Could you elaborate on that? It doesn't surprise we that "genetic changes" is used sensationally, just would like to know what is actually happening and whether it's uncommon or something pretty normal?
Yep, and this is link to disease that people often miss - when we attribute conditions and diseases to "genetics", what is implied is that it is due to some environmental exposure or detrimental pattern of behavior that hasn't been identified, causing some gene expression/mutation that ends up being harmful.
It's nice to see the anti seed oil discourse ramping up lately, but I'm sort of pessimistic about this. Like what is the endgame, exactly?
Seed oils are in basically everything. Trying to avoid them is like trying to avoid endocrine disruptors by not touching plastic or eating anything that has touched plastic. It's sort of an absurd thing to even attempt, it would drive you insane.
As someone who's quite interested in the anti-seed oil discourse/slowly forming movement, my endgame is simply having more people aware of what's in their food. We've accepted what's been handed to us for so long, without a significant percentage of the population stopping to look at exactly what's on the plate.
The more people that are stopping to read ingredients labels. analyze their diet, and think critically about their consumption, the better.
This is an avoidable problem though. We invented this by racing to the bottom and assembling “food” with substitutes for real nutrition. The goal is to educate humanity so that we can start making more conscious decisions about what we eat and move away from this.
yes, they are difficult to cut out. Your options are everywhere very much narrowed. But In 90% of cases I've been able to find a satisfactory alternative.
It is interesting how two simple rules (no seed oil, no corn syrup) almost entirely prevent you from putting terrible things in your body. It also repeatedly enforces a more mindful attitude towards diet.
I experimented with removing seed oils for the past six months or so. Almost every year in the winter I get a lot of pain in my joints and especially where previous injuries have occurred. Halfway through this season I've had very little discomfort, and it has been a bad winter where I am.
Recommend checking out this "How It's Made" segment on the process of making this stuff comestible (it involves bleach, very high temperatures and chemical refinement):
The end game is policy changes and regulation so they get removed from the supply chain and it ultimately becomes automatic for consumers to avoid them. You need studies demonstrating the danger is real to convince legislators.
I don't understand what you mean. Seed oils aren't in most things; if seed oil is in even half the food you eat, your diet is likely appalling. I'm pretty sure I haven't eaten seed oil in at least a few months. I mean yeah if you're eating Doritos, sure, but it's really not that hard to cook from whole foods.
Plastic is much harder to avoid; not even remotely close I'd say.
>Trying to avoid them is like trying to avoid endocrine disruptors by not touching plastic or eating anything that has touched plastic.
Is there any evidence that something transfers to you if you do touch it? This is the first I am hearing about something like this. I thought plastic was essentially a solid.
I have been interested in converting much of my daily interaction of plastic to other materials. Things like converting my Zerowater water filter to a homemade ceramic pot....but the water filter itself is plastic so whats the point?
They're mostly difficult to cut out because we thought they'd be fine to mix in to all kinds of stuff. If we stop thinking that, and in particular if there were to be regulatory changes that made certain seed oils less desirable as an agreement, there would be rapid change.
Research like this can also help cut back on a lot of the scapegoating that goes around about the obesity crisis.
It's actually not all that difficult to parse ingredients lists while shopping. A good rule of thumb in American grocery stores is to stick to the perimeter while shopping (produce, dairy, meat) to avoid seed oils. :^)
The endgame is to avoid them where possible in order to minimize the risk. It's not absurd and very reasonable. People stick to all kinds of obscure diets and most are not going insane.
On a societal level, I think the endgame should be to eliminate the subsidies which make seed oils so cheap, and to design a subsidy/tax structured to reduce the cost of healthy foods and increase the cost of unhealthy foods.
> The same UC Riverside research team found in 2015 that soybean oil induces obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and fatty liver in mice. Then in a 2017 study, the same group learned that if soybean oil is engineered to be low in linoleic acid, it induces less obesity and insulin resistance.
> “The hypothalamus regulates body weight via your metabolism, maintains body temperature, is critical for reproduction and physical growth as well as your response to stress,”
Italics mine.
Linoleic acid is what induces torpor (hibernation) in mammals. We are mammals. People in the modern world are possibly something like half hibernating, inclusive of mental effects and of course the effect on difficult-to-remove-weight. The rise in Soybean oil consumption is an enormous change in the human diet over the last 50 years. The scale of it replacing so many fats, especially formerly animal fats, is just huge.
See: Humans and Hibernating Mammals React to The Same Amount of Dietary Linoleic Acid in the Same Way. By Becoming Torpid.
