[HN Gopher] Soybean oil affects hypothalamus, causes genetic cha...
___________________________________________________________________
Soybean oil affects hypothalamus, causes genetic changes in mice:
study (2020)
Author : whalesalad
Score : 524 points
Date : 2022-02-24 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.universityofcalifornia.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.universityofcalifornia.edu)
| atlantas wrote:
| My understanding is that most of the oils we use are unhealthy.
| They are highly processed and inflammatory.
|
| The good oils are avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil and coconut
| oil.
|
| Is this correct?
| sva_ wrote:
| Be aware that all these oils contain a lot of omega-6, and very
| little omega-3 fatty acids. So if you consume a lot of that
| stuff, you also need a good source of omega-3 DHA/EPA (fish or
| supplement).
|
| Also, there's quite a bit of controversy around the purported
| health benefits of coconut oil. Personally, I'm rather
| skeptical about it.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _...highly processed..._ "
|
| I think this is an important distinction for evaluating oils.
| For example, you mention avocado oil and coconut oil. Are these
| processed with heat (and possibly solvents)? Or are they cold-
| pressed with no other chemicals used to aid extraction?
|
| In the UK, it is very common to find cold-pressed rapeseed oil
| (canola oil) in supermarkets. The canola oil sold in US
| supermarkets is highly processed. Is the cold-pressed version
| still bad?
|
| The problem is that when seed oils are demonised, no
| distinction is made of the method of extraction. There are
| hundreds of researchers (and YouTubers) repeating the mantra
| 'seed oil = bad' without further distinction between heat-
| pressed and cold-press oil extraction. If extraction methods
| don't matter, then researchers need to provide evidence to
| confirm this.
| adrian_b wrote:
| You are right that the extraction method matters a lot for
| any oil.
|
| Any method that uses high temperatures may cause various
| chemical reactions that degrade some of the oil components.
|
| Some of the methods that use solvents for extraction may
| leave very small quantities of the solvents in the oils (e.g.
| hexane, i.e. a light fraction of gasoline), which are
| undesirable.
|
| Nevertheless, cold-pressing is not necessarily the best
| method, even if it is preferable to most other old methods.
|
| While the extraction using carbon dioxide at high pressure
| (supercritical CO2) is also classified as a solvent
| extraction method, it does not leave anything in the oil and
| it is able to extract any oil more completely and with less
| degradation than any other method.
|
| However this modern method is encountered only in relatively
| recent oil production facilities, and unlike cold pressing it
| is not known by most people so it is not used in marketing.
|
| Thus, except for cold pressing, the buyer cannot know whether
| the oil has been produced by a worse method like hexane
| extraction or by a better method, like CO2 extraction.
| adrian_b wrote:
| There are 3 characteristics of the oils that influence how
| healthy they are.
|
| The first is the fatty acid profile, i.e. the relative
| quantities of fatty acids.
|
| It is best when the most abundant fatty acid is oleic acid.
| This is true for olive oil and avocado oil and for certain
| varieties of other oils which are claimed to be "high oleic",
| e.g. high oleic sunflower oil.
|
| For the oils with high percentage of saturated fatty acids, it
| is better to have little palmitic acid and more of either
| longer fatty acids, i.e. stearic acid like in cocoa butter or
| shorter fatty acids, like lauric acid in coconut oil.
|
| Besides the fatty acid profile, some oils are known to contain
| other substances with favorable influences. This is known with
| reasonable certainty only for extra virgin olive oil, which is
| good for preventing cardiovascular diseases but it is not known
| which exactly is the substance with the good effect.
|
| And third, there are oils which may contain other substances
| with bad effects, as shown here for the soybean oil or as is
| the case for the traditional rapeseed oil with erucic acid.
| Such oils must be avoided, at least until the undesirable
| substance is identified precisely and its removal from the oil
| becomes possible.
| yissp wrote:
| As I understand it, the evidence for erucic acid being
| harmful has been called into question more recently. See the
| footnotes for
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erucic_acid#Health_effects
| adrian_b wrote:
| Now it is understood that erucic acid is not so dangerous
| as initially believed, because rats are much more sensitive
| to it than most other mammals.
|
| Nevertheless, the same paragraph from Wikipedia says that
| erucic acid was shown to also cause heart problems in pigs,
| but at much higher quantities than in rats. Therefore it is
| dangerous, but only when eaten in larger quantities.
|
| Canola oil is widely used in food and it contains erucic
| acid. However it contains much less than traditional
| rapeseed oil, so the current food standards are based on
| the assumption that it should not have bad effects when
| eaten in normal quantities.
|
| Nevertheless, someone cautious could avoid it entirely,
| because the only desirable property of the oils which
| contain erucic acid is that they are cheap.
| andreilys wrote:
| Yes afaik, although I've heard some ppl say that coconut oil
| has too much saturated fat making it not great for you.
|
| Avocado oil seems to be the best?
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| My research shows that coconut oil's benefits are chiefly as
| a topical treatment. As far as ingesting it, the benefits are
| minimal to nonexistent, and better derived from other
| sources.
| andreilys wrote:
| Yea I guess the chief benefit of using coconut oil is
| you're not ingesting seed oils which seem to be quite
| harmful.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| avocado might not be so trustworthy, see:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105062
|
| ghee is a great alternative IMO.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| Has anyone done the research to find a reputable olive oil
| brand?
| exhilaration wrote:
| Consumer Reports, from 10 years ago:
| https://imgur.com/a/ChyyFnw
|
| Personally I only purchase California olive oil, I don't
| trust anything coming out of Europe due to the risk of
| adulteration. If you want a widely available brand:
| California Olive Ranch but look at the label carefully, you
| only want their 100% California olive oil.
| hammock wrote:
| I also only purchase California olive oil. Costco has big
| bottles for around $20 and it might be single origin too,
| I can't recall at the moment.
| krrrh wrote:
| It's mentioned in the linked to article:
|
| > Only two brands produced samples that were pure and
| nonoxidized. Those were Chosen Foods and Marianne's Avocado
| Oil, both refined avocado oils made in Mexico. Among the
| virgin grades, CalPure produced in California was pure and
| fresher than the other samples in the same grade
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Wait, isn't coconut oil bad?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Well, it's mostly saturated fat. It's good for frying. Also
| not bad to rub on dry skin.
| aesch wrote:
| Coconut oil is very high in saturated fats which some people
| may want to avoid.
| 09bjb wrote:
| It's more nuanced than that but you could do a lot worse than
| that list. Fat profile matters, and smoke point matters, e.g.
| olive oil is great but if you're frying stuff with it you're
| turning a lot of it toxic; avocado oil is better for high heat.
| mrfusion wrote:
| So olive oil would be bad to use in the air fryer?
|
| Also what's the best substitute for vegetable oil for baking?
| sva_ wrote:
| > _olive oil is great but if you 're frying stuff with it
| you're turning a lot of it toxic_
|
| Do you have a source on that? What is toxic about it? Really
| curious, because I cook a lot with olive oil.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| There is no scientific evidence that olive oil breaks down
| into toxic components.
|
| https://actascientific.com/ASNH/pdf/ASNH-02-0083.pdf
| paavoova wrote:
| That's not quite what's shown in that PDF...All oils tested
| showed signs of instability when heated, but EVOO was the
| most stable. But EVOO still had an increase in trans-fats,
| for example, when heated. Furthermore, in the conclusion,
| they note
|
| _note that the experiments were carried out without food
| being cooked. While cooking, the water and steam which
| comes from the food being cooked aids the process of
| hydrolysis. The absence of food in these trials may have
| allowed for a greater impact of oil oxi- dation when
| compared with other deterioration reactions_
|
| They didn't test the affects of water and food contact on
| stability and note the potential significance of
| hydrolysis.
|
| But just going by that, I'd avoid all refined oils and
| heating/frying.
| kansface wrote:
| Any word on peanut oil?
| slothtrop wrote:
| same pitfalls as most vegetable oils, and high in omega 6,
| which can throw off your omega3:6 ratio if you consume
| lots, which increases risk of obesity among other things.
| Pyramus wrote:
| I thought it was a common myth that the smoke point of an oil
| correlates with toxicity -- do you have a source that there
| is a causal relationship?
|
| The reason for olive oil not being used for deep frying is
| mostly taste and cost, as far as I know.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Smoke point refers to the temperature at which an oil will
| break down. You're right that broken-down oil is unhealthy
| but, more importantly, it makes for bad-tasting food and
| should be avoided when possible.
|
| https://www.masterclass.com/articles/cooking-oils-and-
| smoke-...
| mderazon wrote:
| I consume a lot of Tahini (sesame seeds)
|
| Anyone has any idea about how healthy it is ?
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| What products contain soybean oil? I use canola or olive oil, but
| not sure I've ever bought soybean oil.
|
| Is there any reason to think canola would be better?
| whalesalad wrote:
| No. Virtually all seed oils are terrible for you.
| politician wrote:
| Someone above said that it's usually marketed as "vegatable
| oil".
| zach_garwood wrote:
| "Vegetable oil" seems to usually be all or mostly soy bean oil.
| I believe margarine is also made largely from soy, as well.
| 09bjb wrote:
| Canola is a branding name to distract you from the fact that
| the oil is technically from the nearly un-marketable
| "rapeseed".
| cameronh90 wrote:
| In the UK, we call it rapeseed oil.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Canola is a genetic evolution of rapeseed. They are not the
| same thing.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Can you provide some links about this? I always assumed
| that canola and rapeseed were synonymous.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| It looks to be covered in the opening paragraph of the
| Wikipedia article.
|
| > Canola are a group of rapeseed cultivars which were
| bred to have very low levels of erucic acid and are
| especially prized for use as human and animal food.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed
|
| They are of course very similar products, but it's not a
| mere branding difference as the parent comment suggested.
| undersuit wrote:
| Meh, it's all just Rapeseed. No one considers Granny Smith
| apples to be a different species from Red Delicious
| cultivars.
| Klonoar wrote:
| ...I mean, we do though? There's definitely differences
| in the products and you wouldn't necessarily sub them 1:1
| in some things.
| undersuit wrote:
| But we don't.
|
| Canola is a trademark for a seed oil with low erucic
| acid, but it's still rapeseed oil, just like Cosmic Crisp
| is still just an apple.
| [deleted]
| errantmind wrote:
| Eventually people will realize that the vast majority of the
| foods they buy at the store are:
|
| * Undernourishing: lacking historical nutritional value
|
| * Lopsided / Disproportionate: ingredients are wildly over/ under
| represented wrt 'nature', like extreme levels of PUFAs in
| products due to added seed oils
|
| * Addictive Filler: Added suger or other added sweeteners, added
| corn derivatives, etc
|
| The only way to really avoid this is to go to extremes. For me
| that means cooking all my own food and tracing as many of my
| ingredients back to their sources and vetting them. Just buying
| 'USDA Organic' isn't enough these days, I need to ensure the
| various farms are not contaminating their soil with pesticides /
| fertilizers, among other factors.
|
| What I'd really like to see, and this is a bit out there for HN,
| is a US certification for farmers practicing both USDA Organic
| and Korean Natural Farming (a somewhat radical organic approach
| to farming). I trust KNF with my health.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| What astonished me is that it has been shown that the
| vegetables and fruits of today, at least the commercially
| available ones, are substantially less nutritious than what was
| available in the past.
| justaman wrote:
| Eat fresh, local, natural. Butter, simple olive oil, animal fats.
|
| Food trends are trends because they are profitable. The people
| telling you its healthy are those selling it to you.
|
| The US must also move away from soy beans and corn syrup.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| We should also remember that humans can be perfectly healthy
| without consuming animals and soy products in moderation aren't
| harmful.
|
| We can eat a whole foods, plant-based diets without negative
| health effects or the environmental damage caused by factory
| farming.
| Flankk wrote:
| > January 23, 2020
| hirundo wrote:
| I went all carnivore 15 months ago, and a side effect of that is
| the removal of all seed oils from the diet. The results include
| complete remission of my diabetes and associated fatigue and
| brain fog, the loss of more than 60 excess pounds, greater joy of
| life and emotional stability, and a new, regular desire to
| exercise and move my body.
|
| I don't know how much of that is about cutting out seed oils. I
| am getting large amounts of butter and tallow in my diet.
| gruez wrote:
| >I went all carnivore 15 months ago, and a side effect of that
| is the removal of all seed oils from the diet. The results
| include complete remission of my diabetes
|
| [...]
|
| It's equally plausible that all the effects stemmed from
| removing carbs.
| fswd wrote:
| I've been eating beef tallow past three weeks. Not strictly
| carnivore, but using the broth and oil from my cooking pots.
| Wow I feel great. The best part is that the beef tallow is
| free. I went to the butcher and asked for some fat trimmings,
| they laughed and asked me what for. To render tallow. I got a
| 5lb bag for free.
|
| Also I discovered I can use Rosemary in the fat, for flavor and
| memory improvement.
| udbhavs wrote:
| Did you cut out carbs as well?
| timbit42 wrote:
| Likely since carnivore means all meat.
