EP. 10: Seed Oils
Our lifestyle choices greatly impact who we are, how we age, and how we function. In most things, I realize we all still have to live our lives and we can drive ourselves crazy reducing our chemical load and constantly refining our diets. Hence the good, better, best mentality. But when it comes to seed oils, I am a stickler!
DYK: It takes 680 days to rid seed oils from our bodies! I want you to know that when you eat seed oils, they actually become a part of your cell membranes.
Interestingly, in 1900 heart disease was very rare. But by 1950 heart disease was killing more men than any other disease.
Have you heard of a little product called Crisco? Proctor and Gamble were actually the first to introduce this shortening made entirely of vegetable oil which goes through a hydrogenated processes.
The body just doesn’t know how to process these polyunsaturated fats that have been highly processed through hydrogenation so it stores them, and it’s no wonder why we’re overweight and chronically sick.
Seed oils are linked to:
Cancer
Alzheimer's
Diabetes
Heartburn
Heart disease
Autism
Leaky gut
Autoimmune disorders
Show Notes
1
0:00:00
Hi everyone, I hope that you're doing well. Welcome to another podcast. So this topic's a little spicy. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you've probably seen some posts about seed oils, right? It's not really spicy, but there's a lot of conversation about it. And I just kind of want to clear things up. I had a great, really great question on, I think it was Facebook. It was either Facebook or Instagram.
1
0:00:37
On why do we want to avoid seed oils? Like, what's the big deal? And I feel like no one's talking about this in the general community, right? In my nutrition world, we've known this for years. And the cool thing is, is now there's all this research coming out
1
0:00:53
to substantiate it. So I just kind of want to educate you guys on it. If you've seen my podcast on the pantry clean out, I talk about seed oils a lot. I talk about what oils we use and what we don't use. And I'll post a really handy oil chart for you.
1
0:01:16
I'll do good, okay, and bad, right? Good, better, and best. So that way you guys can kind of print it out, keep it handy in your purse or your pocket or in the pantry, whatever. But let's just talk about that.
1
0:01:29
So what's the big deal? Well, we are what we eat. That's the problem, but it's also the problem, right? So if we eat crappy food Like McDonald's or fast food or some of these other things That literally becomes who we are all of those nutrients or lack of nutrients make up who we are
1
0:01:51
If you eat Say carnivore diet or paleo or clean organic, all of those nutrients are gonna become assimilated into you and your cell membranes, and that's gonna affect so many things. One of the best examples of this to me is,
1
0:02:17
and I'll just pick on smoking, for example, my smokers, right? In general, my patients or my friends that have smoked, they have more wrinkles, right? Wrinkles around the mouth. They just age a little bit faster.
1
0:02:31
And there's really a chemical reason for that. It's oxidative stress. Oxidative stress with our cells will age us. There's no surprise there. If you have somebody that exercises all the time, that eats clean, that gets enough sleep, they age a little bit more gracefully for the most part.
1
0:02:55
And even just with like twin studies, getting sleep versus not getting sleep, there's so much research on that with oxidative stress and aging. So what I'm trying to say is our lifestyle greatly impacts who we are, how we age, how we think, how we function.
1
0:03:12
So seed oils is actually a really big part of that. And again, nobody's talking about this. So when, I just want you guys to think about this for a minute. When you eat seed oils, they literally become part of your cell membranes.
1
0:03:26
If you think way back to biochemistry and cell bio, you have that little mosaic of the cell, right? You have those little phospholipid bilayers and the fats and all of that from our diet becomes integrated into our cells. Well when you eat seed oils, the half-life, just the half-life is 680 days from your body getting rid of the seed oils. So to totally get rid of them, if you don't eat any more, if you start today and don't eat seed oils anymore,
1
0:04:05
it'll take you seven years to get those out of your system. That's crazy. That's like the plastic bag issue with the environment, right? And there's really good research. I'll make sure I link this. The research was done last year and it was based on linoleic acid with the standard American diet and how that can cause chronic disease.
1
0:04:31
So they actually showed that seed oils can remain in the body for extended periods of time. Okay, you might say, why is that a big issue? Well, as you guys know, as we get older, checks and balances kind of get faltered, right? Our body gets more wear and tear.
