If you take a look at the ingredients list of most ultraprocessed foods, "seed oils" should be the least of your worries. How about all the added sugar, salt, refined starches, preservatives, colours, flavour enhancers and other assorted goo? I'm struggling to understand your fixation on "seed oils" as the sole cause of ill health. Do you honestly think that if the "seed oils" in ultraprocessed foods, or in restaurant meals, were switched for some other type of oil or fat, that these so-called foods would be healthy?
One of the issues here is that ultraprocessed foods are all loaded with seed oils. Since I have been aware of the seed oil issue I find it nearly impossible to find any ultraprocessed food (90% of the damn supermarket) that is not loaded with seed oils. So the problem is discriminating between seed oils and ultraprocessed foods. Do the studies clarify this distinction?
Why would these studies single out "seed oils", when every other ingredient and additive in ultra-processed foods is just as likely to be causing harm? And just as importantly, every ultra-processed food is displacing an unprocessed or minimally-processed food that supplies the nutrients humans need, in a nutritional matrix to which we are well-adapted.
You're falling for the reductionist thinking that I wrote this article in order to critique.
I'm impressed by the work of the ophthalmologist Dr Chris Knobbe, who shows a strong correlation between the introduction of seed oils and chronic diseases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM
We do need to remember that low seed oil diets are not "wildly divergent" because these contents were not part of our diet prior to the late 1800s.
I dont see how seed oils can be a safe additive when they are such a new feature of our diet. My own experience is that I gained significant weight at a time when my diet shifted to a much higher seed oil level (chronic pain made it difficult to cook and we ended up eating much more restaurant food. The diet, however was high in Japanese food and much lower in total calories. Getting the seed oils out of the diet is, however, a much more difficult exercise.
You say that you gained weight on restaurant food, and my response to that is that I'm not surprised. Restaurants are not focused on producing healthy food; they're focused on producing tasty food that generates repeat business, and the typical ways that chefs make food tastier is to amp up its salt, sugar and fat content.
What makes you think that this restaurant food was "much lower in total calories"? I've seen plenty of items on Japanese restaurant menus that are very high calorie, such as tempura. It's very reductionist to blame your weight gain on eating more "seed oils" when you were eating FOOD - a complex nutritional matrix that cannot be reduced down to its macro- and micronutrients.
The real trouble is getting all oils out of the diet. Any food from supermarkets contains high levels of oils and eliminating that is particularly troublesome.
The issue with seed oils is that they are new elements in our diet- and have only been part of it since about 1890 or so- so do not digest well.
Easy solution: stop buying crap from supermarkets and prepare your own food at home using simple, wholesome ingredients.
When you say that "seed oils" "do not digest well", what exactly do you mean? Are you saying that lipases don't break them down properly, or that they're not acted upon by bile salts the way that other oils and fats are, or... what, exactly? For the 789th time, I'm not advocating for consumption of ANY oils, including "seed oils", but it's just not correct to say that they "digest" any differently from any other oil.
What we have been eating was sushi and rice- a deliberately low calorie choice.
Tempura is clearly not a good option.
So where were the "seed oils" in these choices? Sushi is not prepared with oil.
That's the whole point---but avoiding seed oils is a difficult exercise, both at the restaurant and at the supermarket.
If you take a look at the ingredients list of most ultraprocessed foods, "seed oils" should be the least of your worries. How about all the added sugar, salt, refined starches, preservatives, colours, flavour enhancers and other assorted goo? I'm struggling to understand your fixation on "seed oils" as the sole cause of ill health. Do you honestly think that if the "seed oils" in ultraprocessed foods, or in restaurant meals, were switched for some other type of oil or fat, that these so-called foods would be healthy?
One of the issues here is that ultraprocessed foods are all loaded with seed oils. Since I have been aware of the seed oil issue I find it nearly impossible to find any ultraprocessed food (90% of the damn supermarket) that is not loaded with seed oils. So the problem is discriminating between seed oils and ultraprocessed foods. Do the studies clarify this distinction?
Why would these studies single out "seed oils", when every other ingredient and additive in ultra-processed foods is just as likely to be causing harm? And just as importantly, every ultra-processed food is displacing an unprocessed or minimally-processed food that supplies the nutrients humans need, in a nutritional matrix to which we are well-adapted.
You're falling for the reductionist thinking that I wrote this article in order to critique.
I'm impressed by the work of the ophthalmologist Dr Chris Knobbe, who shows a strong correlation between the introduction of seed oils and chronic diseases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM
We do need to remember that low seed oil diets are not "wildly divergent" because these contents were not part of our diet prior to the late 1800s.
Have you read https://robynchuter.substack.com/p/diving-down-the-low-carb-rabbit-hole and https://robynchuter.substack.com/p/diving-down-the-low-carb-rabbit-hole-94c? If not, please go ahead and do that now. If Knobbe's arguments aren't already addressed in those 2 articles, please send me the references he cites, as I don't have time to slog through another of these rather repetitive presentations.
I dont see how seed oils can be a safe additive when they are such a new feature of our diet. My own experience is that I gained significant weight at a time when my diet shifted to a much higher seed oil level (chronic pain made it difficult to cook and we ended up eating much more restaurant food. The diet, however was high in Japanese food and much lower in total calories. Getting the seed oils out of the diet is, however, a much more difficult exercise.
I repeat, I do not recommend adding ANY kind of oil to your diet. But if "seed oils" were so dangerous, you'd expect to see a signal of that danger in the literature, and it's just not there. See https://robynchuter.substack.com/p/diving-down-the-low-carb-rabbit-hole-94c.
You say that you gained weight on restaurant food, and my response to that is that I'm not surprised. Restaurants are not focused on producing healthy food; they're focused on producing tasty food that generates repeat business, and the typical ways that chefs make food tastier is to amp up its salt, sugar and fat content.
What makes you think that this restaurant food was "much lower in total calories"? I've seen plenty of items on Japanese restaurant menus that are very high calorie, such as tempura. It's very reductionist to blame your weight gain on eating more "seed oils" when you were eating FOOD - a complex nutritional matrix that cannot be reduced down to its macro- and micronutrients.
The real trouble is getting all oils out of the diet. Any food from supermarkets contains high levels of oils and eliminating that is particularly troublesome.
The issue with seed oils is that they are new elements in our diet- and have only been part of it since about 1890 or so- so do not digest well.
Easy solution: stop buying crap from supermarkets and prepare your own food at home using simple, wholesome ingredients.
When you say that "seed oils" "do not digest well", what exactly do you mean? Are you saying that lipases don't break them down properly, or that they're not acted upon by bile salts the way that other oils and fats are, or... what, exactly? For the 789th time, I'm not advocating for consumption of ANY oils, including "seed oils", but it's just not correct to say that they "digest" any differently from any other oil.