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is wild, but also would explain a lot of the obesity issues
| in the west.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| This title is pretty click-baity in my opinion. Why doesn't the
| title contain the words "soybean oil"? It seems bizarre to use
| the words "most widely consumed cooking oil" without mentioning
| which one.
|
| And referring to changes in gene expression as "genetic changes"
| kind of fear-mongers, given most things we eat lead to "genetic
| changes" in our bodies...everything we eat is processed by
| proteins which are regulated by gene expression.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Because it's clickbait! How can anyone not see that from the
| title alone? Even a cursory reading of it shows it to be
| ridiculous fearmongering nonsense.
| toss1 wrote:
| Result of designing the food supply chain for manufacturer
| convenience and profit, instead of health of the people.
|
| Yeah, but it's the "free market" so we're all supposed to cheer
| at new products and boo at regulations.
| daze42 wrote:
| The whole point of the free market is choice so that when
| people realize that certain things are unhealthy, they are able
| to switch to something else. Also, we aren't exactly in a free
| market at the moment:
| https://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=soyb...
| collegeburner wrote:
| It's the government that wrote the current food pyramid and
| teaches it to people in schools.
| dinero_rojo wrote:
| I kinda doubt there's a ton of overlap between "right wing"
| twitter and HN, but there's been a decent amount of hate on seed
| oils (especially soybean oil) over there lately. Here's one of
| the bigger accounts promoting it in case anyone here'd wanna
| glance at what those people might be saying:
| https://twitter.com/SeedOilDsrspctr
| slothtrop wrote:
| You mentioned right wing. I suspect it would be owing to the
| politicization of meat consumption and advocacy for the
| carnivore diet.
| dinero_rojo wrote:
| Now that you mention it, I don't remember ever really hearing
| about this stuff before the "meat is a treat" thing started
| going around. So you're probably correct about that to some
| degree.
| exhilaration wrote:
| Oh wow, they're using Pepe the Frog:
| https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/09/28/pepe-joins-ec...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| What makes diet studies even more difficult is that you can have
| genetically identical twins, and they will react differently to
| diets only because of their gut bacteria.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY0GKu-PM58
| KerryJones wrote:
| Another related source of information is The Big Fat Surprise by
| Nina Teicholz, Erin Bennett. It goes deep into pretty much every
| major nutritional study from 1950-2005 and shows a lot of how
| soybean and many other seed/vegetable oil was originally founded
| on poorly constructed studies and how there is likely much more
| harm from them.
|
| Highly recommended. It lines up well with this article.
| telchior wrote:
| Taking account that this is unproven in humans -- it's enough for
| me to avoid soybean oil, as cooking oil choice is not very
| important for my palate.
|
| That said, which oils would you use for frying and baking? Most
| high smoke point oils are, like soybean, polyunsaturated, so I'd
| guess that they could have some of the same (proposed) negative
| effects. Bonus points if the alternative is widely available (I
| see potential options like avocado oil and ghee, which may not be
| in my local stores).
|
| Edit: To clarify, the following oils are ALSO very high in PUFAs
| and thus might have similar issues to soybean oil: grapeseed,
| safflower, sunflower, corn, walnut, cottonseed. Somewhat lower
| but still fairly high in PUFAs: sesame, canola, peanut. Finally,
| some oils are low in PUFAs but not suitable for the same uses as
| soybean oil. Olive oil is one of these.
| zaphar wrote:
| If I'm frying something I just use Lard. It's cheap and easily
| available. If I'm saute'ing something then I use Olive oil.
| azth wrote:
| Try Avocado oil, it's supposed to have a high smoke point.
| krrrh wrote:
| One pet theory that I've been harbouring for a while is that
| the different obesity rates in the US and Canada could be party
| explained by the dominance of canola vs soy/corn oil in various
| prepared products. Many brands of mayonnaise or potato chips
| will use canola oil in the Canadian version and soybean oil in
| the US version. A sensitive palate can taste the difference in
| the same way that Mexican coke made with cane sugar is
| distinguishable from the US HFCS version.
|
| Contrary to what many people think canola's omega-3 to omega-6
| ratio is actually not too bad, while soy and corn are off the
| charts in terms of omega-6 dominance.
|
| EDIT: to answer your question on cooking or baking, coconut and
| avocado are great, mostly monounsaturated, and have high smoke
| points. As does pure olive oil (the yellow stuff, not the green
| EVOO, which is preferred for salad dressings or lower heat
| cooking). There was a recent study, done at UC Davis, that
| found a lot of avocado oil to be fraudulent.[0]. Otherwise for
| frying, beef tallow is still the best, and ghee can also be
| used for sauteing since it has a much higher smoke point than
| unrefined butter.
|
| [0] https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-
| avo...
|
| > Only two brands produced samples that were pure and
| nonoxidized. Those were Chosen Foods and Marianne's Avocado
| Oil, both refined avocado oils made in Mexico. Among the virgin
| grades, CalPure produced in California was pure and fresher
| than the other samples in the same grade.
| adrian_b wrote:
| For frying and baking the so-called "high oleic" sunflower oil
| should be very good, if not the best.
|
| It degrades less with heating than other oils and it has a very
| healthy fatty acid profile.
|
| For salads or other food that is not cooked after adding oil,
| extra virgin olive oil may be preferred, because it contains
| other desirable substances besides fatty acids, but heating
| will degrade those, so for frying and baking olive oil does not
| have any advantage over the much cheaper high oleic sunflower
| oil.
|
| Besides high oleic sunflower oil, there are also other kinds of
| oil that are claimed to be "high oleic", which should have
| similar frying properties, but I do not have any experience
| with those.
| KerryJones wrote:
| I'm Keto and have done a considerably amount of researching
| into oils. Saturated fats are usually the best, but in order of
| preference
|
| - Bacon fat - Avocado Oil - Butter - Coconut oil - Olive Oil
|
| If it's not one of these (or some other form of meat fat), I
| skip it.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Humanity has been using Olive Oil for at least 1000 years. So
| that seems pretty safe to me.
| telchior wrote:
| Yes, but olive oil has a low smoke point and is not used for
| the same applications. Otherwise I'd happily use it for
| everything.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| You can use low-smoke-point oils for a lot of cooking if
| you use them right. Pack a pan full of onions, add EVOO,
| and fry at medium heat. The release of water from the
| onions keeps the temperature of the oil down. It works
| because physics (reducing conductive temperature transfer
| via evaporative cooling).
|
| However, if the pan only has a couple onion slices, or
| there's more oil than onions, or the heat is way too high,
| the situation changes. You can also overheat high-smoke-
| point oils if you're not careful. Careful observation and
| regulation of environmental factors is necessary in all
| cases.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| This is something of a modern myth -- me and my ancestors
| have been using olive oil for all forms of cooking for
| centuries. It does fine in high heat applications, you just
| need to vent off the smoke. Flavor isn't affected in any
| noticeable way. There's some YouTube videos with more
| science behind the "low smoke" oils and the myths of their
| being bad for cooking at high heats.
| telchior wrote:
| I do use EVOO for pan frying and sometimes just let it
| smoke. However, I thought I could detect an altered
| flavor as a result. Will have to read more, thanks!
| titaniczero wrote:
| Here in spain we use extra virgin olive oil for practically
| everything and it's fine!
| gruez wrote:
| Humanity has also been drinking alcohol for thousands more,
| doesn't mean it's safe.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| fwiw while fermentation is at least as old as farming,
| distillation into liquor only came about in the
| renaissance. you have to get really competetive to overdose
| on beer.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Alcohol is an endocrine/hormone disruptor and has all
| sorts of effects on the body.
|
| It's kind of like saying sugar isn't bad by bringing up
| LD50 (13.5g/lb bodyweight). Immediately dying from
| overdose is probably the last thing people have in mind
| when discussing what foods are bad for us.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Used to be safer than the water. Some places here in the
| US, it may still be.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Alcohol is certainly safe, just not while operating
| machinery or so much that it poisons you. These are pretty
| much modern problems. Back in the day, it was safer to
| drink alcoholic beverages than water. Alcohol wasn't as
| strong back then, or use industrial methods so this is like
| comparing apples to apple juice.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Peanut oil is most often recommended for Asian cuisine.
| telchior wrote:
| I currently use peanut oil, but it's still 30% PUFA.
| Presumably if PUFAs are bad (again, unproven!) then there
| would be something better.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Specifically for Asian cuisine, all the typically used oils
| are high in PUFAs. Otherwise there is EVOO.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Why are you presuming PUFAs are bad? This study doesn't
| seem to make such a suggestion.
| telchior wrote:
| A couple reasons. One, I believe the reason soybean was
| chosen for this study was simply its prevalence in US
| food -- not because it's special or unique. As an oil it
| shares characteristics with a number of others, and the
| most notable of these characteristics is its fat profile
| (>50% PUFA).
|
| Two, a connection between high PUFA oils in general and
| poor health outcomes is being postulated by other
| researchers... and, to be fair, many people who probably
| have no particular expertise and/or hidden associations,
| such as diet fads. But that's one of the reasons I asked
| the question initially; even the sources that would
| normally be trustworthy on other science (government
| scientists) have proven to be wildly incorrect and
| untrustworthy when it comes to dietary issues. I was
| honestly hoping someone that works in the field would pop
| up to comment.
| cheald wrote:
| Avocado oil is fantastic for high-temperature cooking (smoke
| point ~500F). "Pure" or "refined" olive oil has a smoke point
| of around 410F; it's EVOO that has the lower smoke point. Deep
| frying happens at ~375F. Coconut and MCT oils are great for
| baking, but they do have lower smoke points (320-350F) so
| they're inappropriate for frying.
|
| I generally prefer cooking, frying, and baking with avocado
| oil, both because of its health profile and because because
| it's extremely flavor-neutral, while olive and coconut both add
| a distinct taste to the dish which may not necessarily be
| desirable.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I am sure that avocado oil is excellent for high-temperature
| cooking and I assume that in USA it is cheap, so it is a good
| choice.
|
| However the price of avocado oil varies wildly from country
| to country. In Europe, where I live, it is 3 to 6 times more
| expensive that olive oil and 15 to 20 times more expensive
| than high oleic sunflower oil.
|
| So in most places of Europe, the best choice for high-
| temperature cooking would be high oleic sunflower oil,
| because it is very cheap, being produced locally and not
| imported, like avocado oil.
| bduerst wrote:
| Just be careful when you buy Avocado oil, a recent study
| showed that 82% of the Avocado oil on shelves is either mixed
| or rancid:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095671352.
| ..
|
| _Chosen Foods_ and _Marianne's Avocado Oil_ are the only two
| that are 100% pure refined avocado oil.
| cheald wrote:
| Chosen Foods is indeed my brand of choice.
| telchior wrote:
| Oh, I didn't know there's a variant of olive with higher
| smoke point. I'll look out for that, thanks! Not sure if I'll
| be able to find avocado but I'll try.
| cheald wrote:
| If you have a Costco nearby, they sell a pretty high
| quality avocado oil under the "Chosen Foods" label. It runs
| about $20 for a 2 liter bottle. The UC Davis study that
| found a bunch of adulterated avocado oils specifically
| called out the Chosen Foods oil as being one of the good
| ones.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Why not fry in tallow and other animal fats? I'm not an expert
| in this at all, but I will at least make the argument that we
| have historically eaten more animal fats than vegetable oils,
| so we might be better adjusted to it. I'd love to hear from
| someone who's more educated.
|
| Plus, they taste amazing.
| csunbird wrote:
| Why not the good old sunflower oil?
| telchior wrote:
| Sunflower oil has even higher PUFA content than soybean,
| which is presumably the cause of these health issues in mice.
| I believe soybean was just chosen for the study because it's
| extremely ubiquitous in the US.
|
| edit: Partially wrong! I'm told above that high oleic
| sunflower oil has a different profile with less linoleic oil,
| and apparently it's becoming more common:
| https://www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/general-
| nutrition/what...
| adrian_b wrote:
| Besides traditional sunflower oil, which contains mostly
| linoleic acid (a PUFA), now there is "high oleic sunflower
| oil", which is extracted from a variety of sunflower
| initially developed in Russia some 50 years ago, but now
| grown in most countries.
|
| This non-traditional sunflower oil has little PUFA and it
| is perfect for frying and baking.
|
| The sunflower variety grown for high oleic oil has a
| genetic mutation with this effect, but it was not obtained
| with the modern genetic modification technologies, because
| obviously such technologies did not exist in the Soviet
| Union in the seventies of last century.
|
| Instead of that, the Russians have treated some sunflower
| seeds with a chemical known to cause random genetic
| mutations. Then they have grown and selected several
| generations of plants until they have found one type with
| the desired characteristic of producing oil consisting
| mainly of oleic acid.
|
| Later analysis has shown that this is due to a single
| mutation, which diminishes the activity of the enzyme that
| converts oleic acid into linoleic acid in traditional
| sunflower plants.
| telchior wrote:
| Oh, I updated my comment for someone else's brief reply
| then you popped up with the full rundown. Thanks!
|
| The detail about forcing genetic mutation is neat, will
| have to read up on that.
| jesterpm wrote:
| My personal philosophy is that nothing is good in excess.
| Avoiding soy products is hard since soybean oil seems to be the
| oil of choice for anything pre-made. So I basically avoid soy
| in most everything I prepare myself (and try to prepare most
| things myself).
|
| When I'm cooking/baking, I use butter, olive oil, and (lately)
| bacon grease, depending on what I'm making.
|
| Coincidentally, in January I had made a list of everything in
| my fridge and pantry. The only things left with soy were
| mayonnaise, tortillas, and hamburger buns. I started making the
| bread products myself for fun. I haven't tried to replace the
| mayonnaise yet (I really dislike avocado mayo), but it's next.
| telchior wrote:
| Tortillas should be pretty easy to make at home too, although
| I've had a tough time finding a press that doesn't break.
| jesterpm wrote:
| They are really easy. I have a tortilla press, but I don't
| like it (the tortillas weren't thin enough). I've just been
| rolling them out with a small rolling pin.
| telchior wrote:
| Yeah, the thinness was my issue as well. Which is how my
| press got broken: pressing too hard. (That, and extremely
| low quality iron being used to make it.)
| bduerst wrote:
| >which oils would you use for frying and baking?
|
| Grapeseed oil is my go to.
|
| It's fairly neutral in flavor (slight nuttiness), has high
| smoke point, and is one that is a source of Vitamin E.
|
| For frying and then roasting, I use avocado oil, but keep in
| mind that many avocado oil bought on the shelves are already
| oxidized or rancid. There's a handful of brands that tested to
| be pure, one being _Chosen Foods_ (that I use).
|
| Previous HN discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30105062
| valarauko wrote:
| > one that is a source of Vitamin E.
|
| AFAIK the high temperature of frying oil destroys the
| vitamins it may have
| bduerst wrote:
| Vitamin E is surprisingly stable in oil compared to other
| vitamins (like A).
|
| Unless you're commercially deep frying with the same oil
| over several days, there's minimal vitamin E loss from
| frying.
| telchior wrote:
| FWIW grapeseed oil is the absolute worst you could use if
| PUFAs are bad. It's >80% PUFA, higher than any other.
|
| Of course that's based on two suppositions: 1) that the
| reason soybean oil is bad in this study is its PUFA content,
| and 2) that it's also bad for humans, not just mice.
| bduerst wrote:
| The PUFA in grapeseed oil is linolenic acid (~75%), which
| this specific study ruled out as the cause of the genetic
| expression changes observed in high-fat diets with soybean
| oil.
|
| FTA:
|
| >One additional note on this study -- the research team has
| not yet isolated which chemicals in the oil are responsible
| for the changes they found in the hypothalamus. But they
| have ruled out two candidates. It is not linoleic acid,
| since the modified oil also produced genetic disruptions;
| nor is it stigmasterol, a cholesterol-like chemical found
| naturally in soybean oil.
| telchior wrote:
| Huh, I did actually miss that. Thanks for pointing it
| out. Linoleic acid isn't fully accepted as being healthy,
| so it was an easy assumption for me to make.
|
| My understanding of linoleic acid is that it got a ton of
| good press as a result of the blowback from the discovery
| that we were basically poisoning ourselves with trans
| fats. So it wasn't really that we know PUFAs / linoleic
| acid are good, it's just that we know they're an existing
| alternative to something very bad.
|
| Example random study link that points out some of the
| unknowns around linoleic acid:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5492028/
| Klonoar wrote:
| Seconding this choice as a go-to. I've really found I can't
| go wrong with it.
| olva22 wrote:
| I would second Avocado oil for high heat cooking, high in
| MUFAs. Also good for uses where you want a tasteless oil like
| mayo if you don't enjoy the taste of extra virgin olive oil.
|
| Extra virgin Olive for low heat application.
|
| Definitely want to avoid Cottonseed as it contains a chemical
| used as male contraception (unless you want that!)
