oil, is most abundant in animal fats like butter (~30%), tallow
| (26%) etc. since its a saturated fatty acid.
|
| Most vegetable oils like canola and soybean have much less
| palmitic acid.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Palm oil is a vegetable oil. The production of vegetable oil
| (read: palm oil) creates an end product that looks and feels
| like oil, but has all kinds of other bad shit in it. It gets
| refined, heated, bleached, heated, deoderized, etc...
|
| The same thing happens to flour. We process the living shit
| out of it, then bleach it, then we have to add-in all the
| stuff we removed so that it still has some semblance of
| nutrition.
|
| It's like the deep fried pickle. A pickle in and of itself is
| a pickle, but when you deep fry it, is it still a pickle?
| Some will argue yes. Does it still have the same general
| health characteristics, or more importantly, the lack of
| negative characteristics as the deep-fried one? No.
| phonypc wrote:
| Palm oil isn't really in the same category as the vegetable
| oils that have had concern raised about them recently. It's
| not from a seed, so doesn't need a highly involved process
| to get meaningful amounts of it. Cold pressed palm oil has
| been in use for thousands of years. It's more like olive
| oil in this regard. (Of course, you _can_ still refine it,
| and it often is refined. But it 's not as easily oxidized
| as oils with a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fatty
| acids, so less concerning in that regard.)
| tpush wrote:
| The palmitic acid content of palm oil (or anything else)
| has nothing to do with what you're describing here. Like,
| absolutely nothing.
| headmelted wrote:
| Honest question - how? Isn't it in almost everything?
| guruz wrote:
| Check the "What To Eat" section here:
| https://fireinabottle.net/the-croissant-diet-specification/
|
| This is also sometimes the topic in those subreddits:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/StopEatingSeedOils/
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SaturatedFat/
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If you cook, you can choose not to use those oils.
| gruez wrote:
| >Take one look at the modern production process for vegetable
| oil and this sort of effect is starting you right in the face.
|
| Mind elaborating? Without specific details it reeks of the
| naturalistic fallacy or the "good old days".
| AamosSinervo wrote:
| How would the opposite not be true? "an appeal to the
| modern". Just because something like palm oil is new, must it
| be better? Consider that for years the "new" advice was to
| recommend aspirin to prevent heart attacks. [https://www.ahaj
| ournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000678] If you ignored
| this advice some smarmy pill pusher would say you're
| appealing to nature. What about non-addictive painkillers
| like oxycotton. From wikipedia: "A genetically engineered
| rapeseed that is tolerant to the herbicide Roundup
| (glyphosate)". "Exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides and
| risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma: A meta-analysis and supporting
| evidence" [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/
| pii/S13835...]. So from the beginning the product is tainted.
| Then the oil is bleached for a more palatable color. It
| refined like other industrials oils and often interchangeable
| for machining uses.
|
| Mouse experiments showed weight gain and memory
| loss/alzheimers
| [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17373-3]
|
| While mice are not humans, American obesity has grown since
| the use of seed oils has grown.
|
| Seed oil advocates themselves appeal to "the good ol days",
| as many peoples have allegedly used rape seed oil over
| history.
| gruez wrote:
| >How would the opposite not be true? "an appeal to the
| modern". Just because something like palm oil is new, must
| it be better?
|
| What gave you the indication I was appealing to modernity?
| Being against naturalistic fallacy or the "good old days"
| doesn't mean I'm arguing "well it's new so it must be
| better!". I'm simply saying that we shouldn't give either
| side preference just because it's new or old.
|
| >Consider that for years the "new" advice was to recommend
| aspirin to prevent heart attacks. [https://www.ahajournals.
| org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000678] If you ignored this
| advice some smarmy pill pusher would say you're appealing
| to nature. What about non-addictive painkillers like
| oxycotton.
|
| This seems like a massive strawman/misrepresentation.
