When ever I read any nutrition studies all I see is confounders. That's not a jab at the people that conduct it, they do their best with the data they have....but there are so many confounders it's hard not to take what you want from "health" studies.
While I have a great deal of regard for the scientific method, the scientific industry has become exactly that. Enslaved by endless grant grubbing, lurching into whatever the latest fad is to attract those grants, riddled with mediocrity and beholden to easily gameable metrics.
I am old enough to have seen 4 cycles of "eggs are good", "eggs are bad". It's difficult to put much value in a field when results like that are pretty frequent.
That sets aside the cultush aspects of "the science", God knows how many times some idiot quoted "science" at me during COVID, clearly not understanding what they were talking about. They were acting on faith and tribalism, nothing logical. Scientists are fallable humans and do the same things.
But throwing everything out the window is also not rational.
Broadly, human health studies do seem to say the same thing: Exercise is clearly good (although not ultra marathoning!). Sleep is clearly important. Generally, fasting seems to be useful. Fruits and vegetables are at their worst neutral but almost certainly positive. Meat and dairy is fine.
Everything else is probably fine in moderation.
I am suspicious of preservatives (they are antibacterial and your gut biome is clearly important) and too much emulsification in your gut may also be a problem for your gut biome although I'm not aware of studies showing that.
But focusing on any specific aspects of diet to save your health, seems counter intuitive. And I often wonder if the stress of worrying about all this stuff negates what moderate good a restrictive diet might do.
In the end adages become adages because they speak to a truth.
I think "Everything in moderation, including moderation" will probably give you as good a result as anything.
I thought the problem was partially hydrogenated oils, not all vegetable oils. The one study you referenced was cold-pressed turnip rapeseed oil vs butter. This doesn't mean much to me. I still think labels that list "canola oil" may or may not be hydrogenated and or heated with the use of solvents. This is what I would try to avoid. Check your labels, canola oil is in everything.
The answer to "what does this actually do," is the same answer as when people ask about this with food dyes.
Nutritional research is janky and easily manipulated. Therefore largely useless. But what we all know -- in our bones, and one can know things in other ways beyond the scientific method -- is that industrialized and global food production is cruel, bad for the planet, and encourages us to eat things that are unhealthy. This, it seems, at least partly explains the explosion of chronic disease and mental health problems paradoxically concomitant with advanced medical science and prosperity.
These initiatives point us towards addressing *that* problem.
That's funny, because that's actually exactly what you did about my post. What am I supposed to do? Say yes, you're right, we can ignore science, why did I bother because we can just intuit the answers? I obviously don't agree with that or else I wouldn't have written the post.
This is also incorrect. What I'm *adding* to the post is an answer to your question "Why bother with these things?" You restricted yourself to a narrow set of acceptable reasons.
If you'd like to make the case that the scientific method and maximized utilitarianism are the only ways to know things, and then select action items, feel free to do that.
But this post and your responses have that as an embedded assumption not explicitly stated. My aim was to point this out, and suggest an answer to the questions that appear to confound you.
You still seem combative and defensive. Given your recent life experience I can understand why. But a bit more "yes/and" might help defuse that. If that interests you. Maybe it doesn't!
How can we reconcile an unbridgeable epistemic difference? It's not personal at all. But I've believed those things and know that mindset. There's no real talking about it. The only thing I'll say is that when things become decided based on collective intuition--well, how is that different from Covid, or any other philosophy that seeks to constraint man out of a concern for safety? This is why evidence is important. It's an ethical, political, existential issue. Not to get too deep here, but it's not about epistemology but about how you see the end of humanity.
Interesting observation ... as holding collective intuition more closely would have led to a more humane and sensible COVID response, no? It at least would have bought time for the actual evidence to blow through the institutional fear porn.
Nobody anywhere, as an example, thought in their hearts it was a good idea to let Grandpa die alone.
I hear the exact opposite of what you say from doctors who also sight studies. So who should we believe? All I know is when I follow the advice that is currently standard, that is what you are saying, i am overweight and my cholesterol is high. I have to be on cholesterol Controlling medication and high blood pressure medication. But when I switched to a low carb diet and use tallow and butter, etc., although I do eat vegetables, my cholesterol levels seem to be good and my weight dropped by about twenty pounds. Im gonna stick with what works for me.