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| I listened to a great CBC-produced story on all of the
| "propaganda" surrounding soybeans back in the 90s... there were
| stories floating around that it raised estrogen levels in men and
| made you grow man-boobs basically if you ate it. I remember my
| friends joking about it at the time.
|
| CBC wrote it off as completely without basis, said the chinese
| had been subsisting off of them for thousands of years, if they
| are fine eating it so should we be etc...
|
| It was a convincing argument... but then again Canada grows a
| huge amount of soybeans and CBC is always pro-government so what
| to believe?
|
| Perhaps there was some truth to the rumour?
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Probably, I know I distrust most of the food "science".
|
| When I stuck to "food" pyramid, I was the most unhealthy,
| overweight, and unhappy I've ever been. When I basically
| switched to high fat, high protein, and lowish carbs,I got
| healthier and more importantly my hormone profile went back to
| normal and I wasn't depressed anymore.
|
| It's astounding what lies the government pushes around food,
| and how damaging it can be to your life!
| kayoone wrote:
| The thing with food science is that not every human is the
| same and people react differently to different things. Some
| people may thrive on a high fat diet, other might tolerate or
| even need more carbs, it really depends and isn't black and
| white. Thats why it's important to look at the sample size of
| studies among other factors.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Is there some evidence that humans really react that
| differently all else being equal?
|
| Literally anything that can affect our bodies might be a
| confounding factor: sleep; water intake; type, frequency,
| duration, and difficulty of exercise; sunlight exposure;
| climate (average temperature, humidity, temperature swings,
| atmospheric salinity); elevation; latitude, _etc_...
| carom wrote:
| Celiac, lactose intolerance, fructose malabsorption,
| migraines... there are plenty of variations that cause
| people to handle foods differently.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| If you think something about those reports was fishy, you can
| go and look up how long the Chinese had been subsisting off of
| them and if they've had any problems. Any possible CBC bias
| would have zero effect on that.
| cgriswald wrote:
| This is all hypothetical, since we don't have access to the
| actual report referenced by the GP. However, it would be up
| to the CBC to support any such claim, not up to the rest of
| us to validate it.
|
| You could verify that the extant Chinese population does not
| have trouble with estrogen and soybeans. However, thousands
| of years is long enough for evolution to work on soybean
| eating populations, so I'm not convinced that would be a
| meaningful claim in the first place. Best case scenario,
| you'd find some metric for measuring historical estrogen
| levels in Chinese men and look as far back as possible.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| epolanski wrote:
| As a former chemist researcher I would like to point out: studies
| on mice do not imply the same consequences in humans.
| timbit42 wrote:
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > In all likelihood, it is not healthy for humans.
|
| I'm sure their mouse studies are showing them something, but this
| is the kind of bold claim that wants to be tested
| anthropologically as much as bio-pharmacologically.
|
| China is the leading consumer of soybean oil. It's been a dietary
| staple since the 11th century.
|
| Any claim it's generally unhealthy has to reconcile with the fact
| that it's been used for 1000+ years. Perhaps one could claim "not
| optimally healthy," but it's not a novel chemical.
| slothtrop wrote:
| In aggregate it has, but the processing and quality of the oil
| has certainly changed. Notwithstanding, there has been a steep
| increase in total consumption of vegetable oil since the mid
| 20th century, owing to boxed / processed products. It's
| possible that the primary issue is oil consumption is not as
| moderate as it was.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I should not be surprised that soybean oil is the most widely
| consumed oil, but I had not actually realized it. I had to look
| it up; It is in margarine, mayonnaise, and most vegetable oils.
| And I just had not payed that close of attention.
| m47h4r wrote:
| Ah! Finally an explanation :D
| dustractor wrote:
| Over the last 3 decades I've had the experience of working on and
| off in the restaurant industry so I've been able to observe what
| happens to my body and which type of health issues seemed to
| always disappear when I'm not working in a kitchen versus when I
| am, and I have narrowed it down to only the kitchens where there
| was soybean oil in the fryer that correlated with extreme sinus
| issues.
| JPKab wrote:
| This stuff should be banned outright.
|
| Fatty liver is a big deal. Insulin resistance is as well. Both
| lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, and Type II diabetes.
|
| The impacts on our health care system from these conditions dwarf
| anything else. It should be noted that these conditions, along
| with obesity dramatically increased the death/hospitalization
| rate for COVID.
| scythe wrote:
| I'm glad that this study was published -- it seems interesting --
| but I hate the controls chosen. Coconut is a _weird_ oil. It
| contains a lot of lauric acid, a fatty acid found in high amounts
| in coconut, palm kernel oil, and pretty much nothing else. You
| should also compare soybean to a _normal_ oil, like olive oil,
| palm oil, duck fat, butter, lard, canola, or something else.
|
| Imagine you want to evaluate the effect of switching to [insert
| your favorite language here] on programmer productivity, so as a
| control language for comparison, you choose Haskell. Doesn't that
| sound just a little weird?
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| _Any_ fried foods are atrocious for one 's health. Frying is the
| cooking method that creates the highest levels of advanced
| glycation end-products, which are deadly.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that the "genetic changes" in question
| are changes in gene _expression_.
| version_five wrote:
| Could you elaborate on that? It doesn't surprise we that
| "genetic changes" is used sensationally, just would like to
| know what is actually happening and whether it's uncommon or
| something pretty normal?
| goldcd wrote:
| Your DNA is the "cookbook", of what your body can make.
|
| Gene expression is what your body happens to be making (and
| how much) from the cookbook - and's entirely normal.
|
| I'd have reserved "Genetic changes" for alterations to the
| cookbook.
| infogulch wrote:
| Great analogy, thanks!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Your DNA is the "cookbook", of what your body can make.
|
| > Gene expression is what your body happens to be making
| (and how much) from the cookbook
|
| Gene expression is what you are making right now, and how
| much, in a direct and fairly uninformative sense.
|
| But along with recipes for what you _can_ make, your DNA
| obviously also encodes what you _should_ make, and when,
| and how much, and how all of that should change in response
| to various things -- and gene expression is part of that
| too.
| crowbahr wrote:
| In the simplest terms:
|
| Gene expression constantly changes. It's a field known as
| epigenetics.
|
| You have tons of genes, not all of which are constantly
| active.
|
| You have histones in your DNA that allow certain portions to
| be read while others are locked away. This changes how your
| genes activate.
| valarauko wrote:
| Gene expression >>> epigenetic changes.
|
| Epigenetics is just one of the mechanisms that regulate
| gene expression in some organisms, but there are many many
| more mechanisms at play. All cells of a given cell type
| don't express the same genes at the same level, or even
| maintain the same expression profile from hour to hour.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| Gene expression is not just epigenetics, bacteria also
| obviously express genes, but largely have no epigenome.
|
| Gene expression changes due to environmental signals, and
| it happens all the time.
| projektfu wrote:
| Thank you. I have never heard a biologist refer to a change in
| gene expression as a genetic change. The latter usually refers
| to a mutation.
| roywiggins wrote:
| And the paper itself makes it clear, it's even in the title-
| it's the press release that tried to "simplify" it to the
| point of being confusing.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/endo/advance-
| article/doi/10.1210/en...
| artursapek wrote:
| Follow https://twitter.com/SeedOilDsrspctr to learn more!
| rob74 wrote:
| Interestingly enough, soybean oil is virtually non-existent over
| here in Germany - at least not as oil that you can buy (here the
| dominant ones are canola, good ol' sunflower and olive - the
| latter not for frying though), and I also haven't heard of it as
| an ingredient in industrial foods, but I wouldn't vouch for that.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I don't think you'll see "soybean oil" as a product on a shelf
| you'll see in any grocery store anywhere in the world.
|
| It's an ingredient in pre-made foods.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| Maybe not marketed as such, but in the US anyway most bottles
| of "vegetable oil" are soybean oil.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Yes. As I mentioned above -- soybean doesn't grow well in most
| of Europe (certainly not in the UK), canola grows very easily.
| Also soya is one of the 14 notifiable allergens in Europe,
| which makes it almost unsaleable in its unrefined form. Unusual
| to find it outside of specialist asian food stores.
|
| In the UK, "vegetable oil" is almost always canola.
|
| Even sunflower oil will be marketed as such because it's more
| expensive (imported from Germany, Ukraine, Albania I imagine).
| And I imagine it'll only get more expensive because of _the
| situation_.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > at least not as oil that you can buy
|
| It's not a common oil you find on the shelves of a grocery
| store, even in the US.
|
| It is, however, a prominent ingredient in a lot of bottled
| sauces and dressings. You can find it on the ingredients list
| of most salad dressing and sauces.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| Most "vegetable oil" in the US is soybean oil.
| leafmeal wrote:
| Virtually all "vegetable oil" you see in stores in the US is
| soybean oil.
| Pyramus wrote:
| It's a very German thing to not use olive oil for frying. It
| took me by surprise when living abroad, and to realise it's a
| common frying oil in Mediterranean countries but also in the
| UK.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Economics, probably -- sunflowers and canola grow more
| easily.
|
| Olive oil is a nice pan-frying oil, it's what I use.
|
| Linguistic thing:
|
| When Americans talk about oil for frying, in my experience,
| they are a fair bit more likely than us to specifically mean
| _deep_ frying, for which olive oil is no use. Way more of a
| deep-frying culture, from several different influences.
|
| American cooks are slightly more likely (than the Brits at
| least) to use the term "broiling" for shallow/pan-frying.
| Unusual word here.
| ryeights wrote:
| "Broiling" would refer to using the broiler on one's oven,
| I've never heard that term used to describe pan-frying.
| Terms I have heard are sauteed and seared
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| As another aside, deep fat frying is quite uncommon in
| homes in the UK now.
|
| Many people under the age of say 25 will never have eaten
| deep-fried food cooked at home.
|
| There was quite a concerted campaign against it in the
| early 80s because so many house fires and serious
| injuries were caused by either unsafe fryers or unsafe
| technique. Safety campaigns, TV ads, fire brigade
| campaigns, a campaign to get people to fit extractor
| hoods and smoke detectors etc. Coincided with a public
| health campaign aimed at getting us to lower our fat
| intake, about deep fried food, full fat milk etc.;
| government "nudge unit" stuff.
|
| Time was, deep fried food was a staple of cheap home
| cooking; nowadays a deep fat fryer is really an
| enthusiast cook's appliance, in white British homes at
| least.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| The main difference is the direction of the heat though.
| Top down rather than stove top. More or less the same
| deal otherwise.
|
| "Seared" and "sauteed" we do use! It's just we also use
| "frying" for that, and "frying pan".
| ska wrote:
| > use the term "broiling" for shallow/pan-frying. Unusual
| word here.
|
| I don't think that's right; it's more used for what you do
| in the oven under the "broil" setting.
|
| Americans use "saute" and "fry" in somewhat context
| dependent , somewhat interchangeable ways. Along with
| "sear" being somewhat specific to browning at high heat.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Speaking as an American...
|
| I was aware that "broiling" was a cooking method, but I
| have no concept of what it involves. After checking a
| dictionary, I still don't -- wikipedia redirects
| "broiling" to "grilling", and Merriam-Webster defines
| "broil" as "to cook by direct exposure to radiant heat:
| grill", with an example given of "broil the steak in the
| oven". I would be more likely to use "bake" for heating
| something in an oven, though I'm uneasy about applying
| "bake" to a steak; I'd probably just say "cook the steak
| in the oven".
|
| I would use "fry" for cooking something in oil; I would
| not personally use "saute" at all.
|
| I note further that neither Merriam-Webster nor wikipedia
| seems to be aware of a distinction between grilling and
| baking, or at least not one they're willing to
| articulate. I would have said that baking involves being
| cooked within an oven and grilling involves being cooked
| on top of a hot surface.
| csunbird wrote:
| Exactly, I was wondering why none of the comments were talking
| about sunflower oil, which is what I used in my whole life
| along with olive oil. Vegetable oil does exist in Germany, I
| think it is sold as pflanzenol, although I just don't use it.
| simonsarris wrote:
| > The same UC Riverside research team found in 2015 that soybean
| oil induces obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and fatty
| liver in mice. Then in a 2017 study, the same group learned that
| if soybean oil is engineered to be low in linoleic acid, it
| induces less obesity and insulin resistance.
|
| > "The hypothalamus regulates body weight via your _metabolism,
| maintains body temperature,_ is critical for reproduction and
| physical growth as well as your response to stress,"
|
| Italics mine.
|
| Linoleic acid is what induces torpor (hibernation) in mammals. We
| are mammals. People in the modern world are possibly something
| like half hibernating, inclusive of mental effects and of course
| the effect on difficult-to-remove-weight. The rise in Soybean oil
| consumption is an enormous change in the human diet over the last
| 50 years. The scale of it replacing so many fats, especially
| formerly animal fats, is just huge.
|
| See: _Humans and Hibernating Mammals React to The Same Amount of
| Dietary Linoleic Acid in the Same Way. By Becoming Torpid._
|
| https://fireinabottle.net/humans-and-hibernating-mammals-rea...
|
| (I submitted that article because I think its worth its own
| discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30456454)
| xhrpost wrote:
| > Linoleic acid is what induces torpor
|
| Is this the same as ALA in flax-seed oil that is supposedly
| good for us?