1
0:04:48
We're more likely to trigger any genetic issues that might come up. So if we don't have a healthy system, those issues might very well come up. So let's talk a little bit. I'm going to take you guys back into history just a little bit. If you pull out, I'm a big, um, big fan of recipes. I loved my grandma, my mom's mom raised me a lot.
1
0:05:11
Um, and she gave me her recipe book and I have her handwritten recipes, right? When I look at her handwritten recipes, Crisco, a cup of Crisco, a cup of margarine, right? So let's talk about Crisco. So if you have these family recipes, you can easily sub that out, by the way. If you have family recipes around from like the 40s to the 70s, you'll see a lot of Crisco on there, right? So Crisco was invented, it was really introduced in 1911, right? Guess who produced it? Procter & Gamble. That's interesting, huh? So they introduced it and it was the first
1
0:05:56
shortening to be made entirely of vegetable oil. It was originally cottonseed oil. Now the thing to think about is seed oils are really not, I mean, they're made from seeds, they're not vegetables. And they go through this whole chemical process, which is why Proctor and Gamble made it, chemical process called hydrogenation.
1
0:06:20
And up until 1911, that process was really just used to make candles and soap. So when this was introduced, everyone was like, what is going on, right? So they marketed it as clean vegetable oils and they really marketed it to housewives, right?
1
0:06:38
Because we ran the homes back then and we still do a lot of times. So they made it so that it could resemble animal fats. So then comes along President Eisenhower and there is a gentleman called Ansel Keys. He was a very big proponent with seed oils. So Eisenhower had a heart attack and so all this research went into understanding what causes heart attacks because in 1900 heart disease was rare, right?
1
0:07:17
And we ate butter, lard, tallow. I ate, that's what I eat now. We ate that back then. By 1950, heart disease was killing more men than any other disease. So what changed in 50 years, right?
1
0:07:29
Seed oils, they came out in 1911. So from 1900 to the 50s, coronary artery disease skyrocketed. President Eisenhower has his heart attack and that creates a crisis. The same day he had a heart attack, the stock market plummeted over 6%. That's a lot if you follow the stock market. So they lost like $14 billion, lots of money since World War II, right? Or what are we doing? So his research, and
1
0:08:05
it's funny because just recently his full research came out and it was modified to push an agenda, which we know. The data was so poor it didn't include all total fat and heart disease. So what we know is that it was skewed data to make it look like we need to push more seed oils and that animal fats and saturated fats were bad. That's why there was that whole push. So what we do know with seed oils, there are actually oils that contain a high percentage of what we call, and you've heard me talk about these guys before, PUFAs, right? Short name for polyunsaturated fatty
1
0:08:54
acids. These guys are really unstable and they break down rapidly, which creates chemical stress, oxidative stress, which as I said, ages us, right?
2
0:09:17
As a varnish.
1
0:09:18
So varnish is made from vegetable oils, including soy and linseed. So it's rich in omega-3s like canola. And because these oils are chiefly composed of PUFAs, they actually react with the air, with oxygen, and create a nice polymerization for that varnish and the hard coating, which is great for wood, but not good for
1
0:09:39
our arteries, right? So when you think about it in that context, it makes a lot of sense. And it was funny because I was over to friends at Christmas and they had pulled out canola oil, and my husband and I look at each other, we're like, Oh my gosh, they're using canola oil. They don't know about seed oils. Um, and so then we've had this conversation about it and they thought we were crazy a little bit, but there's good research coming up here. Um, so really,
1
0:10:16
in reality, right, there's good, better, and best. A little bit of polyunsaturated fatty acids is really not a problem. We actually need some. So when we get them through whole foods, not through hydrogenation, get them through whole foods like sunflower seeds or chia or flax, all of those good fatty acids I've talked to you guys about, they're protected by antioxidants, they're whole,
1
0:10:40
they're not stripped away through the industrial process, and anytime you process things, it becomes a different creature, right? We know this. So the refining process strips away the antioxidants. It makes them toxic because it produces exposure to heat, pressure, metals, and bleaching agents. I don't want to eat that. I don't want to cook with that. And the problem is, is then these molecules are toxic because they produce more free radicals.
1
0:11:14
And those little guys are nasty because they hurt our DNA, our hormone receptors, our mitochondria. I know you guys have heard me say before, um, there's a really good study done. Gosh, it's probably been about three or five years now where if I'm the same person I am today versus in the eighties,
1
0:11:34
I would weigh less than I did in the 80s. I weigh more now, only because of the toxins, right? Toxins, seed oils, all of that. So you can eat the same, exercise the same, have the same genetic chemistry, all of that. And you'll weigh less in the 80s than you do today.
