Industrial Oils - The Magic Pill

(karen) #1

Watched the documentary The Magic Pill the other day and one segment stuck with me. ETA: when she says “vegetable oils” she’s talking about the ones that require heat and hexane (primarily corn, canola and soybean oil), not olive or coconut or nut and seed oils that can be cold pressed.

Kate Shanahan:

Vegetable oils are toxic. They’re industrial oils. They are foods that we could not have manufactured until the industrial era. There are seeds that have oil in them but that don’t release their oil readily, so you have to use high heat and solvents to do so. That totally wrecks the molecules, destroys many
of the antioxidants, It’s a mangled, disgusting, smelly mess.

Every cell in your body is wrapped in a membrane that’s made out of about
half fat and half protein. If the fatty acids comprising your cell membrane are unnatural, that cell membrane cannot function in the way that it’s supposed to function. And that’s the beginning of disease. It starts at the cellular level. Vegetable oils are acting like little miniature Trojan horses. Your body doesn’t recognize them as not natural.It will make cell membranes, it will make brain cells,but it’s as if you were trying to build a house and your contractor said,
"Um, well, we don’t have any bricks, “but we do have these little Styrofoam balls. -Let’s go for it.”

I found it a compelling metaphor, and motivation to be sure my new cells are built with natural fat, but I’m wondering if you agree with the science here, and if you think potentially corrupt cell membranes (i.e. cell membranes built with the fats provided by corn/soy oils and vegetable transfats) somehow affect ketosis or play a part in our metabolic disease.

(Dameon Welch-Abernathy) #2

Considering that vegetable oils are so unstable they can spontaneously combust in a clothes dryer, I’d rather not ingest them. Ever again.

(Troy Anthony) #3

Yes this goes beyond ketosis. There are healthy ways and unhealthy ways to get into ketosis. Ketosis is just a shift in metabolism and will be achieved through carb restriction no matter what fat you eat, but if you are poisoning yourself to get there I imagine new problems will arise. Junk in junk out still applies even to keto.

(karen) #4

I agree with both of you, I have no intention of poisoning myself with industrial oils and have been avoiding them in my own cooking for years. I’m just wondering if the specific claim against them in regard to perverting cell membranes is scientifically supported, and what, if anything, that means in terms of insulin pushing fat in or lipolysis pulling it back out again. “Cannot function the way it’s supposed to function” … what does that specifically mean???

(Troy Anthony) #5

I think it would be difficult to isolate the particular effect of just vegetable oil on a cell. I’ve never seen scientific journal worthy evidence on the point, but it intuitively makes sense to me. In layman’s terms, any food the body doesn’t recognize will result in distress, like inflammation and hormonal imbalance. I’ve wonder this same question with the difference of say grass fed and corn fed beef. I haven’t seen real studies on the exact difference the fat from the different cows would have on our cells and hormones, but my instinct is the fat from an inflamed, sick cow is going to be treated different then the fat from a cow we evolved to eat. I know some disagree and their isn’t much hard evidence I’ve found either way, so at some point it comes down to personal sensibility. I also find that most studies done on food are backed by some food industry trying to make a point rather than open inquiry, so it’s digficult to navigate. Serious scientific studies are expensive.

(karen) #6

I’ve read the big difference between corn fed and grass finished beef is the omega fatty acid content - corn = omega 6, which is already too prevalent in a SAD, while grass = omega 3, which we’re usually low on. So it might be possible to target that for a study, even if the direct effect of different beefs - beeves? isn’t traceable. Maybe the same holds true for veg oils, I’m not sure what is specifically bad about them that we could focus on.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

Read The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz. She spends a couple of chapters talking about partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and the seed oils now replacing them as companies phase trans fats out of their food. The hydrogenation process creates hundreds of fatty acids unknown to nature, and Ms. Teicholz discusses the studies that indicate problems occurring when they are taken into cell walls in place of the fatty acids the body would normally use. The replacements for the partially-hydrogenated oils are seed oils that have lower smoke points and that are therefore much less stable under heat. Not only does the haze of volatilized oil particles and oxidation products cause a shellac-like buildup on walls and equipment, but they keep on reacting in the uniforms that are sent out for cleaning. The uniforms have been known to spontaneous burst into flames in the laundry trucks and in the dryers after cleaning. And according to Ms. Teicholz, no one has been researching the effect of these particles on the lungs of food-service employees exposed to them. Ms. Teicholz remarks that these were problems unknown back in the days when companies used tallow and lard for their deep-fat frying. . . .

(karen) #8

thank you Paul, I’m going to check this out.

#9

I have a related question.

If one has been consuming these unhealthy unstable, polyunsaturated fats for a few decades, and they now make up some part of one’s cell walls etc., is this damage reversible to any degree?

Or, put another way, what is the lifespan of these fats in the cell membrane? Are we stuck with them for life, or will they be rebuilt over months or years with more healthy (non-styrofoam!) materials?

(karen) #10

I’ve always loved the adage that all the cells in your body replace themselves within seven years. It’s probably complete BS, but it’s comforting.