| People weren't taking/recommending asprin because it was
| new, they were taking it because it's what the clinical
| evidence was suggesting. Some _reasonable_ objections might
| be that the studies were poorly done, or wasn 't
| replicable, but "it's not natural" isn't one of them. Just
| because "it wasn't natural" produced the right result,
| doesn't really mean we should endorse it, or continue using
| it. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
| See also:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justification_(epistemology)
|
| >Exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides and risk for non-
| Hodgkin lymphoma: A meta-analysis and supporting evidence"
| [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S138
| 35...].
|
| >Mouse experiments showed weight gain and memory
| loss/alzheimers
| [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17373-3]
|
| Early studies showed that aspirin was beneficial for
| preventing heart attacks. You seemed to suggest that was
| bad. However, trusting one study saying that glyphosate
| causes cancer is okay? The wikipedia article for glyposate
| describes the overall evidence for glyposate causing cancer
| as "inconclusive". The IARC also said there was "limited
| evidence" for the type of cancer you described. If you want
| to make the case that appeal to nature is good, you really
| should have used something less contentious.
|
| >Then the oil is bleached for a more palatable color.
|
| Well is that bad? If they're literally dumping household
| bleach into the oil, I might be a little worried. Then
| again, they also put bleach (chlorine) into tap water, so
| should we be worried about that too?
|
| > It refined like other industrials oils and often
| interchangeable for machining uses.
|
| We also put nuclear plant coolant (dihydrogen monoxide)
| into our foods. Should we be worried about that as well?
|
| >Seed oil advocates themselves appeal to "the good ol
| days", as many peoples have allegedly used rape seed oil
| over history.
|
| Right, and that's bad regardless of which side it's on.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > naturalistic fallacy or the "good old days"
|
| This is not a fallacy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
|
| Ray Peat has been warning about seed oils for decades, I'm
| not sure if its bullet-proof but at least its interesting:
| https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| Also, those "good old days", might describe "natural
| selection". You can't be certain that some of the survival
| benefits of your ancestors are NOT an adherence to
| traditions that give them a survival or reproductive
| advantage.
| whalesalad wrote:
| You can't possibly be comparing the wisdom of our
| ancestors with the agricultural-industrial complex? They
| do everything in their power to produce the lowest-cost
| version of "food" (some could argue it is not food) that
| people will pay for.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| I'm not sure you parsed my post correctly. My post argues
| in favor of your post.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmqVVmMB3k
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Fortunately there's olive oil. Approximately 0.5 liters/month
| per person at $10/liter for organic extra virgin from Tunisia.
|
| Heard it too causes cancer if you fry it though...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Heard it too causes cancer if you fry it though..._
|
| Frying at low temperatures with olive oil is one of the
| "healthier" ways to fry, though. Less volatile aromatic
| hydrocarbons are produced when frying with olive oil compared
| to other fats, and some of the compounds in non-extra virgin
| olive oil reduce the production of free radicals.
| base698 wrote:
| Do you not eat out? Most restaurants of all caliber use that
| garbage.
|
| I know I'm still consuming it when I eat in a restaurant. Best
| you can currently do is just not buy it for home use.
| mountainboy wrote:
| any hydrogenated oil is toxic. The article does not state if the
| tested palm oil was hydrogenated or not.
| uhtred wrote:
| Hopefully good news for Orangutans if this leads to less palm oil
| consumption.
| asdff wrote:
| If palm oil wasn't as profitable they will just grow the next
| most profitable thing in the orangutan habitat. The problem is
| one of not setting aside land for preserves vs one particular
| industry or another. Anything will expand to fill the space if
| land is offered for sale and zoned for industry.
| goalieca wrote:
| Dish soap and other applications remain important.
| dnautics wrote:
| bad news for nutella eaters, though
| kazinator wrote:
| If palm oil _killed_ cancer cells, would that make it appealing
| and safe to eat?
|
| If errantly reproducing cells can use a substance, it must be
| bad: is that the reasoning here?
|
| I would imagine that a source of water also favors tumor
| expansion. Cut a tumor off H2O and it will shrivel and die.
| mleonhard wrote:
| I think you did not read the article. In the future, please put
| more effort into your comments or refrain.
