The Huffington Post reports:
Never-published data on vegetable oil and heart health reveals some disturbing trends.
[...] A new analysis of never-before-published trial data from the 1960s and '70s pokes holes at the notion that we can stave off heart attack and stroke by eating more polyunsaturated fat (the "healthy" kind). Instead, it suggests that some people who eat more of this fat from vegetable and and seed oils -- specifically, those that are high in omega-6 fatty acids — actually have a higher risk of death than those who have a diet high in saturated fat.
The study's findings were never published in full, perhaps because they went against the emerging and increasingly popular hypothesis that saturated fat in foods like red meat and dairy causes cholesterol levels in blood to rise, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and death.
Tom Brenna is a professor of human nutrition at Cornell University and served on the committee of scientists who helped create the 2015-2020 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. He says that it isn't as simple as rattling off the names of certain plant oils. Different types of oils have different fatty acid profiles, which all act on your body in different ways.
"This gives us strong reason to think carefully about the composition of polyunsaturated fatty acids," said Brenna. "The analysis does not say that polyunsaturated fatty acids in general are a bad substitute, but that they're seeing negative things exclusively with omega-6 fatty acids."
[...] "You can no longer just say eat one kind of oil or another kind of oil," he said. "You have to specify which one it is, and we have not, as a society, figured out how to talk about that yet."
For the record, the only oils that Brenna can wholeheartedly recommend are olive oil, avocado oil and high-oleic sunflower oil.
I personally believe that it was done because vegetable based food is cheaper and it is impossible to feed the population on healthy meat. In short — Malthus's Catastrophe.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by evil_spork on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:09AM
I think the summary is a bit paranoid in what it says. The study wasn't published at the time because the results contradicted the commonly held beliefs of the day and the researchers weren't confident in their findings. Fats in general aren't as bad for people was once thought. But so much effort was expended into marketing low fat foods to people that it's hard to abandon the marketing and change what a couple of generations have been told. It's easy to convince people that high fat foods make them fat, but cutting back on the fat results in adding salt and sugar. Yet there's mounting evidence that those may be more harmful than the foods they replaced.
It's not that surprising that neither saturated nor unsaturated fats would be that harmful. While fat intake does increase cholesterol, even that's not necessarily that harmful. The negative impacts of high cholesterol are more likely a response to inflammation, and drugs that treat high cholesterol are actually limiting the body's response to inflammation. And there are many questions about the safety of drugs like statins that are frequently prescribed to treat high cholesterol. Those drugs are supposed to be prescribed when diet and exercise haven't lowered cholesterol, but in practice they get prescribed pretty quickly.
The dietary advice we need to be giving people isn't that they need to choose foods with different types of oils (and fats) or to avoid fats in general, but rather to avoid foods that cause inflammation. As for a vegetable based diet, those foods are far less dense in calories, which is definitely beneficial for regulating weight and the resulting health problems from obesity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:33AM
Low fat has been busted for a long time. Cut calories, cut carbs, don't smoke, don't drink. Get protein from eggs, nuts, beans rather than red meat.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 14 2016, @08:00AM
In other words, always treat your chocolate with a knife before eating it.
Yeah, burns are not good for health. Better make sure that only your cigarette smokes.
Because if you die from dehydration, you'll not have time to develop any food-related health issues.
SCNR :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday April 14 2016, @01:24PM
Yes, cutting your food is an excellent way of reducing the calorific intake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcKzcganDwk [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Thursday April 14 2016, @04:08PM
I thought that there was truth in that on average, vegetable oils are better than simply consuming fried lard products.
The real message was that people could rationalize their sins if they ate fried or greasy products made with vegetable oils.
The meat industry is spared, there are new sales of vegetable oils, plantations grown and butter flavorings made as a result of this.
It had little to do with the actual health impact over the long term -- and more to do with marketing and sales.
There are oils much better than that 5 gallon bucket of generic vegetable oils-- olive oil is better than your generic vegetable oil mix. But there are other oils to use and for specific reasons, like taste, flavor, mouth feel, ability to withstand high temperatures. Peanut oil in a stir fry tastes better than olive oil, but may not be as healthy in one way but have different components that make it healthy in another. sort of like how vitamin C isn't healthier than Vitamin B. It doesn't make sense to compare it that way sometimes, unless you're trying to cut back on too much of one thing...
It just seems that this sort of news isn't really news, it just pierces the bubble for people thinking they can get away with bad eating because vegetable oils are healthy.. but they are not really reading these new releases. They are believing marketing. All the fried chicken you can eat with heart healthy oils! Deep fried bacon and beef nuggets! 20 liter turkey fryer for thanksgiving uses 100% pure heart healthy vegetable oils!
etc...