I used to eat sardines every day trying to get the health benefits of fatty fish. They were packed in soybean oil. I drank the oil too. With time I began to have bizarre mental issues that I finally tracked down to the sardines. Sardines packed in olive oil don’t cause this issue. That’s my anecdata to share.
Interestingly enough, soybean oil is virtually non-existent over here in Germany - at least not as oil that you can buy (here the dominant ones are canola, good ol' sunflower and olive - the latter not for frying though), and I also haven't heard of it as an ingredient in industrial foods, but I wouldn't vouch for that.
What is soybean oil traditionally called in the US? I've never actually seen "soybean oil" myself (though it surely exists). Is this the same as "vegetable oil"?
I expect that most of the soybean oil consumed in the US is consumed as an ingredient in something else—salad dressing, sauces, snacks, etc.—rather than a bottle of "soybean oil" (usually "Vegetable Oil") in their pantry.
Taking account that this is unproven in humans -- it's enough for me to avoid soybean oil, as cooking oil choice is not very important for my palate.
That said, which oils would you use for frying and baking? Most high smoke point oils are, like soybean, polyunsaturated, so I'd guess that they could have some of the same (proposed) negative effects. Bonus points if the alternative is widely available (I see potential options like avocado oil and ghee, which may not be in my local stores).
Edit:
To clarify, the following oils are ALSO very high in PUFAs and thus might have similar issues to soybean oil: grapeseed, safflower, sunflower, corn, walnut, cottonseed.
Somewhat lower but still fairly high in PUFAs: sesame, canola, peanut.
Finally, some oils are low in PUFAs but not suitable for the same uses as soybean oil. Olive oil is one of these.
The three oils/fat I have been taught to use in my Indian kitchen are: sesame seed oil, ghee and coconut oil. Sesame seed oil because it has a high smoke point. Ditto with ghee.
The choice of oils always has to do with smoke point and hence what we use it for in the kitchen.
[..] Sesame oil is full of antioxidants. Along with vitamin E and phytosterols, it contains lignans, sesamol, and sesaminol. These compounds help fight free radicals in your body, which may reduce your risk of developing chronic diseases. Sesame oil has a balanced ratio of omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids.[..]
And I am from the south of india which is very hot. In the northern climes where it gets colder, sesame seed oil is substituted with mustard seed oil.
I don’t use olive oil for anything that requires heat. Mostly for salad dressings or drizzling etc. good olive oil..esp unrefined olive oil has very low smoke point. It’s actually harmful to use it for frying etc.
Regionally where olive oil is more abundant, grape seed oil is used for high smoke point cooking. I am also fond of avacado oil these day. I still stick to the trinity of coconut/sesame/ghee…but I also need to test other oils for diff gigs.
Wow. Read one article from the web and everything else is ‘BS’.
I mentioned that this is for an Indian kitchen. Specifically. Our cooking involves tadka(tempering) and sautéing..we use more pulses/lentils and one pot vegetable preparations than meat..meat requires high heat for Maillard reactions.
High smoke point is not to just guide for deep frying in Indian kitchens. We don’t use oil just for deep frying. Everything I learnt is by sound rather than sight with high heat. With the spices we use, aroma and flavour is an integral part of the cuisine. When we temper mustard seeds, we have to ‘listen’ to the sputtering. With ghee, we have to ‘listen’ to the sound of milk solids caramelising. Higher heat will destroy the food.
Good quality olive oil at any heating point is wasted. Refined olive oil at high smoking point is more trouble than food. Considering I have an actual degree in cooking..of international standard for many kinds of cuisines ..…plus multi generational/multi regional Indian cuisine by experience, I think that I can safely ignore any calls for BS about my food and cooking on Hacker News. Stick to your lane.
South italian here. People from south italy have traditionally produced and used olive oil pretty much exclusively and for pretty much everything. Frying stuff is a huge part of the tradition. No relevant problem ever found regarding that. On the contrary: the mediterranean diet is a well known healthy diet.
we have decided to go with having mustard seeds pressed for oil while being physically present for the process. the result is a much much better oil than the one that comes packaged. they say its "plain unprocessed oil" but there is a significant difference between what we get in our press and what comes in a bottle.
I should not be surprised that soybean oil is the most widely consumed oil, but I had not actually realized it. I had to look it up; It is in margarine, mayonnaise, and most vegetable oils. And I just had not payed that close of attention.