1
0:11:55
Right, we know obesity and being overweight are going up. So with the polyunsaturated fatty acids. The problem is, is not only do they cause free radicals, which hurts our DNA, makes us age, and causes chronic disease, but it changes our metabolism.
1
0:12:13
So the body really doesn't know how to process these fats because they're not natural, so they get stored. And it's really interesting because they've done generational research to show the storage of PUFAs in the body. So over decades, the concentration of PUFAs
1
0:12:32
in our body fat gradually rises. In the 1900s, the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids in our body fat was about two to 4%. Now it's 10 to 30. And that's not natural, right? No wonder we're overweight and sick.
1
0:12:47
And so what's the problem with this, right? You guys have heard me say that fat is good, right? We need fat for metabolism. We need fat for energy. Well, fat is also needed for the mitochondria and for metabolism. So a lot of times when you have high polyunsaturated fatty acids,
1
0:13:09
seed oils in your body, you're not getting the fat that you need for fuel because it's being stored because it's not natural and you're craving sugar so there's There's a clear reason why so many of us are addicted to sugar and if you look at the rate of type 2 diabetes That certainly hasn't gone down since the 1900s or the 1950s so
1
0:13:27
really interesting stuff So of course the theme two is soy is the most commonly used vegetable oil in processed foods and restaurants. It's nearly twice over that of canola and the animals too are fed soy and corn. They eat a lot of omega-6s and then it's also supplemented with other vegetable oils, such as cotton seed. So these animals themselves don't burn the fat needed
1
0:14:08
for energy, so they're stored in their fat, which means that we get that fat from those animals. So it's just kind of a compounded effect, which obviously is not good. We need good fatty acids, and some we can make, some we can't.
1
0:14:24
There's fatty acids called, you've heard me talk about them, omega-3s, essential fatty acids. So there's omega-3s, which are anti-inflammatory, and omega-6s, which if in too much, get to be more pro-inflammatory, which obviously we don't want more inflammation in our body.
1
0:14:43
So thinking about fats in that perspective do help. Looking at fats that have been around forever, butter, butter saturated fat, canola is a poly monounsaturated fat. So the challenge with that is canola is liquid at room temperature, butter solid, and that's the reason chemically because the double bonds allow for more oxidation of the fatty acids and that can create free radicals.
1
0:15:17
So I know I'm throwing a lot of chemistry at you guys, but just trying to get you to understand why these fats have certain properties and how those properties affect our own biochemistry. The other nasty little thing about those seed oils is they produce byproducts, right?
1
0:15:35
They're not natural in our body, so they're gonna have nasty consequences. So there's a substance called acrolein. There's one called HNE, which is basically, it's called an aldehyde in chemistry. It's just a byproduct. acetylhydenide, MDA. So acrolein, HNE, and MDA are all byproducts. Acrolein is actually also found in cigarette smoke.
1
0:16:05
That can cause lung damage. It's a biocide, so it means it kills all life. HNE and MDA are cytotoxic, so they kill cells, and they're mutagenic, so they cause mutations to the DNA, which we don't want. So the HNE specifically causes cell death.
1
0:16:32
The MDA causes oxidative stress. And you can check for MDA. It's a marker of oxidative stress. So those are things to consider with how not only are the seed oils bad because they integrate in our cells and cause free radicals,
1
0:16:50
but they have nasty side effects with what they produce. So looking back at like omega-3s and omega-6s, we need a good ratio of those, right? And it used to be back in, you know, more of the hunter-gatherer days, it was close to one to one,
1
0:17:08
or very close of a ratio of less than one. And then since canola oils come on and vegetable oils, that ratio is about 15 to one, 30 to one. So obviously, with higher omega-6s, we're more inflamed. And obviously, that's a bad thing. And I'm sure you guys have heard now,
1
0:17:31
there's that whole ban on trans fats, right? So anytime you look at a label, look for hydrogenated oils, look for partially hydrogenated. You don't want any of that in your system. If that's on an ingredient, it is not food.