| alliao wrote:
| Is this the same as 3-MPCD? basically any hydrogenated oils would
| have this, seeing this popping up recently
| ndosnfiwjaijx wrote:
| Lots of "do your own research" folks here.
| ravenstine wrote:
| How does it compare to glucose/sugar?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yet another thing on the cancerogenic pile _sigh_
|
| At some point you have to ask yourself if everything but water
| gives us cancer.
| laluser wrote:
| Gotta watch out for lead in the water too!
| moffkalast wrote:
| But if my veins aren't lead lined, what will protect me from
| banana radiation?
| mbg721 wrote:
| A plantain vest. The rows of plantains attach to all of the
| body's normal banana receptors before the lethally
| radioactive bananas can, leaving you unscathed.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| If I couldn't grow it or raise it 100 years ago, I don't want
| to eat it. Open to being convinced otherwise.
| voz_ wrote:
| What happened in 1921? Or is this one of those baseless
| "before we had cancer" comments?
| tyingq wrote:
| I suppose there's some merit in the "before we had cancer"
| thing. Certainly many people were dying of other stuff long
| before they would have gotten cancer.
| malfist wrote:
| Cancer wasn't invented then.
|
| In all seriousness, things like pasteurization and
| refrigeration make our food supply a lot safer than it used
| to be.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I realized at some point that "It's food iff your
| grandparents would call it food" either has to be amended
| to add a generation, or we have to accept Oreos pretty
| soon.
| bluGill wrote:
| Margarine was invented in 1869. You need to go back a lot
| farther.
|
| You are also skipping out a lot of newer stuff that
| wasn't possible back then, but after serious study seems
| safe. Most of what was done 200 years ago is accepted as
| safe, but there is no actual evidence for it, and in many
| cases we know it wasn't. (the obvious example of using
| lead in finishes for food contact items)
| WarChortle wrote:
| Do you not take Advil? Tums? Antibiotics? or a myriad of
| other useful medicine?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Aspirin is more than 100 years old and people have been
| eating calcium carbonate for quite some time. I get your
| point, though.
| rileyphone wrote:
| Of note is the monstrosities we call chickens today are a
| product of breeding contests in the 1940s [0] (but does that
| mean there is anything wrong with eating them? who's to say).
|
| It seems a lot more people today are taking a critical look
| at what they eat, though often excluding broad categories
| based on feeling rather than hard science. At first this
| looks reactionary, but on closer inspection one realizes that
| the science involved is typically biased or just lacking.
| We've invested comparatively little into understanding the
| downsides of modern food products like vegetable oil, but the
| little windows we have indicate they may be causing whole
| hosts of human maladies from dementia to type 2 diabetes [1].
| Nutrition constitutes the inputs to the complex biological
| system, and large changes (eg disease) can end up being the
| result of nonlinear processes started by changing these
| inputs. Another example is a lack of magnesium in the western
| diet, through both soil depletion and food processing,
| leading to large scale deficiencies [2].
|
| What's really dizzying, though, is that this information
| isn't widely known, and is typically found through either
| self-directed study or through listening to podcasts. When
| the average person makes decisions regarding their nutrition,
| they're relying on outdated and probably harmful advice,
| despite intending to make "healthy" choices. Maybe we need an
| app to scan a barcode or read a list of ingredients and
| respond with the known potential for harm and confidence. All
| I know is I'll never look at fried chicken the same way again
| (unless it's fried in lard, of course).
|
| [0] https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/the-
| chicken-of... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190303234503i
| d_/http://pdfs.se... [2]
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-013-1781-2
| skymt wrote:
| Not the worst place to start, but considering palm oil has
| been used in cooking for thousands of years it's not clear
| what that principle has to do with this story.
| gambiting wrote:
| You do realise palm oil is older than 100 years, right? Used
| literally for thousands of years.
|
| "Humans used oil palms as far back as 5,000 years. In the
| late 1800s, archaeologists discovered a substance that they
| concluded was originally palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating
| back to 3,000 BCE.[4] It is believed that traders brought oil
| palm to Egypt"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil
| yupper32 wrote:
| Is your medicine cabinet empty?