Because the 3 most consumed oils are soybean, corn and canola oils, I wonder why didn’t they study the 3 oils at once. The effects, if any will be easily visible through differences.
> In all likelihood, it is not healthy for humans.
I'm sure their mouse studies are showing them something, but this is the kind of bold claim that wants to be tested anthropologically as much as bio-pharmacologically.
China is the leading consumer of soybean oil. It's been a dietary staple since the 11th century.
Any claim it's generally unhealthy has to reconcile with the fact that it's been used for 1000+ years. Perhaps one could claim "not optimally healthy," but it's not a novel chemical.
Two thoughts, be wary of academics with "specialties" until their work is reproduced and/or peer reviewed. Also people are not exactly rodents so they need to reproduce this in humans which is understandably far more difficult.
Whole industry started because of this claim, plant based cooking oil, margarine, trans fat. Each targeted in replacing one aspect of animal oil. Each are later found to be (more) harmful than animal fat.
Soybean oil has less partially hydrogenated oils than other deodorized oils, making it potentially the healthiest of the deodorized oils.
Obviously deodorized oils are not very healthy, but I honestly don't understand all the posts like "Eat only coconut oil/butter/lard". For the "appeal to science", there's plenty of data that diets very high in saturated fats is a risk factor for heart disease. For the "appeal to nature", ancient peoples did not have our modern access to animal fats, hunter gatherers ate a lot of seeds, nuts and bugs to fill out a diet that otherwise ate small lean game with occasional big fatty hunting successes.
I listened to a great CBC-produced story on all of the "propaganda" surrounding soybeans back in the 90s... there were stories floating around that it raised estrogen levels in men and made you grow man-boobs basically if you ate it. I remember my friends joking about it at the time.
CBC wrote it off as completely without basis, said the chinese had been subsisting off of them for thousands of years, if they are fine eating it so should we be etc...
It was a convincing argument... but then again Canada grows a huge amount of soybeans and CBC is always pro-government so what to believe?
I went all carnivore 15 months ago, and a side effect of that is the removal of all seed oils from the diet. The results include complete remission of my diabetes and associated fatigue and brain fog, the loss of more than 60 excess pounds, greater joy of life and emotional stability, and a new, regular desire to exercise and move my body.
I don't know how much of that is about cutting out seed oils. I am getting large amounts of butter and tallow in my diet.
Over the last 3 decades I've had the experience of working on and off in the restaurant industry so I've been able to observe what happens to my body and which type of health issues seemed to always disappear when I'm not working in a kitchen versus when I am, and I have narrowed it down to only the kitchens where there was soybean oil in the fryer that correlated with extreme sinus issues.
Eventually people will realize that the vast majority of the foods they buy at the store are:
* Undernourishing: lacking historical nutritional value
* Lopsided / Disproportionate: ingredients are wildly over/ under represented wrt 'nature', like extreme levels of PUFAs in products due to added seed oils
* Addictive Filler: Added suger or other added sweeteners, added corn derivatives, etc
The only way to really avoid this is to go to extremes. For me that means cooking all my own food and tracing as many of my ingredients back to their sources and vetting them. Just buying 'USDA Organic' isn't enough these days, I need to ensure the various farms are not contaminating their soil with pesticides / fertilizers, among other factors.
What I'd really like to see, and this is a bit out there for HN, is a US certification for farmers practicing both USDA Organic and Korean Natural Farming (a somewhat radical organic approach to farming). I trust KNF with my health.
What astonished me is that it has been shown that the vegetables and fruits of today, at least the commercially available ones, are substantially less nutritious than what was available in the past.
[+] [-] roywiggins|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] projektfu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] version_five|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShepherdKing|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shaicoleman|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM
Here's a slide where he shows that soybean oil induces diabetes (in mice):
https://youtu.be/7kGnfXXIKZM?t=2341
The talk makes the case on how it's also applicable to humans.
[+] [-] unicornporn|4 years ago|reply
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29610056/
[+] [-] voldacar|4 years ago|reply
Seed oils are in basically everything. Trying to avoid them is like trying to avoid endocrine disruptors by not touching plastic or eating anything that has touched plastic. It's sort of an absurd thing to even attempt, it would drive you insane.
[+] [-] SpringDrive|4 years ago|reply
The more people that are stopping to read ingredients labels. analyze their diet, and think critically about their consumption, the better.
[+] [-] whalesalad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trts|4 years ago|reply
It is interesting how two simple rules (no seed oil, no corn syrup) almost entirely prevent you from putting terrible things in your body. It also repeatedly enforces a more mindful attitude towards diet.