| Pxtl wrote:
| It's _every_ high-heat unsaturated cooking oil. Basically
| every cooking oil except olive oil and full-fat stuff like
| coconut, butter, and lard contain a decent amount of linoleic
| acid.
| loopdoend wrote:
| Butter and lard contain Neu5Gc which is another nutrition
| rabbit hole.
| primroot wrote:
| ALA is alpha-linolenic acid (the essential omega-3 fatty
| acid). LA is linoleic acid (the essential omega-6 fatty
| acid). They are the "raw materials" of the Arachidonic Acid
| Cascade.
| hinkley wrote:
| Presumably this is somewhat parallel to the poly- and mono-
| unsaturated fat versus saturated fat. The bones of these
| chemicals are pretty similar but what hangs off the
| molecule makes a huge difference in behavior, like CO2
| versus CO.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| So does this mean they should have similar effects on the
| body or that they are different enough to be essentially
| just two different fats that are significantly different
| enough not to draw conclusions that ALA causes the same
| (potential) effects as LA as brought forth in the article?
| rileyphone wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_ratio_in_food
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| ALA is one type of Omega 3 fat. LA is Omega 6.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| They're both polyunsaturated fats. While an over-
| simplification Omega3s (which ALA is) tend to be anti-
| inflammatory and have tons of positive effects of
| cardiovascular health (up to a point - more on this
| later) while Omega6s, which are necessary for our
| survival, do tend to have an inflammatory effect.
|
| The goal is to be high-ish in Omega3s without getting
| mercury poisoning and low in Omega6s.
|
| The modern diet - so if you go out to eat at all, if you
| cook with corn/canola/soybean/cottonseed oils or
| shortenings like Criso, if you use 90% of most modern
| pre-made marinades, salad dressings, cereals, chips,
| crackers, cookies, and even most bread (not including
| some brands of butter bread), they all load up on "seed
| oils" (Meaning LA).
|
| When people say a good diet is rich in whole foods and
| low in processed foods - this is what is at the heart of
| it. Processed foods tend to be high in omega6s, high in
| sugar, and high in sodium,. The latter 2 are largely for
| taste, or in salt's case taste and preservation.
|
| Omega6s are used b/c the oils are super cheap. These are
| oils that couldn't exist without modern industry, in the
| bulk in which we produce them. (unlike say..beef tallow,
| coconut oil, butter, olive oil, ghee, duck fat, etc.) And
| initially they were sold by non-food industries as a way
| to maximize profits on byproducts from other industrial
| processes.
|
| They have incredibly high smoke points and they don't go
| rancid or spoil, so if you want to make say... Cheeze-Its
| or Pringles, it's a perfect choice for production - it's
| cheap, it's stable, it doesn't burn easily, it doesn't
| spoil, etc..
|
| What's worse is we've radically changed what we feed
| animals too - chickens, pigs, cows, and now all of the
| meat we eat also has a much higher omega6 profile than it
| ever did before these seedoils came along or "corn"
| became the staple of our lives from ethanol to chicken
| feed.
|
| Foods high in Omega3s tend to be fatty fish, the low
| mercury types would be salmon and sardines, mostly. Tuna
| is good too but higher in mercury. and you'll want to eat
| the wild versions of these b/c at least in Salmon's case
| it also contains an antioxidant called Astaxanthin, which
| is an amazing anti-oxidant. Salmon get this from eating
| Krill (Krill get it from eating algae - and it's why
| krill and salmon are red/pink).
|
| Unlike most anti-oxidants, Astaxanthin doesn't flip to
| being pro-oxidant under any circumstances and it,
| particularly, prevents Poly-Unsaturated Fats from
| Oxidizing. Which is really important since they oxidize
| so easily ( this is why Omega3 based oils, for example,
| aren't good cooking oils).
|
| Fish are high in EPA and DHA, which are forms of Omega3.
| ALA is the type found in flax or papaya or some other
| sources. I'd mention chia seeds but being as they're
| higher in oxylates than spinach, i reject them as a
| health food. ALA is a poor Omega3. Your body can't use it
| directly and it must be converted into EPA and DHA and
| it's done so at a really poor conversion rate. Something
| like only 5-10% of the Omega3s in ALA form ever get
| converted to a form that your body can use.
|
| And while there's 1000s of blogs and videos going on
| about the benefits of Omega3s, which there are many, let
| me also give warning that high doses of EPA (pure EPA at
| 4-7g) given to patients in a clinical trial, for years,
| gave them heart arrhythmias. While no fun, the main cause
| of death from heart arrhythmias is stroke, and funny
| enough, Omega3s lessen the risk of death from stroke. So
| you'd get a heart arrhythmias but still be less likely to
| die from it. The lesson here, though, is the poison is in
| the dose.
|
| The more you read Fire in a Bottle (blog linked in first
| comment), you'll notice that the human body really isn't
| meant to process mass amounts of PUFAs at all.
|
| This is a fantastic talk on Omega3s:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f-CFQxaUY4
|
| I have weaponized my health anxiety, so subscribe if
| you'd like to know more.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| It's interesting to try and square the multiple conflicting
| findings about the effect of the modern diet on the brain and
| other observed phenomena such as The Flynn Effect
| (https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence) that mean IQ is
| increasing over time.
| stakkur wrote:
| Maybe 'IQ', a somewhat suspect measure, isn't very useful.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Especially interesting to put all of that in the context of
| recent reports of plateaus and reversals in the Flynn Effect,
| at least in certain European countries:
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6042097/),
| contrasted with wider meta-analyses that still show an
| increase, although less than previously thought, and
| dependent on age group and country development status. (https
| ://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...)
| somenameforme wrote:
| The Flynn effect has been observed to have reversed in a
| number of nations in Scandinavia and elsewhere. [1]
| Scandinavia is the typical test bed because of have
| compulsory military enlistment paired with IQ testing. And
| the declines are quite substantial with Norway seeing a 5
| point decline between individuals born in 1991 compared to
| those born in 1975, and a 3 point decline compared to those
| born in 1962.
|
| Big meta studies may miss this because its a relatively new
| trend, and IQ is full of a million biases that can just
| generate noise when combined. When people are young, their IQ
| is significantly influenced by environmental factors, but as
| they age genetic factors become dominant. And in countries
| without some form of compulsory testing, sample biases
| abounds.
|
| As for the past gains, look at height! Height is reasonable
| proxy for nutrition and globally it's just skyrocketed [2].
| Japan is one of the more extreme examples, with their average
| height increasing by about half a foot since 1896!
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#Possible_end
| _of_p...
|
| [2] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-
| men?tab...
| iratewizard wrote:
| There was a good article I read years ago (and can't find
| again with how useless Google has become) which talked about
| IQs rising but people getting dumber. The main theory it had
| was adapting to the tests and teaching skills that help
| answer questions on IQ tests.
| sinyug wrote:
| > Soybean oil
|
| I saw this video about seed oils a few months back.[1] Some of
| the information there tracked stuff I have been reading for a
| while. Decided to switch over completely to coconut oil and
| _ghee_ (clarified butter).
|
| A comment on the video that matches my view on the subject:
|
| > If you want to be healthy just do the exact opposite of
| everything we were told about nutrition by mainstream experts
| for decades
|
| [1] The $100 Billion Dollar Ingredient making your Food Toxic
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmqVVmMB3k)
| mrob wrote:
| >ghee
|
| Cholesterol oxides in Indian ghee: possible cause of
| unexplained high risk of atherosclerosis in Indian immigrant
| populations:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2887943/
|
| "Substantial amounts of cholesterol oxides were found in ghee
| (12.3% of sterols), but not in fresh butter"
| sinyug wrote:
| > Indian ghee
|
| We have been using ghee in India for thousands of years. If
| immigrant Indians are having problems, they should look
| into what changed in their diet and lifestyle after they
| immigrated.
| namdnay wrote:
| > We have been using ghee in India for thousands of years
|
| That in of itself is not a particularly good argument.
| What has been the life expectancy for those thousands of
| years?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Indians in India have skyrocketing diabetes and obesity
| numbers in recent decades. 20+ years ago you would
| struggle to see a single non thin person.
|
| Drastic increase in quantity of ghee (and sugar since a
| lot of Indian tests are a lot of ghee and sugar) consumed
| and reduction in labor (trading strenuous, perspiring
| work for air conditioned, sitting work) could be relevant
| factors that make ghee consumption from the previous
| thousand years not comparable to today.
| sinyug wrote:
| > Indians in India have skyrocketing diabetes and obesity
| numbers in recent decades. 20+ years ago you would
| struggle to see a single non thin person.
|
| I have noticed that. I have also noticed that youngsters
| started adopting Western habits and diets and consumption
| patterns over the same time period.
|
| > Drastic increase in quantity of ghee
|
| Unless you are rich or belong to the upper middle class,
| ghee is generally consumed in moderate quantities because
| the family would not be able to afford it.
|
| Today, ghee is between Rs. 500-600/kg. Seed oils are
| about Rs. 125/kg.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Presumably, the Indian immigrant populations discussed
| above would belong to upper middle classes, by virtue of
| being able to immigrate at all. But also, the sheer scale
| of Indian population can mean we are talking about a
| couple hundred million people easy in India whose
| lifestyle is no longer conducive to the amount of ghee
| they were used to eating.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Yup. Rich/Upper Class people used to consume a lot of
| Ghee (rich people - they can afford it. Upper class -
| usually because they're connected to temple food
| preparation and ghee is abundant there). The rest of us
| used a tiny amount at the very end for flavor. Peanut oil
| & Coconut oil were common in our household. Followed by
| sunflower oil.
| GordonS wrote:
| > Indians in India have skyrocketing diabetes and obesity
| numbers in recent decades
|
| About a decade ago, my Indian colleagues told me that
| Indians had been encouraged to switch away from ghee,
| based on health concerns. I forget which oil most moved
| to, but I think it was palm, vegetable or sunflower oil.
| In addition, they said consumption of refined sugar had
| _skyrocketed_ , where palm sugar had previously been
| used.
|
| Ghee has been consumed for centuries (at least) in India
| - I wonder if it's these ghee alternatives and refined
| sugar are the main causes of increased diabetes and
| obesity.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Ghee has been consumed for centuries (at least) in
| India - I wonder if it's these ghee alternatives and
| refined sugar are the main causes of increased diabetes
| and obesity.
|
| Yes, carbohydrates like sugar are of course a huge part
| of the problem, but the health crisis has many factors
| and my intention was to convey that ghee has downsides.
| Saturated fats are saturated fats regardless of how many
| thousand years they have been used.
| sinyug wrote:
| > I wonder if it's these ghee alternatives and refined
| sugar are the main causes of increased diabetes and
| obesity.
|
| This is the _most_ likely cause. People in India are
| consuming way more sugar, refined flours and seed oils
| than they used to three decades back. That is when all
| these colas /biscuits/chocolates/chips/pizzas and oils
| started being advertised heavily on television.[1]
|
| [1] Sundrop super-refined sunflower oil: the healthy oil
| for healthy people
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI-39Wxd5U8)
|
| [2] Saffola: refined Kardi/Safflower oil
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTaMTD3taVc)
| valarauko wrote:
| People in India are consuming way more of everything,
| including ghee, than they did three decades ago. Ghee was
| a luxury then and carefully portioned out. Growing up I
| ate a lot more Dalda than ghee, simply as a matter of
| what we could afford. Traditionally ghee was even more of
| a luxury than in my time. Outside the traditional cowbelt
| areas, ghee was substantially more expensive relative to
| other goods prior to Operation Flood. So while Indians
| have been eating ghee for millennia, they probably ate a
| tiny fraction of how much we eat it now.
| kortilla wrote:
| > We have been using ghee in India for thousands of
| years.
|
| Doing something unhealthy for "thousands of years" does
| not make it healthy.
| sinyug wrote:
| > unhealthy
|
| There is no concrete evidence that ghee is unhealthy.
| Even the linked study is only talking about a "possible
| cause," that too in Indians who are not even in India.
| Indians adopt western habits when they immigrate. Who
| knows what they have been eating once they assimilated
| into English and West Indian societies.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Cholesterol is more than just fat consumption. You can't
| talk cholesterol without talking about carbohydrates.
|
| All fat oxidizes, some oxidize easier than others. Some are
| more inflammatory tahn others (omega6s are way more so than
| saturated fats). Carb intake has complex interactions
| kicking off the oxidation of fats too.