It does taste good though (a fried whole turkey done right is tasty), but thats all people remember if they remember the marketing at all. That it is healthy even though its fried, because vegetable oil..
(Score: 1) by EETech1 on Friday April 15 2016, @04:29AM
My great-grandmother lived to be a 108, and she had a lard sandwich everyday for lunch.
She went through more butter and more eggs...
Probably ate almost as much bacon as I have too:)
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday April 18 2016, @07:45PM
i know some older folks that had fantastic cholesterol when younger.. and are now diabetic, because they thought they could eat what they wanted since the cholesterol was always low.
One of them even still has so low of levels it is only readable with modern testing -- but that doesn't help with the blood sugar problems.
I guess moderation is still important, even if you have a free pass on part of what kills the rest of us.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 14 2016, @05:42PM
Additionally, these findings are specific to corn oil. Saying "vegetable oil," while accurate, is a bit misleading because most oils advertised as "vegetable oil" are actually canola oil which was not studied. Bit of title clickbait, there.
The methodology was probably fine for what they were studying but like usual the press is making a mess of it:
The intervention group reduced their saturated fat intake about 50 percent compared to their normal diet, and upped their vegetable oil intake more than 280 percent in the form of corn oil.
Result, poor health outcome: anybody surprised by that, other than the breathless press?
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:22AM
I was under the impression that the really healthy fat is not polyunsaturated, but monounsaturated, i.e., olive oil.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 14 2016, @12:01PM
Doh, even monounsaturated fat doesn't beat crispy bacon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Thursday April 14 2016, @05:26PM
If what you buy is even "olive oil" as marketed.
http://www.foodrenegade.com/your-extravirgin-olive-oil-fake/ [foodrenegade.com]
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @05:35PM
while the extra-virgin olive oil industry is plagued by counterfeiting, its too bad that site is basically just a commercial for an olive-oil "club" for which they get referral fees.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Friday April 15 2016, @10:18AM
Not all of us live in the US, you know...
I live in Greece, where olive oil is abundant, locally produced and is simply called "oil"—if you want any other kind, you have to specify it.
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Friday April 15 2016, @01:46PM
Must be nice.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:30AM
It seems that a lot of the stuff we thought would kill us wasn't the problem all along. We were warned off of foods full of cholesterol, but almost none of that actually makes it into the blood stream. Go ahead and eat the eggs. [bu.edu] And what we thought we had to avoid to prevent manufacturing our cholesterol internall turns out not to be so bad after all either.
So much of dietary science has proven to be one fad after another. We need to borrow a few super computers from the climate scientists and use them to simulate humans for a while.
Oh, and Malthus predicted [economist.com] we would all be dead of starvation by now. Yet we use way less farm land per capita today than we did when he was alive, and have nothing approximating a food shortage. He's been wrong for over 200 years, he realized he was wrong in his lifetime, and its time to let him go.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:43AM
The good thing about the new billions is that a greater total number of scientists using ever faster communication networks means faster scientific progress. Better crop yields and a better chance of technological solutions for reversing environmental destruction.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by evil_spork on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:53AM
In climate science, showing that certain activities (like excessively burning fossil fuels) are bad for the Earth interferes with the business models of some big companies. Big oil has known for a long time that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. They've actively worked to stir up opposition and get people to distrust the science.
The situation isn't a whole lot different in dietary science. There are a lot of big businesses who make their money selling unhealthy foods to people. Let's refer to them as big sugar, and they're happy to throw lots of money to convince people that their products aren't harmful. Their playbook is very similar to those of big oil and big tobacco: deny, deny, deny, and fund some biased research along the way.
There are healthier alternatives out there. It's really doesn't cut costs at all, but there are healthier sodas such as Sodastream. I really like the taste of soda, but Sodastream's flavors have a lot less sugar. Many of their syrups are a combination of cane sugar and artificial sweeteners (not aspartame, though). Mixing about three-fourths of the recommended amount of syrup, which still tastes good to me, reduces the sugar content to about a third to a fourth of normal sodas. Swapping out a drink with diet soda (especially if you get one flavored with stevia) is another step in reducing sugar. The only problem is that they've struggled to compete with big sugar here in the US. The products are great, but anything that tries to compete with big sugar risks getting squashed like a bug. I don't think I could really completely cut the sweet stuff out of my diet, so I've tried to moderate it. The problem is that what's good for my health isn't profitable for big sugar.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @12:14PM
His prediction was wrong, but his work on how food supply affects population has not been disproven. We are still the reindeer on the island with no predators and a large but finite amount of food.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday April 14 2016, @04:46PM
Maybe the reindeer should learn how to fish?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:33AM
master's thesis of Steven K. Broste
http://www.psych.uic.edu/download/Broste_thesis_1981.pdf [uic.edu]
re-analysis
http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246 [bmj.com]
dietary sources of linoleic acid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid#Dietary_sources [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 14 2016, @07:52AM
Eating too much of anything is unhealthy. Also, eating too few different things is unhealthy. As long as your food is sufficiently diverse and not excessively much, it doesn't matter too much what exactly you eat.