1
0:17:48
That is a chemical. So just something to think about. Yes, you'll get some exposure. You're not gonna avoid them completely, but they're in so many different things, which is crazy. So we know for sure that seed oils are linked to many diseases. And again, I'm
1
0:18:03
from the school of thought, I don't think one thing triggers anything. But I think if there's enough trauma to the body and enough accumulation of stress, the body just says, hey I am done. And then you get cancer. Then you get Alzheimer's. So vegetable oils can contribute to Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, insulin resistance, heartburn, autism, dementia, heart disease, we know that, autoimmune, and leaky gut, right?
1
0:18:31
That's a no-brainer, we know that. So the research that's showing up right now with looking at seed oils is really interesting. With Alzheimer's specifically, that HNE product I talked about is always found in damaged areas of the brain. You can't have Alzheimer's without having HNE in the brain. One study showed that mice fed a diet high in canola oil had significantly impaired memory and more amyloid plaques, which we don't want.
1
0:19:10
I don't want to lose my mind as I get older. Sometimes I forget things now. I don't want to do that as I get older. So that's just one example of how it can contribute to chronic disease. Cancer, we know there's so many things
1
0:19:24
that can contribute to cancer. It's obviously caused by oxidative stress, genetic damage, and all of that. The studies show that that linoleic acid, remember that I said it would take seven years to get out of your system, is required in animal models to induce cancer.
1
0:19:43
One of the main mechanisms which vegetable oils cause cancer is through something called cardiolipin damage, and cardiolipin is one of the main phospholipids, fat in the mitochondria's efficiency, energy production, which is one of the hallmarks of cancer. And there's never been a tumor found with normal cardiolipin. So that's something else that you guys can get checked. Diabetes, gosh, there's so much good research on diabetes with seed oils.
1
0:20:23
One study showed that mice placed on a high-fat diet. One group consumed olive oil, the other did veggie oils. The ones that ate veggie oils developed insulin resistance. The group that consumed olive oil did not. This study is fascinating because it showed that carbohydrates played no role in insulin resistance.
1
0:20:47
Right, the oils, the oils do a lot. And we've used olive oil for centuries. Right? Heart disease is another one. So really cool research with that. And if you struggle with LDL issues, this one's for you. So two researchers discovered that LDL, which is lethal cholesterol, must be oxidized to cause macrophages to form foam cells. So basically, the LDL cholesterol needs to be oxidized to form foam cells, and these little foam cells cause plaquing in the arteries. So it doesn't matter how high it is, it has to be the oxidation that causes the
1
0:21:51
issue. There's some other really good studies showing a control group continued to eat a diet high in saturated fats and animal fats. The intervention group ate a cholesterol lowering diet that replaced saturated fat with veggie oils, so margarine and corn. The result, here's the catch,
1
0:22:15
showed that the intervention group, so the group that ate the veggie oils, had 14% lowered cholesterol, okay, 22% increase in death, right? So it does lower your cholesterol because it's not a natural fat. So that just makes sense,
1
0:22:32
but it causes more deaths because it's not a natural fat. So cholesterol is not a bad thing. Just like fats, not a bad thing. Obesity. Again, this is so interesting. There's so much research. Basically there's studies showing that when you expose mice to a high omega-6 diet, that can affect accumulation of body fat across generations. So each generation that consumed omega-6s became fatter than the previous generation. What are we seeing
1
0:23:04
today, right? For one, that nasty little H&E product I talked about will trigger fat accumulation by altering fat tissue. So I don't care how much you're exercising, I don't care how much cold therapy you're getting done to burn your fat cells, you are not getting rid of that HME. So omega-3s encourage something called beta-oxidation,
1
0:23:28
which is basically burning a fat for fuel. Omega-6s suppress it. So you can eat, really, honestly, you can eat as much omega-3 as you want. You're not gonna get fat. You're gonna have better metabolism.
1
0:23:41
If you eat more omega-6s, it's gonna be the opposite. So really interesting studies out there. So hopefully I cleared up some questions for you guys about seed oils, where they kind of originated from, what they're doing to our health. As I said, I'll post a little chart
1
0:23:59
showing like good, better, and best with the oils for you guys. And then, of course, look out for that if you haven't seen it, the podcast on the grocery clean-out. And then give me questions. If you guys have any questions on, hey, can you find research on this, or do you know anything about this, send those my way
1
0:24:13
or do you know anything about this, send those my way because I'd love to have that dialogue with you.
Transcribed with Cockatoo