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| There are thousands of possible explanations. Indians may
| just tolerate the western lifestyle worse than westerners
| do. This study seems to look at a single chemical compound
| that is suspected of some connection with atherosclerosis,
| which is pretty thin.
| sarma912 wrote:
| In Grad school (and as someone who had no idea about the
| western diet or macros for that matter at the time),
| pizza everyday seemed like a low cost option. I got fat.
| I've spent the last 5 year undoing all that damage.
| cleancoder0 wrote:
| Who ever told anyone to drink soybean oil?
|
| On the other hand, I consume massive amounts of flaxseed oil
| (insane amounts of omega3), olive oil, sunflower seed oil
| every single day. I have no issues with weight, no heart or
| blood vessel issues, blockages.
|
| Ingredient isolation studies of foods are a complete
| disservice to scientific method.
|
| Any particular food can be part of a healthy diet and
| lifestyle, absolutely any.
|
| People today are sedentary, just look at natives living in
| wilderness across the world. They gorge on honey,
| occasionally eat meat and have insanely strong skeletons and
| muscles. Look at others that eat only meat, milk and blood,
| have massive amounts of atherosclerotic plaque, but given
| their lifestyle in the wilderness, their blood vessels expand
| and are insanely flexible, only a few unlucky ones die of
| heart attack very young.
|
| The RDA for Calcium in Western world is so high due to
| sedentary lifestyle not promoting usage of calcium by the
| body. There are healthy populations, consuming half the
| amount and have even less bone fractures.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| this is the 2nd time in a week I've seen Fire In A Bottle
| linked on HN.
|
| It's good to see it. This guy is so ahead of the curve.
| zaphar wrote:
| Anecdotally when someone is believed to be "Ahead of the
| curve" in nutrition science they are more likelty to be shown
| to have shot entirely off the road in a few years.
| zhte415 wrote:
| The article specifically mentions, following that cited part,
| on Linoleic acid:
|
| > the research team has not yet isolated which chemicals in the
| oil are responsible for the changes they found in the
| hypothalamus. But they have ruled out two candidates. It is not
| linoleic acid, since the modified oil also produced genetic
| disruptions; nor is it stigmasterol, a cholesterol-like
| chemical found naturally in soybean oil.
| simonsarris wrote:
| But the team DID note that "the SO + CO diet caused more
| weight gain over the 16-week study than the other HFD" (As
| opposed to the modified soybean diet). This is a quote from
| the paper, not the article.
|
| According to the paper the Linoleic acid composition of the
| oils in question are: soybean: %52.90
| modified SO: %7.42 (aka plenish) coconut:
| %0.06
|
| So while some of the genetic expressions may exist in both,
| both have LA, and the higher LA = higher obesity according to
| the paper authors (they did not give a graphic for the
| obesity differences, unfortunately)
| forgetfulness wrote:
| It explains why they chose coconut oil for the comparison, it
| has one of the least amounts of linoleic acid in its
| composition in any fat.
|
| Ironically, lineseed oil is also low in linoleic acid.
|
| https://www.news-medical.net/health/Oils-Rich-in-Linoleic-
| Ac...
| [deleted]
| hinkley wrote:
| We are also feeding those beans to cows, pigs, and I think
| chickens? People have been complaining about lineolic acid
| rising in these meats too.
|
| In a way I think this gives some ammo to the vegetarian
| philosophy, but I'd like to know the lineolic acid content of
| tofu, since bean curd is not exactly equivalent to whole beans.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Yup. One of the best books on this topic of toxic oils is Deep
| Nutrition:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Nutrition-Your-Genes-Traditional...
| Salgat wrote:
| To note, even eggs and lard have large amounts of Linoleic
| acid, and I'm pretty sure lard and eggs have existed in the
| human diet for as long as chickens and pigs as livestock have
| existed.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| I somewhat agree that the fear of linloeic acid doesn't
| always match facts. I do tend to avoid seed oils as they are
| relatively new and their health effects are rather suspect.
|
| However, in this case, the eggs and lard that existed in the
| human diet for a long time, are not the same. The chickens
| and pigs are eating a different diet and this does effect the
| composition of the fatty acids present in the flesh/eggs.
| gruez wrote:
| >I do tend to avoid seed oils as they are relatively new
|
| compared to what? various foods contain oil (eg. peanuts,
| cashews, soybeans, sunflower seeds). Are they different, or
| "suspect" as well?
| nomel wrote:
| All of these are extremely seasonal, and relatively rare,
| in terms of total caloric intake in an archaic diet.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| the rates of linoleic acid in eggs, large, chicken, beef,
| pork have all changed drastically in the last 100 years
| because what we feed the animals has changed drastically.
|
| a grass fed cow has a lower omega6 profile than one in a
| factory farm.
|
| farmers have gotten tricky with it, raising "grass fed cows"
| but then for a couple months before slaughter, fattening them
| up with industry "feed". So now when you're at the store you
| have to find not only "grass fed" but "grass finished" beef.
|
| Chickens that are allowed to eat at will (chickens eat a
| really wide range of shit, not just "feed" that's mostly corn
| - they eat grass, bugs, they'll even eat rodents if they can
| catch one). Chickens in farms usually don't eat like that. If
| your eggs say "organic", they're certainly not eating like
| that.
|
| There's absolutely no way to get low PUFA pork these days. At
| all. Fire in the Bottle blog has partnered with a farm that's
| raising low PUFA pigs and you can have $100 of pork shipped
| to you, but that's the only place i'm aware of it.
|
| But yeah, the fat profile of our animals havve radically
| changed. Because of what we feed them. And then we eat them
| and the problems goes on up the food chain.
|
| I'm not a vegetarian and i'm not a globalist and there
| becomes a point where there's a lot of politics in what you
| eat. I'm not into diets to be kind to animals or even because
| of the environment. If healthy food hurt the environment, i'm
| eating healthy food. Ya know?
|
| But at this juncture - you're better off being low meat (wild
| caught, mercury tested, salmon 1-2x a week, some skinless
| chicken, grassfed beef 1x a month or something), and eating a
| mostly vegetarian diet, roughly 1-2 meals a day, lots and
| lots and lots of veggies. It's simply too hard to account for
| all the garbage done to meat, from a health perspective.
| jlcoff wrote:
| collegeburner wrote:
| Suggestions on how I can get enough complete protein in
| such a diet? I am open to reducing meat for health if this
| is a factor but eat about 150 grams complete protein every
| day and this is hard to replace from vegetarian. The few
| vegetarian dishes I see with significant protein are often
| not nearly as good as yogurt, meat, eggs or just stuff with
| whey protein in it. I can't see much with comparable
| protein to calorie to chicken breast, spirulina is
| comparable but is disgusting taste and not complete.
|
| There is also that it is hard to eat 3000-3500 calories
| every day of clean food in a bulk with animal products,
| removing those will probably make it even harder.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| There's 2 ways to look at protein.
|
| There's a life-span way and a health-span way. Do you
| want to live longer? or do you want to feel and
| potentially look better? When it comes to protein, these
| two things seem to be at odds with one another.
|
| High protein is correlated with shorter lifespans.
|
| - https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-
| matters/protein... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC-
| ej7HbPWg
|
| You'll notice the first link shows higher lifespan when
| protein intake is increased after a certain age (65).
| it's assumed this is largely due to the number of deaths
| from injuries (falls) and complications from injuries
| that happen to the elderly and that muscle mass at this
| stage is vital.
|
| But protein tends to active mTor. You want that to not be
| activated and you want IGF-1 to be low. These are
| correlated with longer lifespan.
|
| - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6611156/ -
| https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/understanding-mtor-pathway-
| and-... - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31316753/ -
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15501691/
|
| And it looks like studies in humans and animal models
| seem to reflect correlative data for "Blue Zone diets"
| (more or less). ( https://www.bluezones.com/2020/07/blue-
| zones-diet-food-secre... ). Most of the regions in the
| Blue Zones are high in veggies, low in meat, often with a
| bit of seafood, and virtually zero processed foods.
|
| How you define a little meat really varies when going by
| "blue zones". Some might say 4-6oz a day, some might say
| 1-2x a week. The low amounts of meat and obtaining
| incomplete proteins with more narrow amino acid profiles
| is beneficial for health in the long term, largely due to
| mTor activation being avoided or reduced. The body
| evolved (it seems) to an extent, to struggle for certain
| nutrients (but that doesn't mean do without them
| entirely, but just periods of not having everything at
| once, constantly). This seems very apparent with studies
| into proteins. When it comes to other vitamins and
| minerals (electrolytes, vitamins, etc..) we seems to need
| those fairly constantly/consistently.
|
| the ultimate way to not activate mTor or stimulate IGF-1,
| is to fast. Either do time-restricted eating where you
| eat in a 4-8 hour window every day, or periodically do
| multiple day fasts..
|
| The timing of your eating, IMHO, is more important than
| how much meat or veggies you consume. If you ate one meal
| a day and had meat at that meal, even in large amounts,
| it'd be more benefitial than say... eating 3 meals a day
| and being fully vegan or vegetarian. How often you're
| eating seems to have a more negative effect on lifespan
| than, to some extent, what you're eating.
|
| I don't avoid meat. I rely on greek yogurt, eggs 1-2x a
| week, 4-5oz of meat (mostly fish, low-fat chicken breasts
| without skin, and beef 1x a week), a variety of nuts (i
| prefer macademia nuts b/c they're low in omega6, low in
| oxylates and high in monosaturated fats, most other nuts
| are high in Omega6s and/or oxylates).
|
| I probably eat at a midway point between what i should do
| for health and lifespan.
|
| If you're more concerned with health span than lifespan
| then you really want to get about 1G of protein per KG in
| body weight.
|
| If you're more concerned about lifespan, 0.5G per KG of
| body weight is more where you want to be.
|
| If you went full carnivore, you'd probably feel
| absolutely amazing. Eating a lot of meat spurs on
| testosterone, increases fertility and reproductive
| capability, and all sorts of great stuff, but the trade
| off seems to be for lifespan.
|
| You'll notice body builders often don't make it to 100
| years old. But look at the Mediterranean, look at japan -
| fairly thin, active people - often with
| religious/community connections, who are eating mostly
| veggies, a little meat, and some seafood once in a while,
| they're the ones passing the 100 year mark more often.
|
| Doing stuff like fasting, or eating a, lets call it a
| plant-based diet as opposed to vegetarian, (or both),
| doesn't feel so great. You can't perform at the gym like
| you usually would, for example.
|
| The body is best, from a lifespan perspective and to a
| certain extent, a healthspan perspective, when it's
| exposed to hormetic stressors. These are little stressors
| that improve the over-all functioning of your body.
| Exercise is one. Sauna use is another. Cold exposure
| (showers, ice baths) is another.
|
| But fasting is too, spurring on autophagy (which is the
| strongest anti-cancer process we have, internally) and
| all other great processes like the down regulation of
| IGF-1.
|
| The body not quite having all the protein it needs, ALL
| THE TIME, is a beneficial stressor that works to increase
| lifespan as well. As far as I've read anyways.
|
| Eating many vegetables are also hormetic stressors.
| Various phytonutrients are built by plants as reactions
| to when they are stressed, these phytonutrients produced
| under those conditions are some of the best substances we
| can eat. Like sulphorafane (from broccoli, broccoli
| sprouts, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts, etc.)
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz4YVJ4aRfg -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNGxNzogOY
|
| IMHO - i'd keep on with (grass fed/finished where
| applicable) meat, yogurt, nuts, a little whey from time
| to time, 4-5oz of meat a day, (free range or omega3+)
| eggs every once in a while. But at 40 years old and
| experiencing some health problems stemming from a mix of
| a lifetime of bad habits (drinking, smoking, sodas, fast
| food) and a bit of anxiety that clobbered me in
| adulthood.. i lean more towards longevity these days that
| i do in making sure i can lift at the gym and maximizing
| my athletic performance.
|
| i don't care about what i look like anymore. I don't care
| about satisfying my ego at the gym anymore either. I just
| want to be happy and live to see my grandkids be born and
| maybe go through some pivotal things in elementary school
| before kicking the bucket.
|
| I eat 2 meals a day 5 days a week
|
| i fast 2-3 days a month, at the beginning of the month.
|
| I eat "normally" for social purposes on the weekends.
|
| I don't calorie count. I've found that based on WHAT i'm
| eating, calories don't matter much. I did Keto for 6
| months and even eating tons of meat and hitting 3kcals a
| day, i was still losing weight when my carbs were under
| 20g a day.
|
| But now I probably don't hit 2k cal a day and sometimes
| my weight fluctuates up 1-3 pounds or back down, here and
| there. And i exercise 5-6 days a week.
|
| i know i ramble (ADHD) but i used to pack on 3k a day or
| more, and drink protein shakes and hit the gym and make
| sure i was getting lots of protein.
|
| I've long abandoned that mentality. I stopped listening
| to fitness people and started listening to doctors and
| scientists.
| chihuahua wrote:
| I'm a little confused, you write "vegetarian" but did you
| mean "vegan"?
|
| "The few vegetarian dishes ... are often not nearly as
| good as yogurt, meat, eggs, or [...] whey protein"
|
| Yogurt, eggs and whey protein are vegetarian (but not
| vegan). Vegetarian is extremely easy (I eat 95%
| vegetarian because it's cheaper and easier), vegan is
| very difficult and requires significant sacrifices.
|
| Or maybe I misunderstood your sentence in some way.
|
| I don't mean to be pedantic, but it seems to me that the
| discussion is going to be difficult if vegan and
| vegetarian are getting mixed up.
| hinkley wrote:
| 'Grass fed' has a remarkable amount of wiggle room in it
| from a marketing and Truth in Advertising standpoint.
|
| And there's also 'grass finished' which does the reverse
| process of grain first and grass at the end to boost the
| carotene a little and change the texture of the fat a bit
| (grain fed 'looks better' to shoppers which is part of how
| that changeover happened so fast)
| crowbahr wrote:
| From the study:
|
| > One additional note on this study -- the research team has
| not yet isolated which chemicals in the oil are responsible for
| the changes they found in the hypothalamus. But they have ruled
| out two candidates. It is not linoleic acid, since the modified
| oil also produced genetic disruptions; nor is it stigmasterol,
| a cholesterol-like chemical found naturally in soybean oil.
|
| 1. We're not mammals that experience torpor. That doesn't even
| remotely apply to us.
|
| 2. The study explicitly states this isn't lineolic acid.
|
| 3. The site you linked is a snake oils salesman who has a
| vested interest in you buying their products and living the
| lifestyle they espouse.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 1. We're not mammals that experience torpor. That doesn't
| even remotely apply to us.
|
| We do not experience torpor _naturally_. That does not
| exclude that you can blast a human body with the right amount
| of hormones or substances that act like ones and artificially
| induce torpor in humans. NASA has been researching ways to do
| that for years now [1], given that even a small amount of
| saved resources per human on a months-long space trip saves a
| _lot_ of resources in total, not to mention the potential of
| a reduced metabolic rate also protecting the traveling humans
| from cosmic radiation-induced damage.
|
| As for "how to induce torpor", well, we don't even know what
| exactly causes it in animals. We are just guessing - and we
| are at the same time also noticing that wide swaths of the
| population show up with a _lot_ of health issues that used to
| be either rare or mostly spread on older people. Auto-immune
| diseases (allergies, diabetes, neurodermitis), precocious
| puberty, cancers of all kinds, obesity in young people,
| circulatory issues, Alzheimer 's and other neuro-degenerative
| diseases, just to point out the most obvious and most-
| researched. And since there are only three major things that
| changed over the last hundred years from the previous default
| - our food, the introduction of heavy industry, plastics and
| pollution, and our way of living under modern capitalism
| (your ordinary medieval farmer did _not_ work 40 hour weeks
| for the entire year for his whole life) - it is not
| surprising that correlations appear there. The key thing is
| to find out if the correlation also has a corresponding
| causation!
|
| [1]: https://www.nasa.gov/content/torpor-inducing-transfer-
| habita...
| phkahler wrote:
| >> We're not mammals that experience torpor. That doesn't
| even remotely apply to us.
|
| Your first sentence is obviously true. Your second one is
| probably false, since the total removal of that seems
| unlikely compared to evolution simply disabling it. I have no
| evidence that part of it remains, nor do I see any evidence
| of total removal.
| bduerst wrote:
| If there are effects of linolenic acid on mammalian torpor,
| then the second sentence is still true.
|
| Life science is based on observational evidence, and since
| humans are some mammals who have never been observed to
| undergo torpor, effects observed inducing mammalian torpor
| do not apply to humans. They're not making a positive
| evolutionary statement about human torpor never existing,
| just that any observed effects from linolenic acid on
| mammalian torpor do not apply to humans the way the other
| person was implying it does.