I suspect that most of the "X is unhealthy" studies actually show that too much of X is unhealthy. Which is generally true whatever X is. Even too much water can kill you (although it's hard to drink that much water, therefore water poisoning is a rare condition).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @09:26AM
CIA Director John Brennan begs to differ: [soylentnews.org] "I would not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again."
(Score: 3, Informative) by gidds on Thursday April 14 2016, @10:51AM
Well, yes, as A Bit of Fry & Laurie [youtube.com] pointed out so expressively [abitoffryandlaurie.co.uk]: "Of course too much is bad for you; that's what 'too much' means! [...] 'Too much' precisely means that quantity which is excessive; that's what it means. [...] I mean, if it's too much, it's too much. Too much of anything is too much. Obviously!"
But I think that's missing the point, which is how much is 'too much'?
If you'd need to consume a ludicrous or physically-impossible amount of a substance before it became dangerous, then 'too much' is not a concern; we'd generally call it 'safe' and not worry about. Whereas a substance like paracetamol (or 'acetaminophen', or whatever you call it where you are) has a harmful dose only a few times greater than its therapeutic dose, and so there is a serious risk of taking 'too much', and we take great care over dosage and availability.
So, in this case, if the 'too much' for some types of vegetable oil is rather less than previously thought, then I think that's interesting and newsworthy.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday April 14 2016, @03:41PM
Fugu - not even once.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 14 2016, @05:46PM
But I think that's missing the point, which is how much is 'too much'?
Well, the study appears to answer that one! Apparently, increasing your corn oil consumption by 280 freaking percent, is too much.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday April 14 2016, @09:46AM
Healthful? Is that even a real word? Don't you mean "healthy"?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @10:13AM
mod parent interestful
(Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday April 14 2016, @10:17AM
The Huffington Post seems to be a USA-based publication. I'm guessing that you (like me) are not an American. We have to remember that what they speak over there, while it looks very like English, is not quite English...
And, to be fair, this is one of the less-egregious differences; while unfamiliar, 'healthful' is at least fairly easy to decipher, and is not easily confused with any other words or meanings. (Words like 'pissed', 'pavement', 'purse', 'pants', 'vest', 'suspenders', 'check', 'jelly', 'biscuit', and 'chips' cause much more confusion.)
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Thursday April 14 2016, @11:33AM
(Words like 'pissed', 'pavement', 'purse', 'pants', 'vest', 'suspenders', 'check', 'jelly', 'biscuit', and 'chips' cause much more confusion.)
Wait, I know both the British and American meanings of most of these, but what are the differences between British and American "purse", "vest", and "suspenders"? (I'm an American, by the way.)
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday April 14 2016, @12:14PM
In the UK, a 'purse' is normally a small container for coins, notes, keys, credit cards — like a large thick wallet, stereotypically used by women. A US 'purse' is what we'd normally call a 'handbag'.
I think UK 'vest' is roughly equivalent to US 'undershirt'; US 'vest' is a UK 'waistcoat'.
US 'suspenders' are UK 'braces'; UK 'suspenders' are used to hold up stockings. (I don't know if there's a separate UK word for the latter meaning — I've never worn stockings — but you can probably understand the inadvertent amusement if we read of a man adjusting his suspenders!)
There are many more differences, of course, some more subtle, and context is often enough to help distinguish. One that (appropriately enough) annoys me is 'pissed' — context is often insufficient to distinguish between the UK meaning (drunk) and the US (annoyed). Especially when UK English manages perfectly well (using 'pissed off' for the latter).
If you're interested, blogs like Not One-Off Britishisms [wordpress.com] and Separated By A Common Language [blogspot.com] can be worth reading. (The former, which looks at UK language from a US point of view, can be a real eye-opener, revealing that words and phrases I've taken for granted all my life are inexplicably unknown in the US. Here in the UK it's easy to get the impression of a one-way tide of US imports being forced upon us; this blog confirms that it's very much a two-way process, and that UK English is holding its own.)