I experimented with removing seed oils for the past six months or so. Almost every year in the winter I get a lot of pain in my joints and especially where previous injuries have occurred. Halfway through this season I've had very little discomfort, and it has been a bad winter where I am.
Recommend checking out this "How It's Made" segment on the process of making this stuff comestible (it involves bleach, very high temperatures and chemical refinement):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfk2IXlZdbI
[+] [-] dataangel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blindmute|4 years ago|reply
Plastic is much harder to avoid; not even remotely close I'd say.
[+] [-] langsoul-com|4 years ago|reply
Technically, if you did the carnivore diet using 80% animal fat butter, or lard, then it'll be fine.
Except, the price you pay is enormous. Can't even eat a caesar salad!
[+] [-] scythe|4 years ago|reply
A clear understanding of why these oils cause these problems would be a good start, methinks.
[+] [-] nebula8804|4 years ago|reply
Is there any evidence that something transfers to you if you do touch it? This is the first I am hearing about something like this. I thought plastic was essentially a solid.
I have been interested in converting much of my daily interaction of plastic to other materials. Things like converting my Zerowater water filter to a homemade ceramic pot....but the water filter itself is plastic so whats the point?
[+] [-] cbsmith|4 years ago|reply
Research like this can also help cut back on a lot of the scapegoating that goes around about the obesity crisis.
[+] [-] tuckerpo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buckthundaz|4 years ago|reply
Note that this simple method of making what you eat will mitigate exposure to endocrine disrupting plastics too.
[+] [-] lazyjones|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coffeecat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobrains|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waffle_maniac|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonsarris|4 years ago|reply
> “The hypothalamus regulates body weight via your metabolism, maintains body temperature, is critical for reproduction and physical growth as well as your response to stress,”
Italics mine.
Linoleic acid is what induces torpor (hibernation) in mammals. We are mammals. People in the modern world are possibly something like half hibernating, inclusive of mental effects and of course the effect on difficult-to-remove-weight. The rise in Soybean oil consumption is an enormous change in the human diet over the last 50 years. The scale of it replacing so many fats, especially formerly animal fats, is just huge.
See: Humans and Hibernating Mammals React to The Same Amount of Dietary Linoleic Acid in the Same Way. By Becoming Torpid.
https://fireinabottle.net/humans-and-hibernating-mammals-rea...
(I submitted that article because I think its worth its own discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30456454)
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rob74|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobmischka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] admn2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jesterpm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethbr0|4 years ago|reply
From looking at cooking oils yesterday, you'll see either a mix (soy, canola, olive, etc) or a specific oil (canola) in the ingredients list.
[+] [-] lemax|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] telchior|4 years ago|reply
That said, which oils would you use for frying and baking? Most high smoke point oils are, like soybean, polyunsaturated, so I'd guess that they could have some of the same (proposed) negative effects. Bonus points if the alternative is widely available (I see potential options like avocado oil and ghee, which may not be in my local stores).
Edit: To clarify, the following oils are ALSO very high in PUFAs and thus might have similar issues to soybean oil: grapeseed, safflower, sunflower, corn, walnut, cottonseed. Somewhat lower but still fairly high in PUFAs: sesame, canola, peanut. Finally, some oils are low in PUFAs but not suitable for the same uses as soybean oil. Olive oil is one of these.
[+] [-] jelliclesfarm|4 years ago|reply
The choice of oils always has to do with smoke point and hence what we use it for in the kitchen.
[..] Sesame oil is full of antioxidants. Along with vitamin E and phytosterols, it contains lignans, sesamol, and sesaminol. These compounds help fight free radicals in your body, which may reduce your risk of developing chronic diseases. Sesame oil has a balanced ratio of omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids.[..]
And I am from the south of india which is very hot. In the northern climes where it gets colder, sesame seed oil is substituted with mustard seed oil.
I don’t use olive oil for anything that requires heat. Mostly for salad dressings or drizzling etc. good olive oil..esp unrefined olive oil has very low smoke point. It’s actually harmful to use it for frying etc.
Regionally where olive oil is more abundant, grape seed oil is used for high smoke point cooking. I am also fond of avacado oil these day. I still stick to the trinity of coconut/sesame/ghee…but I also need to test other oils for diff gigs.
[+] [-] jelliclesfarm|4 years ago|reply
I mentioned that this is for an Indian kitchen. Specifically. Our cooking involves tadka(tempering) and sautéing..we use more pulses/lentils and one pot vegetable preparations than meat..meat requires high heat for Maillard reactions.