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| 1. We have common genes going back to mammals who did
| experience torpor. 2. A study doesn't "own" their data and
| have exclusive right to interpret this data 3. Someone
| selling something that they think is beneficial to their
| customer, does not mean it is not beneficial. I would say
| most people who sell things honestly think their customers
| will benefit from their product.
| crowbahr wrote:
| > We have common genes going back to mammals who did
| experience torpor.
|
| We also have genes that are related to cows, have you tried
| subsisting on grass?
|
| Your argument is farcical and entirely based on the
| preaching of a snake oil salesman, in a comments section
| based on a torpid male mouse study that specifically
| refutes the argument you're making.
| rvense wrote:
| Um, don't we have something like 30% of our DNA in common
| with actual grass, nevermind grass eaters?
| liveoneggs wrote:
| my grandpa weren't no fescue!
| captainredbeard wrote:
| He was alfalfa
| clevergadget wrote:
| tell me you've never worked in sales without telling me
| you've never worked in sales
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| leave this meme on twitter, please
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| Can we apply this argument to everything that's for sale?
| Seed oils are for sale too...
| thfuran wrote:
| Yes, you absolutely should look to sources other than
| walnut oil salesmen for information regarding the
| benefits and drawbacks of walnut oil.
| frankus wrote:
| There are some interesting coincidences that make me think
| that the torpor hypothesis might be worth exploring:
|
| - Basal metabolic rates in present-day Americans are
| substantially lower than they were in the past (http://webcac
| he.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nqBxKGn... -- Yes,
| the link is from the aforementioned blog, but you can check
| the citations).
|
| - Mean body temperatures today are lower than in the past
| (https://www.vox.com/science-and-
| health/2020/1/22/21075218/no...).
|
| - 13.2% of Americans have taken an SSRI in the past 30 days
| (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm). To
| be clear, depression and torpor are different conditions, but
| it seems reasonable that a torpid-like state might include
| depression-like symptoms, and that those might be treatable
| with SSRIs.
|
| - Obesity has absolutely exploded in the past 40 years, and
| none of the prevailing hypotheses have much explanatory power
| (https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-
| hunger-p...).
| rednerrus wrote:
| The amount of SAD probably would be worth exploring was
| well. That's some hibernation mimicking behavior.
| daed wrote:
| Can't all these things also be explained by our
| increasingly sedentary lifestyle?
| rsync wrote:
| Almost certainly.
|
| Modern "western" people spend a tremendous amount of time
| sitting - either in an office or a car - and are almost
| totally sedentary.
|
| In fact, so sedentary that the mere act of walking is
| considered "exercise".
|
| Frankly, I'm surprised the mental and physical outcomes
| aren't _even worse_.
| Sharlin wrote:
| They will be in the coming decades as the population
| ages. The direct and indirect effects of sitting all day
| long are going to be _incredibly_ costly to the society,
| and the only reasonable policy would be to combat our car
| addiction by any means necessary - and this is even
| distegarding all the _other_ disastrous externalities of
| widespread personal car use!
| frankus wrote:
| I see three problems with that explanation.
|
| First, I'm not sure there's a strong case that our
| lifestyles today are any more sedentary than in, say, the
| 1970s (when obesity rates were around 12% rather than
| 30%). We had cars, transit, elevators, escalators, school
| buses, television, keyboards, etc. in the 1970s, while at
| the same time "going to the gym" was just not something
| that average people did on a regular basis. Even going
| jogging was mildly eccentric.
|
| Second, this is looking at resting metabolic rates, not
| overall calorie expenditure, although there is probably
| some association between RMR and physical activity.
|
| Which brings me to the third point, which is that you're
| just shifting the burden of answering question of "why
| are we fat?" to "why are we sedentary?". If we are in
| fact increasingly sedentary, it could be that an outside
| factor is causing both low RMR and sedentary behavior.
| Anecdotally, I (as a comparatively skinny person) have a
| lot harder time sitting still than some of my friends and
| acquaintances that struggle with their weight. They might
| consider spending a day in bed as a great way to
| recharge, whereas it is something I would only do if I
| were pretty miserably ill.
| [deleted]
| Earw0rm wrote:
| I kind of wonder how much of a role climate control has
| to play as well. Surely must have a role alongside
| straightforward inactivity.. until pretty recently,
| people would burn a lot of calories just regulating body
| temperature indoors. People with outdoor jobs/lifestyles
| obviously still do.
| pygy_ wrote:
| Obesity is the consequence of growth seeking in the food
| production and distribution industry.
|
| Market pressures ended up selecting a diet made of
| poisonous food that lies to your tastebuds and satiety
| center.
| simonsarris wrote:
| For obesity, 2 is wrong, and the study does explicitly
| mention "the SO + CO diet caused more weight gain over the
| 16-week study than the other HFD"
|
| Plenish just has less LA, not zero, and they were trying to
| rule it out from a few genetic expressions they were looking
| at, not obesity.
| netmonk wrote:
| For 1 i would suggest the read of this wonderfull blog
| https://fireinabottle.net/ https://twitter.com/fire_bottle
| ch4s3 wrote:
| While he has a science background, he's definitely selling
| something. Drawing a straight line for evolutionary
| ancestors with a gene to modern humans and not showing that
| we have the same gene is a non-starter. Even if we have it,
| it could have changed in expression and function such that
| we are not capable of torpor.
|
| We know from animal research that torpor/hibernation in
| non-human mammals creates a sleep deprived state. We know
| that there is no evidence of humans being able to enter a
| state of torpor. We know that humans have high sleep
| requirements for our brain function. It stands to reason
| that humans distant ancestors lost the ability to hibernate
| at some point and that it wouldn't work with our
| physiology.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Go try and eat only coconut oil for say, 2 weeks, you'll feel
| the difference.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| meowkit wrote:
| I'm on your "side" here, but this is a bad take.
|
| Coconut oil is mainly comprised of saturated fatty acids.
| Its closer to butter, not the refined PUFA oils.
|
| Consuming anything to excess is gonna mess up your system,
| water included.
| retrac wrote:
| The heck is this? Eat a pound of coconut butter a day?
|
| Eat more than a few tablespoons of _any_ edible oil in one
| sitting and you 'll definitely feel a difference.
|
| Edit: using only added coconut oil in cooking is, upon
| reflection, a more probable interpretation. Sorry.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I think the most charitable reading of their comment
| would be something like "replace other fats you use
| (butter, olive oil, etc) with coconut oil for two weeks".
|
| Edit: you added your edit while I was writing my comment
| :)
| EMM_386 wrote:
| MCT oil made from coconuts.
|
| You can mix it in with things like coffee and shakes,
| easy way to get it.
| hourislate wrote:
| >Coconut oil is the least fattening of all the oils. Pig
| farmers tried to use it to fatten their animals, but when
| it was added to the animal feed, coconut oil made the
| pigs lean [See Encycl. Brit. Book of the Year, 1946].
|
| https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-
| oils.shtml
| Smoosh wrote:
| I would hope that there would be a better source than a
| 75 year old "summary of news book". If this is true there
| would surely be more recent and thorough scientific
| studies.
| bduerst wrote:
| IIRC, that was more from the fact that coconut oil has
| zero linolenic acid, which is an essential metabolite.
| Coconut oil is still a huge calorie source for livestock,
| just that it's also mixed with soybean oil.
|
| Basically, any combination of coconut oil in your diet
| that isn't 100% coconut oil will lead to calorie gain.
| klyrs wrote:
| https://www.news-medical.net/health/Oils-Rich-in-Linoleic-
| Ac...
|
| Look, if we're going to make major life changes on the
| basis of this one study, you've missed the opportunity for
| an all-chocolate diet.
| chihuahua wrote:
| When you've tried the all-meat diet and didn't like it,
| the all-chocolate diet seems like the logical next step.
| bduerst wrote:
| *Cacao _butter_ diet. Not the delightful as the candy
| bars but still just as possible.
| Smoosh wrote:
| I'm not going to criticize your all-chocolate diet, but
| its always sensible to take supplements in the form of
| embedded nuts, nougat, praline and perhaps fruit and mint
| flavoured confections.
| pempem wrote:
| ^ best post of the thread!
| gcheong wrote:
| "You'll feel the difference."
|
| What difference will I feel that couldn't be explained
| simply by my expectation that I would feel different?
| malfist wrote:
| You'll feel a difference because coconut has a high
| amount of MCT (medium chain triglycerides). MCT is often
| touted as a weightloss tool, I've seen plenty of posts
| talking about pigs not getting fat on MCT, or how it
| takes more calories to break it apart (which is bullshit)
| or it some how raises your body temp/metabolism.
|
| The truth is that our stomach has a hard time digesting a
| sudden influx of MCT. Adding a large amount of MCT to a
| diet previously free of MCT will cause nausea. And that
| short term nausea is largely the cause of any
| "weightloss" seen by MCT. The studies that study MCT and
| show weightloss are all short term studies, and not the
| 6-12 month study you really need for weightloss.
|
| In short, you'll feel a difference because coconut oil
| upsets your stomach. Not because it's a non-animal fat.
| Hell, we use sesame, peanut, canola, and olive oils all
| the time. Replace all your dietary fat with canola oil or
| olive oil and you'll not notice. Will probably have
| health benefits because of the reduction in saturated
| fats.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Fixating on lineolic acid is kind of hard when basically _all_
| high-heat vegetable oils contain a lot of it. If lineolic acid
| is the problem then basically every unsaturated cooking oil
| other than olive oil is now unusable. _Maybe_ canola, depending
| on how much lineolic acid is safe.
| burke wrote:
| Avocado sits somewhere between olive and canola in terms of
| linoleic acid content (one reference said 13%; another said
| 7-20%), and has one of the highest smoke points of all
| cooking oils at 271degC. It's also pretty flavour neutral.
| It's a fantastic choice for high-heat cooking.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yeah, I tend to use avocado oil when it's available or
| refined high-heat olive oil when it's not. The heavy
| processing of high heat olive oil is concerning but it does
| mean low linoleic acid.
| nomel wrote:
| > Fixating on lineolic acid is kind of hard
|
| There have been many instances, throughout history, where
| something that had massive adoption by our society has turned
| out to be bad. Lead being a relatively recent example. All
| the plastics (BPA, BPA free "safe" plastics, phthalates, etc)
| probably being the current/next.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| canola is probably the best out of the bunch but it's still
| too high in omega6s.
|
| PUFAs - as cooking oils - should be totally and utterly
| avoided. People should be using butter, ghee, beef tallow,
| coconut oil, avocado oil (which is a little higher in omega6s
| that i'd like but it's mostly a monosaturated fat), duck fat,
| emu oil.
|
| Macademia nut oil is higher in monosaturated fats than olive
| oil and has a higher smoke point, but it's expensive. Tallow,
| butter and coconut is where it's at for high heat cookiing.
|
| Most seed, nut, corn, and vegetable oils are trash.
| Cottonseed, soybean, corn, canola, grapeseed, peanut, etc..
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| The three oils/fat I have been taught to use in my Indian kitchen
| are: sesame seed oil, ghee and coconut oil. Sesame seed oil
| because it has a high smoke point. Ditto with ghee.
|
| The choice of oils always has to do with smoke point and hence
| what we use it for in the kitchen.
|
| [..] Sesame oil is full of antioxidants. Along with vitamin E and
| phytosterols, it contains lignans, sesamol, and sesaminol. These
| compounds help fight free radicals in your body, which may reduce
| your risk of developing chronic diseases. Sesame oil has a
| balanced ratio of omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids.[..]
|
| And I am from the south of india which is very hot. In the
| northern climes where it gets colder, sesame seed oil is
| substituted with mustard seed oil.
|
| I don't use olive oil for anything that requires heat. Mostly for
| salad dressings or drizzling etc. good olive oil..esp unrefined
| olive oil has very low smoke point. It's actually harmful to use
| it for frying etc.
|
| Regionally where olive oil is more abundant, grape seed oil is
| used for high smoke point cooking. I am also fond of avacado oil
| these day. I still stick to the trinity of
| coconut/sesame/ghee...but I also need to test other oils for diff
| gigs.
| donatj wrote:
| The olive oil bit is a myth - see:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_aFHrzSBrM
|
| Olive oil is actually one of the chemically safest oils to
| heat.
| pilingual wrote:
| "Sesame oil has a balanced ratio of omega-3, omega-6"
|
| This is not true.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Wow. Read one article from the web and everything else is 'BS'.
|
| I mentioned that this is for an Indian kitchen. Specifically.
| Our cooking involves tadka(tempering) and sauteing..we use more
| pulses/lentils and one pot vegetable preparations than
| meat..meat requires high heat for Maillard reactions.
|
| High smoke point is not to just guide for deep frying in Indian
| kitchens. We don't use oil just for deep frying. Everything I
| learnt is by sound rather than sight with high heat. With the
| spices we use, aroma and flavour is an integral part of the
| cuisine. When we temper mustard seeds, we have to 'listen' to
| the sputtering. With ghee, we have to 'listen' to the sound of
| milk solids caramelising. Higher heat will destroy the food.
|
| Good quality olive oil at any heating point is wasted. Refined
| olive oil at high smoking point is more trouble than food.
| Considering I have an actual degree in cooking..of
| international standard for many kinds of cuisines .....plus
| multi generational/multi regional Indian cuisine by experience,
| I think that I can safely ignore any calls for BS about my food
| and cooking on Hacker News. Stick to your lane.
| krrrh wrote:
| To back up and... refine... your point. EVOO does contain
| non-oil elements that will burn when heated and that's
| obviously not something anyone wants. However, pure olive oil
| (the yellow stuff) has a higher smoke point and is suitable
| for frying. In Germany they actually sell refined olive oil
| specified as Bratolivenol, "literally frying olive oil", and
| it will state on the label that it is safe to heat up to 210
| C.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| The best olive oil is cold pressed which most people have
| probably never tasted..anyone who has tasted a fresh ripe
| olive will spit it out..it's literally inedible.
|
| Olive oil at its best is bitter and sharp and super
| astringent. That no one would ever recognize even in its
| most commonly used form..emulsions like mayo. It's is a
| viscous opaque yellow liquid gold. Altho there are also
| varieties that can be green gold at first pressing.
|
| I contracted via my farm to harvest olives from old city
| trees that were planted by some heiress and they were
| ancient no name varieties which had a more yellow gold
| tinge. Lovely bitterness at first pressing. Most olive oils
| we can buy is refined and processed and blended. When
| blended with grapeseed oil, they have longer shelf life and
| doesn't become rancid as fast.
|
| More recently there has been efforts to mechanize and
| automate olive harvests but it has resulted in entire olive
| groves being razed so new dwarf varieties and cultivars
| suitable for automated harvest are being planted in Europe
| and Morocco..with table olives from canopied trees being
| planted in Tunisia and other places where labor is cheaper.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| we have decided to go with having mustard seeds pressed for oil
| while being physically present for the process. the result is a
| much much better oil than the one that comes packaged. they say
| its "plain unprocessed oil" but there is a significant
| difference between what we get in our press and what comes in a
| bottle.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Olive oil is not harmful when heated! Please link to scientific
| research showing this.
|
| Here is one of many studies showing the opposite:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02786...
| znpy wrote:
| > It's actually harmful to use it for frying etc.
|
| Claims like this are BS.
|
| South italian here. People from south italy have traditionally
| produced and used olive oil pretty much exclusively and for
| pretty much everything. Frying stuff is a huge part of the
| tradition. No relevant problem ever found regarding that. On
| the contrary: the mediterranean diet is a well known healthy
| diet.
| chakintosh wrote:
| Recommended reading: The Hacking of the American Mind by Prof.
| Robert Lustig https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-American-Mind-
| Corporate-Takeo...
| champagnois wrote:
| I remember writing soy is basically poison and definitely not a
| health food here on HN not long ago. People would be smart to
| wise up to this sooner rather than later. It is still an
| extremely unpopular stance because many are lead to believe that
| this dirt cheap source of protein is "okay".