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday April 14 2016, @03:38PM
That first blog is very good. I find it compelling reading, nearly as dangerous as tvtropes. Haven't dared look at the other one yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @01:14AM
a 'purse' is normally a small container for coins [...] stereotypically used by women
Some USAian guys carry something whose lengthened name is coin purse. [google.com]
It has a slit down 1 side and you squeeze it at the ends to open it.
The lengthened name of the thing USAian women carry (same sort of thing that UK women use) is change purse. [google.com]
UK 'suspenders' are used to hold up stockings. (I don't know if there's a separate [US?] word for the latter meaning
When a USAian guy wears those, they're called garters. [google.com]
When a USAian gal wears that, it's called a garter belt. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday April 14 2016, @12:21PM
I believe that "suspenders" in US means "braces" in the UK - straps which loop over your shoulders and hold your trousers up.
"Suspenders" in the UK mean a belt round the waist next to the skin with straps going down to hold your stockings up. Used to be universal for women once but since women's tights were invented only worn by prostitutes and some other women on special romantic occasions, and maybe gay male cross-dressers (though I would not know about that).
British people find it hilarious when American men refer to their "suspenders"..
(Score: 3, Funny) by JeanCroix on Thursday April 14 2016, @03:46PM
One might almost say... Englishful?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @06:11PM
We call it "American" (pronounced "Murrican"), thankyouverymuch.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 14 2016, @01:52PM
It's from the Middle English "helthful" if Random House is to be believed.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/healthful [dictionary.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @11:18AM
There may be a degree of truthiness to this.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday April 14 2016, @12:21PM
That way one can make informed choices.
Btw, as for marketing of oil as being bad. Never bought marketing anyway..
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday April 14 2016, @02:56PM
As posted above,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleic_acid#Dietary_sources [wikipedia.org]
lists the linoleic acid content.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @04:02PM
Health science is all marketing anyway. Still eating lots of oat bran? Probably not. Drinking lots of red wine to the exclusion of white, or beer? Do you understand how anti-oxidants work and how they are or or not taken up by the body, or do you purchase anything and everything with acai or pomegranate in the name?
(Score: 1) by WillR on Thursday April 14 2016, @05:56PM
The constant stream of "X causes cancer!", "No, X prevents cancer! Buy more X!", "Y helps you lose weight! Buy Y!", "No, Y is making you fat!", "Z is good for your heart! Eat Z at least 3x a week!", "Stop eating Z, it causes heart attacks!" headlines has probably done more to undermine public trust in science than the anti-vaxers, the creationists, and the Koch brothers combined...
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @03:24AM
When you analyze it all, a few common usable traits become obvious. Oh and all these tabloids.. well at least they are usable for starting the cabin heater provided they have no plastic on them ;)
(Score: 1) by fubari on Friday April 15 2016, @05:24AM
You're probably ok on omega-6, but also watch omega-3 and omega-7.
"What is omega-7? Never heard of it"
Yeah, me neither. I just read about omega-7 today, think I will be looking for some. Here's a link for you:
excerpt from Omega-7 An Overlooked Fatty Acid [lifeextension.com]
"The typical American diet contains plenty of omega-6s, but is woefully deficient in omega-3s and monounsaturated fats. This has led to a consensus to eat more foods rich in omega-3s (fish and some nuts) and monounsaturated fats (from olive oil and some nuts), less saturated fats, and no hydrogenated fats.
Scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Cleveland Clinic have been investigating a unique fatty acid that has not yet caught on in the mainstream.
This novel fatty acid called omega-7 can help break the cycle of high blood sugar, elevated lipid levels, inflammation, and excess fat gain as well as enhance insulin sensitivity."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @12:53PM
Who ever said vegetable oil was health?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday April 14 2016, @03:46PM
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/how-vegetable-oils-replaced-animal-fats-in-the-american-diet/256155/ [theatlantic.com]
People used to prefer cooking with animal fats since cold pressed vegetable oils had worse smoke points before the industrial revolution.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @05:21PM
At least this is better than on Yahoo, where it seems that 'You' are always doing it wrong!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 14 2016, @05:47PM
I prefer peanut, coconut, and olive for cooking.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by termigator on Friday April 15 2016, @08:06AM
Olive, coconut, and avocado
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2016, @06:07PM
"Healthful" means promoting health.
"Heathy" sometimes means that, especially to the British and the uneducated. It more normally means that something has good health.
It's better to use the more-specific word. When I hear you say that your meal is healthy, my first reaction is that it is alive and well. That's good for alfalfa sprouts, but not so good for pork.