I didn't say what changes I made other than the diet. In fact the only other change was to not eat breakfast because I'm no longer hungry in the morning like I was with the higher carb diet.
When I say I was previously doing what is taught to be healthy I mean that. I haven't eaten sugar or sugary products for years with very occasional exceptions. Any food with added sugar has been on my no go list for a long time. I only ate whole grain breads and went to the gym regularly, etc. I even cut way down on meat for a while. But I still had high cholesterol, high BP, and was overweight. It's only been since i went low carb and cut out the seed oils that all that changed. In fact my HDL was low previously and now it's normal. My LDL is high but it was high before as well. One other thing I've done is to cut out all highly processed meets that have any kind of preservatives or added chemicals.
I see what your saying. I misunderstood. Yes I realize the low carb lifestyle is doing the heavy lifting. I didn't mean to say cutting out seed oils was making all the difference. Yet, I can't see how using highly processed oils that use harsh chemicals to get produced can be better than using natural oils which are produced without all the harsh chemicals. Even though they say no significant amount of the chemicals remain.
It's similar to coffee decaffeinated with chemicals. They say no significant amounts of the chemicals remain but when I drink decaffeinated coffee I get headaches. If I just give up coffee completely I don't get headaches. So something in the decaffeinated coffee is causing the headaches. What else is there but the chemicals used?
I went off statins for high cholesterol and switched to Berberine. My cholesterol, with no changes to my diet, was lowered from 205 to 170. Statins cause more harm than good after reading A Midwestern Doctor here on Substack.
I think every person is different. I don't believe in percentages and numbers. My blood pressure is my blood pressure. To compare my numbers to the numbers of other people takes away my from my personal being. Everyone is telling you should store your stuff in glass containers, but everything from the store is packed in plastic.
If that is what people worry about that is okay with me, but why? If people like the taste of butter, let them eat it. Some people love read meat. I think it smells weird. A former doctor told me I should stop eating pork, because I had a rash and he thought it was from milk and pork. It turned out to be from gel shampoo. I don't believe in one science fits all, even though someone comes with 1000 'studies'. A few years ago a study showed, that quite a lot of studies were either never done, badly done, and if they compare food, how can they compare my digestion system to that of anyone else? Interesting to read, just like the 1950s proof that smoking is good for you.
In the 1950s we knew that smoking was bad for decades. The science was clear but the politics and special interests were lying. This is not that paradoxical.
Well, now I am really confused. Nutrition information has been corrupted by money for so long. That is why it keeps changing. I don't know what is true anymore. The processed food is made to be addictive and it has loads of bad stuff in it - chemicals, fats, sugar, sodium - even if it is labeled healthy.
Correct. The biggest problem is that processed food is made to be addictive and has too many calories and if you eat too much of it, which is what it is designed for, you’re going to get fat.
It’s actually very simple. Eat the fats God gave in the packaging He gave it. Industrially produced seed oils aren’t it . I don’t care what your “data” shows.
If I understand the issue correctly, it's not that using sunflower oil on your salad is going to be a major problem, though the Omega-3 profile is not as good as olive oil. The problem comes when these seed oils, and let's recall that Canola is an artificial creation from the Rape seed which, used to be a machine oil, are put into deep friers and other forms of high heat food processing and cooking which severely denatures their molecular structure. Unstable oils don't do well in high heat applications, whereas Tallow is very good for high heat.
As for being disappointed in RFK Jr, perhaps let's be realistic about expectations. RFK Jr has been fighting various groups for years, has had his head in loads of data, battles in courts and the problems with the 'American' diet are considerable. They won't be undone in 3 months. Apparently minor changes such as this are still positive developments.
Mercola’s recent study found in PubMed. LA appears to be involved in mitochondrial and cell membrane issues with oxidation problems. Obviously in nutritional studies things change, but there are certainly issues with LA.