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| No, I have ibuprofen for when I have a headache lasting
| more than a day. (It's caffeine... every ... time.)
| yupper32 wrote:
| So you eat ibuprofen, but you couldn't grow or raise it
| 100 years ago. It was invented in the 60s and wasn't
| available over the counter until the 80s.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| outworlder wrote:
| > If I couldn't grow it or raise it 100 years ago, I don't
| want to eat it
|
| Humans have been barbecuing meat for millennia. Possibly even
| before Homo Sapiens Sapiens was around. And yet, it has
| carcinogenic properties, specially if charred.
|
| What's so special about 100 years ago anyway? 1000 might make
| a difference - but then again, life expectancy wasn't that
| great back then.
|
| It's only because we are living so much that cancer is such a
| large problem. Also because, due to modern medicine, we can
| often diagnose the person before they just get sick and die
| from 'unknown' reasons.
|
| Your best bet is to eat food from as many different sources
| as you can and not eat too much of any single specific thing
| (which is a modern thing btw, 100 years ago, it wouldn't be
| as easy to do) and let averages do the rest.
| f6v wrote:
| Ultra-processed foods are probably a consequence of trying to
| feed billions of people. Do you think there's enough farm
| land, water, etc. for the earth population to only grow
| bio/eco produce?
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| Do you mean if you personally wouldn't have been to grow it
| or raise it 100 years ago? Or do you mean something more like
| "if it wasn't widely accessible 100 years ago"?
| rackjack wrote:
| being alive gives you cancer
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Cancer is alive.
|
| That's so weird.
|
| Some part of you decided to go in a different direction.
| You're not advanced enough to support both. The strain on
| resources starves you both.
|
| Kind of like a cannibal parasite. That sure sounds like a
| death metal band.
| jszymborski wrote:
| With every cell division, we are not only closer to death, but
| roll for a "cell transformation"[0].
|
| A transformed cell is most likely to occur in a "cancerised
| field" of cells. Those fields might be induced to be
| transformed in-turn by the original transformed cell(s).
|
| It's in this way that the snowball turns from a pea to a
| boulder, but all along the way there are trees ready to stop
| its momentum. Be it DNA repair systems, the immune system, the
| extra-cellular matrix, etc...
|
| An oncologist once told me (and its not hard for me to
| conceive), that we're all likely die with a number of tumours
| in us... just not likely from them.
|
| All this to say, yes everything causes cancer. When you
| consider the molecular biology behind it all, it's a wonder
| we're anything but giant, spherical, innervated tumours.
|
| Just like everything else, you make your own risk assessments
| in life, but the advice boils down to: avoid undue risks of
| cancer if you can. What "undue" and "if you can" here mean is
| deeply personal.
|
| [0] A fun euphemism for a cell that is cancer-like.
| justinator wrote:
| To be honest, we're in a constant state of almost having
| cancer, it's just that our immune system handles the little
| stuff before it gets out of control. Nothing causes cancer, but
| certain things tip the scales towards the cancer getting out of
| control.
|
| (about is all simplified of course)
| vmception wrote:
| And _also_ things can directly cause cancer by directly
| damaging DNA in the right places at the right time.
|
| No need to take the optimistic route.
|
| If it makes you feel better: _some_ cancers.
| justinator wrote:
| Oh, well: I didn't think conceptualize, "we are always in a
| state of having cancer" was an optimistic view, just
| realistic :). But DNA gets damaged all by itself, but
| you're right: something like smoking for decades doesn't
| help matters.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Not trying to be pedantic but carcinogenic is something that
| _causes_ cancer, that is not the mechanism this study is
| describing with palmitic acid.
|
| The study claims that palm oil promotes the growth of
| metastasis of an original cancer tumour. So it is not that palm
| oil _causes_ cancer but that it will _potentially_ promote more
| agressive copying of tumurous cells into other regions of the
| body.
| sebirocs wrote:
| if this helps saving orangutans in borneo, i welcome it
| gremloni wrote:
| Basic question-- is coconut palm? Are there multiple types of
| palms? Where does the oil come from?
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