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Study finds 82 percent of avocado oil rancid or mixed with other oils:
Consumer demand is rising for all things avocado, including oil made from the fruit. Avocado oil is a great source of vitamins, minerals and the type of fats associated with reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. But according to new research from food science experts at the University of California, Davis, the vast majority of avocado oil sold in the U.S. is of poor quality, mislabeled or adulterated with other oils.
In the country's first extensive study of commercial avocado oil quality and purity, UC Davis researchers report that at least 82 percent of test samples were either stale before expiration date or mixed with other oils. In three cases, bottles labeled as "pure" or "extra virgin" avocado oil contained near 100 percent soybean oil, an oil commonly used in processed foods that's much less expensive to produce.
Journal Reference:
Hilary S. Green, Selina C. Wang. First report on quality and purity evaluations of avocado oil sold in the US [open], Food Control (DOI: 10.1016/j.foodcont.2020.107328)
Why put avocado oil in the bottle when you can use soybean oil instead and pocket the extra profit?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:50PM (4 children)
To clarify on Anon's comment, the core issue is trying to stick to the American Heart Association recommendation of 5-6% saturated fats especially when you're on a keto diet where half your calories should come from fats. e.g. on a 2000cal keto, you get just 13g of saturated fat. So, since olive and avocado oils are 86/88% unsaturated, you can get away with 3-5tbsp of them daily instead of, say, barely 1-2tbsp using canola (50% saturated). However, olive oil smoke point is just 210c so you can't fry meat and veggies with it but with avocado you can since it's 270c.
For a more thorough comparison, lard is 33% saturated with 190c smoke point so it's fairly useless; Coconut is 90% saturated with 230c so it's entirely useless; Canola is 50% saturated with 270c smoke point so is mostly useless; Soybean oil is 84% saturated with 234c smoke point so it's passably useful to substitute olive oil but it's very dish dependent...
This is, btw, why keto and Atkins diets aren't medically recommended. They simply take way too much work to get the numbers right. Granted, if done right they're the best options. But practically speaking patients barely take their pills on time so medical boards can't have them measure their fractional fat intake by the teaspoon.
Disclaimer: I'm ignoring my doctor and doing a high saturated fat keto deficit for the last year or so. Lost a ton of weight but going by known medical science I shaved off roughly a decade off my lifespan. Or the way I tell my physician, the "shit years".
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @11:11PM (3 children)
At this point, the only reasonable dietary advice that doctors should be giving is to eat a variety of all food groups, moderating individual components and ensuring that at some point in the week you've given your body enough time away from food that it gets to actually tap into the fat supplies for fuel.
Combine that with reasonable exercise and you should have relatively little to worry about in terms of lifestyle disease. Any other advice really needs to be based on specific characteristics of the patient.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Thursday June 18 2020, @01:43AM (2 children)
Funny enough, "food groups" isn't a medical term. It's ancient department of agriculture school curriculum (/ propaganda) meant to encourage the consumption of certain produce, optimally local products but typically major agro favorites, over imports. Medicine, or more specifically, nutritional sciences under consensus, have mostly settled on certain micronutrients, vitamins, essential amino acids and, yes, avoiding saturated fat for the better part of half a century while constantly keeping busy by refining the figures and combating big agro's propaganda and regulatory capture.
Sadly, while Wikipedia hints at this with:
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_group [wikipedia.org] )
That's as far as they're willing to go.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday June 18 2020, @12:27PM (1 child)
Of course, "serving" is an arbitrary invention that is barely fit for purpose. The argument that it's defined in terms of weight, or volume for liquids, doesn't have any merit - it's not what the eater considers a serving, so it's creating an unnecessary equivocation, whilst simultaniously ignoring the fact that providing a weight would be a better way of communicating that weight.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @02:32PM
A "serving" is supposed to be relative to your body size and activity level. A serving for a seven-foot 300lb athlete is several times as big as a serving for a five-foot 100lb sedentary office worker.