High smoke point is not to just guide for deep frying in Indian kitchens. We don’t use oil just for deep frying. Everything I learnt is by sound rather than sight with high heat. With the spices we use, aroma and flavour is an integral part of the cuisine. When we temper mustard seeds, we have to ‘listen’ to the sputtering. With ghee, we have to ‘listen’ to the sound of milk solids caramelising. Higher heat will destroy the food.
Good quality olive oil at any heating point is wasted. Refined olive oil at high smoking point is more trouble than food. Considering I have an actual degree in cooking..of international standard for many kinds of cuisines ..…plus multi generational/multi regional Indian cuisine by experience, I think that I can safely ignore any calls for BS about my food and cooking on Hacker News. Stick to your lane.
[+] [-] znpy|4 years ago|reply
Claims like this are BS.
South italian here. People from south italy have traditionally produced and used olive oil pretty much exclusively and for pretty much everything. Frying stuff is a huge part of the tradition. No relevant problem ever found regarding that. On the contrary: the mediterranean diet is a well known healthy diet.
[+] [-] donatj|4 years ago|reply
Olive oil is actually one of the chemically safest oils to heat.
[+] [-] cityofdelusion|4 years ago|reply
Here is one of many studies showing the opposite: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02786...
[+] [-] 2Gkashmiri|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pilingual|4 years ago|reply
This is not true.
[+] [-] Bedon292|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atlantas|4 years ago|reply
The good oils are avocado oil, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil.
Is this correct?
[+] [-] sinuhe69|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shadowgovt|4 years ago|reply
I'm sure their mouse studies are showing them something, but this is the kind of bold claim that wants to be tested anthropologically as much as bio-pharmacologically.
China is the leading consumer of soybean oil. It's been a dietary staple since the 11th century.
Any claim it's generally unhealthy has to reconcile with the fact that it's been used for 1000+ years. Perhaps one could claim "not optimally healthy," but it's not a novel chemical.
[+] [-] ck2|4 years ago|reply
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_vis=1&q=Sladek+Soybean
Two thoughts, be wary of academics with "specialties" until their work is reproduced and/or peer reviewed. Also people are not exactly rodents so they need to reproduce this in humans which is understandably far more difficult.
[+] [-] a_c|4 years ago|reply
Whole industry started because of this claim, plant based cooking oil, margarine, trans fat. Each targeted in replacing one aspect of animal oil. Each are later found to be (more) harmful than animal fat.
I would recommend the book big fat surprise https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16130316-the-big-fat-sur... if anyone is interested in learning how the oil industry evolved
[+] [-] verall|4 years ago|reply
Obviously deodorized oils are not very healthy, but I honestly don't understand all the posts like "Eat only coconut oil/butter/lard". For the "appeal to science", there's plenty of data that diets very high in saturated fats is a risk factor for heart disease. For the "appeal to nature", ancient peoples did not have our modern access to animal fats, hunter gatherers ate a lot of seeds, nuts and bugs to fill out a diet that otherwise ate small lean game with occasional big fatty hunting successes.
[+] [-] johnnyApplePRNG|4 years ago|reply
CBC wrote it off as completely without basis, said the chinese had been subsisting off of them for thousands of years, if they are fine eating it so should we be etc...
It was a convincing argument... but then again Canada grows a huge amount of soybeans and CBC is always pro-government so what to believe?
Perhaps there was some truth to the rumour?
[+] [-] hirundo|4 years ago|reply
I don't know how much of that is about cutting out seed oils. I am getting large amounts of butter and tallow in my diet.
[+] [-] dustractor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] errantmind|4 years ago|reply
* Undernourishing: lacking historical nutritional value
* Lopsided / Disproportionate: ingredients are wildly over/ under represented wrt 'nature', like extreme levels of PUFAs in products due to added seed oils
* Addictive Filler: Added suger or other added sweeteners, added corn derivatives, etc
The only way to really avoid this is to go to extremes. For me that means cooking all my own food and tracing as many of my ingredients back to their sources and vetting them. Just buying 'USDA Organic' isn't enough these days, I need to ensure the various farms are not contaminating their soil with pesticides / fertilizers, among other factors.
What I'd really like to see, and this is a bit out there for HN, is a US certification for farmers practicing both USDA Organic and Korean Natural Farming (a somewhat radical organic approach to farming). I trust KNF with my health.
[+] [-] frankfrankfrank|4 years ago|reply