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| Because the 3 most consumed oils are soybean, corn and canola
| oils, I wonder why didn't they study the 3 oils at once. The
| effects, if any will be easily visible through differences.
| marricks wrote:
| I used to be so pro-science, but the more you follow it the more
| you see the stumbles (Folic acid causes cancer, but doesn't stop
| it) and just how much studies are funded by big corporations and
| can be easily killed if results start turning out unfavorably.
|
| Older I get the more hippy-dippy I feel about food. We should
| probably have simple food, vegetables and grains, as our main
| staples. That's what people used to mostly eat and people that do
| eat that are healthier.
|
| The next big scare about this or that oil, or tofu (which is a
| staple in many populations which are healthier than the US), come
| and go. And if they ever get contradicted you won't ever hear it.
| a_c wrote:
| It all started with ancel keys'
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys suggestion that
| cholesterol and animal fat are bad to human.
|
| Whole industry started because of this claim, plant based cooking
| oil, margarine, trans fat. Each targeted in replacing one aspect
| of animal oil. Each are later found to be (more) harmful than
| animal fat.
|
| I would recommend the book big fat surprise
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16130316-the-big-fat-sur...
| if anyone is interested in learning how the oil industry evolved
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I used to eat sardines every day trying to get the health
| benefits of fatty fish. They were packed in soybean oil. I drank
| the oil too. With time I began to have bizarre mental issues that
| I finally tracked down to the sardines. Sardines packed in olive
| oil don't cause this issue. That's my anecdata to share.
| loopdoend wrote:
| Best to buy ones packed in water. No idea as to the quality of
| the oil used.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| Yep, you can always add oil yourself if you like the taste. I
| also recommend buying the ones that have the skin and bones,
| because there's a lot of nutrition there. The bones are
| barely noticeable. This was the brand I went with:
| https://www.amazon.com/Crown-Prince-Sardines-
| Water-4-25-Ounc...
| randomcatuser wrote:
| Whoa, how did you track?
| pengaru wrote:
| The higher end canned fish are available cooked in their own
| juices without any added water even [0].
|
| As with anything quality varies substantially. I personally
| stay away from any of the oil-packed fish. Wild caught sardines
| in water with no additives can be found, even cheaply from the
| Season kosher brand.
|
| [0] https://davesalbacore.com/product/3-25oz-no-salt-king-
| salmon...
| Pxtl wrote:
| Maybe that was oils in general? Eating too much cooking oil
| makes me feel like absolute crap mentally, regardless of type.
|
| Obviously the syndrome described in article is possible in your
| case, but the article sounds like a chronic accumulated damage
| thing, not an acute reaction just after eating.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| Recently I learned the Whole Foods Plant Based diet avoids
| processed oils altogether, including olive and coconut. Not
| sure I could go that far myself, but it's interesting to know
| that people do it, and it's the one diet known to reverse
| cardiac disease.
| nomel wrote:
| The sentence "Sardines packed in olive oil don't cause this
| issue." suggests that it's not.
| pacomerh wrote:
| I think the problem starts with eating canned food here.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I happen to agree, partly. Canned food 24/7 isn't healthy
| when other options are available, but that's why it shouldn't
| be an exclusive ingredient of one's diet.
| hashimotonomora wrote:
| Care explaining what bizarre mental issues?
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I guess it would best be described as enhancement of
| repetitive, obsessive thoughts and just in general not
| feeling good and even angry for the rest of the day after
| eating them. It was a really weird time.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| I have the same thing. It took me ten years to rule things
| out. Plain as day, if I have soy oil, I will go a little
| wayward emotionally, mentally, and if I have enough, also
| noticeable skin issues - canker sores, flaking skin, scalp
| pimples, and random itchy patches I'll scratch to bleeding.
| Oh, and if I have enough, in a short amount of time, I can
| easily trigger a migraine. Sushi with soy oil, mayonnaise
| (soybean oil), and fried foods are all drifting away from
| me.
|
| I'm not allergic to soy - I went to an allergy doctor and
| did the little skin application test, and it's not a
| histamine reaction. So the term is "sensitive" - I'm "soy
| sensitive".
|
| If I eat 'clean' for 14 to 21 days, I get a clarity that
| compels me to continue avoiding it. I'm happy to connect
| with anyone (profile) that wants to swap notes on this -
| it's incredibly frustrating to figure out. Dealing with it,
| not so much. Almost all aspects improve with its avoidance.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| renewiltord wrote:
| Soybean oil the most widely consumed? I would never have guessed.
| Figured canola would be.
| qiskit wrote:
| I figured the cheapest oil ( vegetable, canola, etc ) would be
| the most widely used cooking oil as well. I've never even heard
| of soybean oil let alone know anyone who uses soybean oil.
| jccooper wrote:
| "Vegetable oil" is likely to be partially or mostly soy, as
| it's the cheapest vegetable oil.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| In some places, generic "vegetable oil" is all or mostly
| soybean oil, even some of the cheap brands. The midwest US
| has _lots_ of corn and soybeans, and it is pretty natural
| that soybean oil would be fairly common.
|
| And honestly, a lot of oils seem obscure. I use grapeseed
| oil, but hadn't heard of it 10 years ago. I don't know anyone
| else that does either. They sell it in one of the grocery
| store chains here, though, and I decided to try it. Something
| similar must be the case for soybean oil: Some stores in
| Norway sell a bottle labeled 'soybean oil', so someone must
| be buying it.
| dmoy wrote:
| It's not even close. Soybean oil is like 4-5x the consumption
| volume as canola.
|
| Which makes sense if you've ever seen rural Midwest. So much
| soybean, everywhere.
| dmoy wrote:
| for more context - soybean is used to stuff nitrogen back
| into the soil, for the real cash crop (corn, etc).
|
| So what you'll see is fields rotate between corn & soybean,
| or corn, corn, & soybean.
|
| The US produces about 4 billion bushels of both corn and
| soybeans per year.
| brimble wrote:
| Looks like generic "vegetable oil" is soybean oil. That
| explains it.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Do not take this work seriously unless you are a male inbred
| mouse of the C57BL/6N persuasion.
|
| This is a classic N=1 study of one sex and one genome of mouse.
| As such this work is of almost no know relevance to other strains
| of mice, let alone to humanity.
|
| If you want an example of how mice dietary studies should be done
| then look to the National Institute on Aging and its
| Interventions Testing Program. They use both sexes and mice that
| are as genetically diverse as humanity.
|
| N-of-1 studies should be deprecated by journals and by NIH.
| Embrace diversity before making broad translational claims.
| nomel wrote:
| It's should be taken as a serious indication that further study
| is needed.
| asdff wrote:
| We use model systems because they are often in fact
| representative of the systems we are actually concerned about
| but cannot reliably measure like we could in a lab environment
| with an established model system. This does not mean the work
| is meritless.
| voldacar wrote:
| It's nice to see the anti seed oil discourse ramping up lately,
| but I'm sort of pessimistic about this. Like what is the endgame,
| exactly?
|
| Seed oils are in basically everything. Trying to avoid them is
| like trying to avoid endocrine disruptors by not touching plastic
| or eating anything that has touched plastic. It's sort of an
| absurd thing to even attempt, it would drive you insane.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Trying to avoid them is like trying to avoid endocrine
| disruptors by not touching plastic or eating anything that has
| touched plastic.
|
| Is there any evidence that something transfers to you if you do
| touch it? This is the first I am hearing about something like
| this. I thought plastic was essentially a solid.
|
| I have been interested in converting much of my daily
| interaction of plastic to other materials. Things like
| converting my Zerowater water filter to a homemade ceramic
| pot....but the water filter itself is plastic so whats the
| point?
| gruez wrote:
| >Is there any evidence that something transfers to you if you
| do touch it? This is the first I am haring about something
| like this. I thought plastic was essentially a solid.
|
| I recall a few years ago there were a few articles/studies
| saying that that BPA were in thermal paper (ie. receipt
| paper). I think the conclusion was that if you were picking
| up a few receipts per day, the amount was negligible, but if
| you worked in retail it might be a hazard.
| pirate787 wrote:
| Also if you crumple a receipt and don't wash your hands,
| and touch food, its a hazard
| istorical wrote:
| Transfers to you? There are microparticles of plastic in
| every liquid you drink, floating in the air, in the digestive
| systems of practically every animal in the food chain.
|
| When you wash a piece of polyester or microfiber in a washing
| machine you are sending millions of little microscopic pieces
| of plastic into the water supply.
|
| Ever drink from a plastic water bottle that sat in a hot car
| and it tastes really funny? Enjoy your plastic.
|
| If you google "plastic in the air", "plastic in food",
| "plastic in animals", "plastic in water", it's pretty much
| impossible to not find evidence. It's incredibly depressing.
| It's in the Mariana trench and on Everest.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| It seems like there are varying definitions of
| microparticles. Are you referring to stuff that is still
| slightly visible to the naked eye (if you squint),
| something the requires a regular microscope or something
| that needs an electron microscope. I'd like to think that
| my zerowater filter which filters out enough such that a
| TDS meter reads 0 would filter out microplastics but who
| really knows. I don't inspect every cup of water I drink
| with a microscope.
|
| I always wondered why there hasn't been more of a push to
| explore plastic pyrolysis technologies to help remove these
| plastics from circulations. I see countless pictures of
| discarded clothing, and other plastic based waste and I'm
| thinking that there is some potential solution: break it
| down back into its original oil based input.
| dataangel wrote:
| The end game is policy changes and regulation so they get
| removed from the supply chain and it ultimately becomes
| automatic for consumers to avoid them. You need studies
| demonstrating the danger is real to convince legislators.
| tuckerpo wrote:
| It's actually not all that difficult to parse ingredients lists
| while shopping. A good rule of thumb in American grocery stores
| is to stick to the perimeter while shopping (produce, dairy,
| meat) to avoid seed oils. :^)
| trts wrote:
| yes, they are difficult to cut out. Your options are everywhere
| very much narrowed. But In 90% of cases I've been able to find
| a satisfactory alternative.
|
| It is interesting how two simple rules (no seed oil, no corn
| syrup) almost entirely prevent you from putting terrible things
| in your body. It also repeatedly enforces a more mindful
| attitude towards diet.
|
| I experimented with removing seed oils for the past six months
| or so. Almost every year in the winter I get a lot of pain in
| my joints and especially where previous injuries have occurred.
| Halfway through this season I've had very little discomfort,
| and it has been a bad winter where I am.
|
| Recommend checking out this "How It's Made" segment on the
| process of making this stuff comestible (it involves bleach,
| very high temperatures and chemical refinement):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfk2IXlZdbI
| malloryerik wrote:
| No corn syrup or seed oil sounds like a wise choice. What do
| you do about eating at restaurants? Just avoid dishes that
| are likely offenders? And soybeans themselves, as well as
| unfermented tofu, is OK?
| trts wrote:
| Whole foods, steamed or grilled vegetables, legumes, butter
| or olive oil, fish, eggs, or other protein that isn't
| fried. Fewer ingredients are generally better. Ingredients
| that have ingredients are worse.
| scythe wrote:
| >Like what is the endgame, exactly?
|
| A clear understanding of _why_ these oils cause these problems
| would be a good start, methinks.
| waffle_maniac wrote:
| Oils are not an essential nutrient. But many people claim to
| have a cultural exemption from a decent diet nowadays.
| scythe wrote:
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid
| buckthundaz wrote:
| If you cook your own food, it is easy to avoid. Simply don't
| buy them. Use tallow, ghee, butter, coconut oilt.
|
| Note that this simple method of making what you eat will
| mitigate exposure to endocrine disrupting plastics too.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Coconut is a seed.
| whalesalad wrote:
| This is an avoidable problem though. We invented this by racing
| to the bottom and assembling "food" with substitutes for real
| nutrition. The goal is to educate humanity so that we can start
| making more conscious decisions about what we eat and move away
| from this.
| voldacar wrote:
| >The goal is to educate humanity so that we can start making
| more conscious decisions
|
| I don't think you can educate your way out of economies of
| scale that make it cheap to feed people garbage. The only
| real solution would be to declare PUFA as unfit for human
| consumption but that won't happen obviously
|
| Besides, many people really will just eat whatever crispy
| oily sugary slop has the shiniest packaging. It is unpleasant
| to believe this, but it's true. Think of how health conscious
| or critically minded the average person is, and remember that
| 50% of the population is below that average. A lot of people
| really just go through life without making choices, just
| consuming whatever is directly in front of them. This can be
| hard to believe if (like most people on this site) you are
| significantly smarter and richer than average, and spend your
| time around others who are similarly smarter and richer than
| average, but it really is true.
