IIt is strange that something very nice can cause a lot of controversy. Most of us have a bottle of seed oil, usually called vegetable oil in the UK, in our kitchens – which are tasteless but very useful that was a common component of cooking for decades.
However, this previously unnoticed golden fluid has sparked anger online and evil debate. It was described by the effects of nutrition on social media as “toxic”, “inflammatory” and “abnormal” and the root cause of obesity.
US Health Minister Robert F Kennedy Junior, who Causing controversy On topics of vaccines to fluoride in drinking water, He said The population is poisoned with “ungrated seed oils” and urged people to return to “traditional” fats such as butter, grease and beef to improve health.
last month Wall Street Journal I mentioned The fast food chains were promoting their transformation away from seed oils after Kennedy’s criticism. He even visited a television visit to a branch of Sheak ‘N Shake to build her decision to cook fried potatoes in cow meat instead.
Do we have to give up our bottles of vegetable oils and sunflower and cover everything in the pork?
Seed oils have been widely used since about the 1950s, as well as their use in home cooking, are also in many foods that were processed ultra -treated. It includes rapeseed (known as the canola in the United States, is generally called vegetable oil in the United Kingdom), sunflower, soybeans, corn, carriage, rice bran, sesame and bip. Although you can buy cold -compressed seed oils, the most common production method involves the use of a solvent (usually hexan) to extract oil from the plant. It is true that hexan is a toxic substance, but it is almost completely removed from the final product by the refining process – the European Union allows a maximum of 1MG per kilo.
The whitening refining process and retail removal operations include, both of which are critical critics that seed oil is “abnormal” and therefore “bad”.
“The treatment actually takes potential toxic substances,” explains Tom Sanders, an honorary professor of nutrition and nutrition science at King’s College College in London, who spent his career in the search for fat and food health.
Sarah Perry, a professor of nutritional sciences in Kings, agrees to: “The final product, in my opinion, is very safe to eat.”
The next claim against seed oils is that they are “inflammation”. Perry says this assumption depends on a basic misunderstanding of science.
Critics of seed oil claim that the type of omega-6 fatty acid in it (called linoleic acid) can be inflammation, while omega-3 other non-saturated fatty acids, which are found in nutrients such as fatty fish, linen and chia-seeds-can reduce inflammation.
“Since the enzymes used to convert omega-3 into anti-inflammatory chemicals are the same as used to convert the omega-6, the presence of a lot of seed oil means that the enzymes were stolen away from the omega-3,” says Perry.
“This is not true. This is true of a theoretical biochemical path. This is true in mice on unrealistic catalysts. But it is not true at all in humans.” In fact, the random experiments that are controlled appear that the linoleic acid has either neutral or, in most studies, an anti -inflammatory effect in humans.
“The idea that the linoleic acid is a type of toxic object is absolute nonsense,” says Sanders. “They are essential nutrients. From essential fatty acids are the most important. If you are incomplete, they weaken immunity function and do not work platelet function.”
Perry, the chief scientist at the Zoe Nutrition Company, says it has a strong effect of lowering cholesterol in the blood. “It has been proven that it reduces the level of cholesterol in the blood significantly. For this reason and based on the current evidence, I would like to say that seed oils are not only Bad for us, it is a healthy part of our diet. “
Sanders attributes a lot of decrease in cardiovascular disease that we have seen in the past fifty years to increase the consumption of seed oils. A few weeks ago, a study that followed the 200,000 adults in 33 years found that those who replaced a tablespoon of butter per day in the same amount of vegetable oil such as soybeans or turnip seeds had a 17 % decrease in the risk of death of all causes. The study published in Internal medicine jama It also found a 17 % decrease in the risk of death from cancer.
“Our study has found that the high butter consumption was associated with increasing deaths from all causes and cancer, while the high eating of plants based on plants has been associated with deaths from all causes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases,” said the author of the head of the study, Yu Chang, a student of high studies at Harvard Chan College of Public Health.
“I have shown that men with heart disease suffer from an increase in seed oils. But this was through fattens that also contain unsaturated fats, which we know that increase the risk of heart disease.”
A similar logic applies to the argument that the amount of our seed oils has risen-which has more than 200 times over the past fifty to 70 years-as well as our rates of chronic diseases.
“The association does not mean causation,” says Perry. “Think about what has changed, our nutritional scene can not be identified compared to 70 years. It is estimated that 60 % of the seed oils that we consume come from ultra -treated foods that have many other unhealthy chemicals for us and the processes that affect food health.”
In other words, seed oil is not the problem.
Perry’s recent remarks about seed oils in hot water. After appearing on a podcast, explaining that seed oils are healthy, she received an uncomfortable hate mail, including telling them that she is “the most hated world in America.”
“It has almost reached the point where I was to stop talking about the topic, so I hadn’t undergoing such terrible and meaningful comments. But then I thought, this is exactly what they wanted. They want to close the real evidence, so he just lost me to talk about it more.”
As always, with nutrition, it is best to look at the diet in general from excessive installation on one component. But this type of message does not tend to get a lot of traction. “The human nature is to the point that we are more likely to risk and the main headlines,” says Perry. “They will get more clicks than the world of balanced and boring nutrition like me. They say that seed oils are good as part of a balanced diet.”
Sanders says that you do not have to give up your seed oils and should not exchange them for butter or grease. “Swimming seed oil is just gossip. It does not depend on any good science at all.”