|
| Like think of how more than 2/3 american adults are
| overweight. Why? Because they literally can't stop picking up
| food with their hands, putting it into their mouths, and
| chewing and swallowing it. All you have to do to not be fat
| is to instruct your fleshsuit to stop picking things up and
| placing them in your mouth. Calories cannot legally enter
| your body without your consent. And yet 2/3 adults are
| overweight. So I don't think education will do anything here.
| [deleted]
| jim-jim-jim wrote:
| > _Like think of how more than 2 /3 american adults are
| overweight. Why? Because they literally can't stop picking
| up food with their hands, putting it into their mouths, and
| chewing and swallowing it. All you have to do to not be fat
| is to instruct your fleshsuit to stop picking things up and
| placing them in your mouth. Calories cannot legally enter
| your body without your consent. And yet 2/3 adults are
| overweight. So I don't think education will do anything
| here._
|
| Do you think the average American's willpower has radically
| plummeted since the 70s? And the rest of the developed
| world nosedived with them? It's gotta be calories-
| in/calories-out and discipline to a degree, but things have
| shifted so rapidly and decisively that it's worth
| entertaining environmental explanations.
|
| Plus there's little harm in kicking this hypothesis around.
| A fat person who is otherwise unmotivated by traditional
| health advice might perk up once you appeal to his inner
| conspiracy theorist and tell him he's being fed industrial
| waste.
| SpringDrive wrote:
| As someone who's quite interested in the anti-seed oil
| discourse/slowly forming movement, my endgame is simply having
| more people aware of what's in their food. We've accepted
| what's been handed to us for so long, without a significant
| percentage of the population stopping to look at exactly what's
| on the plate.
|
| The more people that are stopping to read ingredients labels.
| analyze their diet, and think critically about their
| consumption, the better.
| lazyjones wrote:
| The endgame is to avoid them where possible in order to
| minimize the risk. It's not absurd and very reasonable. People
| stick to all kinds of obscure diets and most are not going
| insane.
| jacobmischka wrote:
| What is soybean oil traditionally called in the US? I've never
| actually seen "soybean oil" myself (though it surely exists). Is
| this the same as "vegetable oil"?
| darknavi wrote:
| Perhaps "vegetable oil"?
| admn2 wrote:
| I was at Target in the sauce aisle and I couldn't believe how
| literally every sauce I picked up had Soybean oil as the first
| ingredient.
| ska wrote:
| What is surprising about that? They use what's cheapest.
| admn2 wrote:
| Yeah, more just surprised that Soybean specifically so
| ubiquitous. Felt like last time I looked it was a range of
| weird oil name (corn oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, etc.)
| Just astonishing how the huge CPG conglomerates have
| engineered such highly processed food all in the name of
| price efficiency. I love brands like Primal Kitchen and how
| many others like it gain popularity as they're one of the
| few brands whose ingredients are just normal and easily
| identifiable.
| ska wrote:
| US produces about 1/3 of worldwide soy, I think
| production is only second to corn. So if nothing else,
| it's available.
| rileyphone wrote:
| IIRC soybeans help add nitrogen back to the soil and are
| highly subsidized.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| According to https://www.ilsoyadvisor.com/on-
| farm/ilsoyadvisor/nitrogen-s..., they "fix" nitrogen so
| require less than other crops, but it's still a net
| negative.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Ran into that problem yesterday at the grocery store. I
| wanted to buy horseradish sauce but every single product
| offered had soybean oil as a primary ingredient, often the
| first ingredient. Thankfully horseradish root can still be
| obtained for making sauce at home.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I've been looking for years for beef jerky that is less than
| 10% sugar. It doesn't appear to exist.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If you check the ingredients list, it will list soybean oil. It
| has to for soy allergies.
|
| From looking at cooking oils yesterday, you'll see either a mix
| (soy, canola, olive, etc) or a specific oil (canola) in the
| ingredients list.
| some_random wrote:
| Yes vegetable oil is usually soybean in my experience, check
| the ingredients.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| In the UK, something marked "vegetable oil" is basically
| going to be rapeseed (canola), but sometimes sunflower seed
| oil if it's come from Europe.
|
| If it is marked "pure vegetable oil" it essentially always
| 100% rapeseed.
|
| Rapeseed grows very easily here, and we don't grow soybeans
| -- they barely grow at all here.
|
| Soya is a notifiable allergen in the UK -- it must be
| labelled as such when it's in an unrefined form. And even if
| it's refined, the law still says the origins of oils have to
| be declared.
|
| The combination of these two things (cost and allergens)
| means that if an oil has soya on it, you'll know from the
| front label. Indeed, if it's anything other than rapeseed
| it'll probably be marketed that way.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| I believe you're right. Most (if not all) of the "vegetable
| oil" I've encountered has been soy bean oil.
| KerryJones wrote:
| Vegetable oil varies per brand, but yes, largely Soy Bean oil.
|
| 85% estimation: https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/53980/what-
| vegetables-go...
|
| 50% estimation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61QV7ua-kgk
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Usually. Vegetable oil almost always contains soy oil, but it
| can be a medley of soy and other oils, or other oils entirely.
| It's safe to assume though that any bottle of vegetable oil you
| see is all or mostly soy.
| KerryJones wrote:
| Vegetable Oil (as mentioned in another comment) is largely
| soybean oil
| ska wrote:
| This is pretty regional. In US I think you are (mostly?)
| right.
| jesterpm wrote:
| I expect that most of the soybean oil consumed in the US is
| consumed as an ingredient in something else--salad dressing,
| sauces, snacks, etc.--rather than a bottle of "soybean oil"
| (usually "Vegetable Oil") in their pantry.
| antihero wrote:
| Is it used in the UK much? I mostly see rapeseed, sunflower and
| olive oil used.
| GordonS wrote:
| No, I don't believe I've ever seen it here, even though I
| frequent asian grocery stores.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Is it supposed to be a big thing in Asian grocery stores?
| If you walk into a grocery store in China it will quickly
| become apparent that you're expected to do your cooking
| with corn oil.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Another one that annoys me is "wildflower honey" is actually
| honey from pollinating fields of soybeans.
| zymhan wrote:
| It is indeed frequently sold as "Vegetable Oil", which is a
| generic term.
|
| However, if you read the Ingredients, you'll find that most
| Vegetable oils are composed of mostly, or pure, Soybean Oil.
| dnissley wrote:
| Example: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Vegetable-
| Oil-1-gal/1...
| [deleted]
| endtime wrote:
| "Vegetable oil" can be soybean oil but it can also be other
| things. And I do often see "soybean oil", or something like
| "vegetable oil (soy and/or palm and/or canola)" in a list of
| ingredients.
| lemax wrote:
| Yes, soybean oil is marketed as vegetable oil, e.g. Crisco
| vegetable oil is soybean based.
| tpush wrote:
| _In mice_. Let 's temper the usual nutritional conspiracy
| allegations and grand proclamations of effects on humans until
| someone trained and knowledgable provides an interpretation of
| this study. Most of these rodent studies end up not being
| applicable to humans anyway.
| andreilys wrote:
| There is plenty of research done on the harmful effects of seed
| oils.
|
| It's not a stretch to assume this is yet another study
| demonstrating this in mice models.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| But there also seems to be a ton of research suggesting the
| seed, nut and legume consumption is very healthy...
| andreilys wrote:
| Yes however that's different than consuming processed seed
| oil.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| From the post:
|
| > A caveat for readers concerned about their most recent meal
| is that this study was conducted on mice, and mouse studies do
| not always translate to the same results in humans.
| cottager2 wrote:
| Do you have a source for the claim that _most_ studies done in
| mice don't hold up? As far as I know, mice are quite a good
| proxy, although there are some differences. It seems like it
| would be a complete waste of time to study mice if most results
| didn't hold.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| zdragnar wrote:
| The post itself includes a caution against applying this
| information directly to humans. It is a sign further research
| is warranted, nothing more (as opposed to completely
| pointless).
| 09bjb wrote:
| Mice strike the best balance for science of animals who are
| decent proxies for humans, are inexpensive to breed and
| genetically manipulate, and who don't trigger much ethical
| backlash.
|
| It seems to me though that the extent to which mouse biology
| and behavior translates well to human biology and behavior
| might also be the extent to which it's totally immoral. "Yes,
| but think of how many future lives I'll save by vivisecting
| this sentient or semi-sentient being..."
| Avshalom wrote:
| You can start with following footnotes from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_mouse#Limitations or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing#Scientific_crit.
| .. I guess; I doubt it's possible to show what % of mouse
| studies hold up or don't hold up.
| shaicoleman wrote:
| Recommended viewing: Dr. Chris Knobbe - Diseases of Civilization:
| Are Seed Oil Excesses the Unifying Mechanism?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM
|
| Here's a slide where he shows that soybean oil induces diabetes
| (in mice):
|
| https://youtu.be/7kGnfXXIKZM?t=2341
|
| The talk makes the case on how it's also applicable to humans.
| verall wrote:
| Soybean oil has less partially hydrogenated oils than other
| deodorized oils, making it potentially the healthiest of the
| deodorized oils.
|
| Obviously deodorized oils are not very healthy, but I honestly
| don't understand all the posts like "Eat only coconut
| oil/butter/lard". For the "appeal to science", there's plenty of
| data that diets very high in saturated fats is a risk factor for
| heart disease. For the "appeal to nature", ancient peoples did
| not have our modern access to animal fats, hunter gatherers ate a
| lot of seeds, nuts and bugs to fill out a diet that otherwise ate
| small lean game with occasional big fatty hunting successes.
| freewinz wrote:
| This comment comes off as extremely uninformed; there is far
| more chemistry involved in nutrition than the tiny factors you
| mentioned.
|
| Appealing to science could also be eating a higher saturated
| fat diet like in France where heart disease is lower than in
| the US.
|
| There is lots of science that is ignored by the ignorant and
| uninformed.
|
| Not to mention omega6 vs omega3; what you say is "appeal to
| nature" is actually appealing to science for some chemistry
| abeppu wrote:
| > Used for fast food frying, added to packaged foods, and fed to
| livestock, soybean oil is by far the most widely produced and
| consumed edible oil in the U.S.
|
| Just in terms of the scope of the problem ... is there any
| evidence that these findings apply to humans eating products from
| livestock fed with soybean oil? If not, surely what matters in
| this context is not how much is "produced and consumed" but how
| much is consumed by humans?
| globalise83 wrote:
| Seems from the article that soybean oil contributes to making
| people obese and unhappy.
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe. The study only looked at mice though.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| And mice happiness might be hard to evaluate.
| slothtrop wrote:
| There are others. The skyrocketing rate of use of vegetable
| oils correlates quite highly with rate of obesity.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I'm not obese. I have a family history of obesity. On the
| contrary, I am a bit underweight, and I have tried very hard to
| gain weight and have never managed to accomplish much. What are
| obese people eating that I'm not eating? What foods are high in
| soybean oil?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| My experience with obese people in my family is that the most
| consistent theme is quantity. If you're eating 1,000 calorie
| meals and don't work out all the time you're going to be obese
| no matter what you're eating. Sugar and carbs definitely help
| pack the calories, but I've seen people eat 1,000 calorie
| salads.
| willchang wrote:
| You can start with fried items from McDonald's:
| https://querysprout.com/what-oil-does-mcdonalds-use/#:~:text=Fo
| r%20some%20people%2C%20it%20may,of%20its%20main%20cooking%20oil
| s.
| gelert wrote:
| Have you ever kept a log of the food you eat in a day?
| Admittedly I come at this from a very different perspective
| being obese, and having been much more obese in the past, but
| actively logging my food and retrospectively calculating
| calories gave me a much better sense of how much I was actually
| eating.
|
| When you've recorded some data on that it would be productive
| to calculate your basal metabolic rate, which are the calories
| your body uses on the daily (so any exercise adds on to that).
| Comparing those two figures might be productive.
|
| Of course there may be genetic factors going on but perception
| is so powerful it's the first thing I'd question
| sosuke wrote:
| TLDR; I spent way too long thinking about this in the short time
| I looked at it. I still want to post my rambling but at the same
| time take it all with a good dash of salt.
|
| That title though. Why does the UoC feel the need to use
| clickbait titles?
|
| I guess it becomes a mouthful when it is "America's most consumed
| cooking oil, which is soybean oil, causes genetic changes in the
| brain."
|
| But my first though is ... I've never bought soybean oil afaik.
| Is soybean oil vegetable oil? Because I buy vegetable oil.
|
| Ah clarification later in the post "Additionally, the team notes
| the findings only apply to soybean oil -- not to other soy
| products or to other vegetable oils."
|
| The difficult part is that most of the things I consume that use
| soybean oil I don't have a choice in what oil they used. Sure I
| can not eat those chicken nuggets but the easier solution would
| be to change the manufacturing process to use something better
| right?
| jderick wrote:
| Yes, vegetable oil is typically soybean oil.
| sosuke wrote:
| I went to the kitchen just now. Damn. So vegetable oils OTHER
| than soybean oil is fine for mice.
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| Slightly less damaging. High heat processed oils are
| probably not great in general.
| Klonoar wrote:
| >"Additionally, the team notes the findings only apply to
| soybean oil -- not to other soy products or to other vegetable
| oils."
|
| This was the bit I was honestly curious about. I've taken quite
| a liking to tofu recently and have been curious if too much is
| possible.
|
| I still eat a fairly balanced diet so I'm not too vexxed on it,
| but it's a good distinction here.
| cm2012 wrote:
| This lines up with that big research paper that came out last
| year saying the obesity epidemic almost certainly has an
| environmental cause beyond pure calories available, based on
| water table data, etc.
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Title should probably mention the article is talking about
| Soybean oil.
| ck2 wrote:
| Practically live on google scholar past two years, hope they
| never stop it.
|
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_vis=1&q=Sladek+Soybean
|
| Two thoughts, be wary of academics with "specialties" until their
| work is reproduced and/or peer reviewed. Also people are not
| exactly rodents so they need to reproduce this in humans which is
| understandably far more difficult.
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