"If you’re anti-authoritarian or skeptical of centralized power (and believe me, I understand that), you might be naturally inclined toward skepticism toward seed oils.
And so I think that’s part of where it comes from."
1) What about the unintended consequences for the eyes using seed oils?
2) Most seed oils are used in processed foods, that may be more the issue. Using an oil alone is different than eating crap food loaded with it.
I didn't supply the research for #1 (if you want me to I will) but there is a lot of already completed research. Did include one.
One thing you have to wonder is seed oils came into wide use in the 1990's. So 20 years. I guess we'd have to see the effects over the last 20 years on health. Not so good. Yes, I know that may not cause all or most of it but it's suspect.
Well, the two studies that found this were poorly controlled with known flaws. In at least one, the seed oil group had a much higher intake of trans fats. Most other better controlled studies show the opposite outcome. Why doesn’t she mention these three facts? Well, it’s because they do not suit her narrative.
That said, I largely agree with her that the impact of saturated fat on health appears to be marginal, given that 1) there are a number of risk factors impacting cardiovascular disease risk, 2) LDL is just one of these, 3) LDL levels account for a modest minority of net work, 4) the impact of saturated fat on LDL levels is very modest, 5) the differences in saturated fat intake across the population is relatively small, 6) the threshold for saturated fat intake to have an impact on cardiovascular disease risk is much lower than the population average.
Saturated fat intake per se is largely a nothingburger, but not absolutely zero. The inverse is also true of seed oils. And the insistence that swapping seed oils for tallow in french fries or restaurant food is somehow going to “make America healthy again” is absurd.
Do you really think a Big Mac combo is somehow going to be made healthy by swapping the fats that its cooked in? If you’re eating enough of that to matter, you have much bigger health problems to worry about.
I thought you said data doesn’t matter. Now it does? Sounds like you pick and choose your arguments based on conclusions you have already decided on. Get out of my comments. You do not belong here.
Really? This is a bold statement ... I question this claim ...
"Nobody has tested a modern diet that's ultra-high in omega-6 and very low in vitamin E. It's worth exploring."
And Yes. Overprocessing is a villain in this story, however, RFK,Jr. is not. Regardless of his effectiveness, his focus on the issues has awakened people who may not have been aware of the pitfalls of modern convenience in terms of their health.
We are a trusting bunch. Our Secular Faith in Pharma is in need of investigation. RFK holds the Bully Pulpit for that. He is the one bright penny in an altogether dismal political pocket.
God no longer exists. Jesus no longer saves. But Big Medico will. Praise Big. All the Bigs! Pharm, Med, Ag, Biz. The catechisms are all there for our perusal. The charts, graphs and conclusions of bought experts.
Believe the Many Lettered! Do not investigate their sources of income, lest ye be deceived.
To be honest I don't know what to think anymore.
When ever I read any nutrition studies all I see is confounders. That's not a jab at the people that conduct it, they do their best with the data they have....but there are so many confounders it's hard not to take what you want from "health" studies.
While I have a great deal of regard for the scientific method, the scientific industry has become exactly that. Enslaved by endless grant grubbing, lurching into whatever the latest fad is to attract those grants, riddled with mediocrity and beholden to easily gameable metrics.
I am old enough to have seen 4 cycles of "eggs are good", "eggs are bad". It's difficult to put much value in a field when results like that are pretty frequent.
That sets aside the cultush aspects of "the science", God knows how many times some idiot quoted "science" at me during COVID, clearly not understanding what they were talking about. They were acting on faith and tribalism, nothing logical. Scientists are fallable humans and do the same things.
But throwing everything out the window is also not rational.
Broadly, human health studies do seem to say the same thing: Exercise is clearly good (although not ultra marathoning!). Sleep is clearly important. Generally, fasting seems to be useful. Fruits and vegetables are at their worst neutral but almost certainly positive. Meat and dairy is fine.
Everything else is probably fine in moderation.
I am suspicious of preservatives (they are antibacterial and your gut biome is clearly important) and too much emulsification in your gut may also be a problem for your gut biome although I'm not aware of studies showing that.
But focusing on any specific aspects of diet to save your health, seems counter intuitive. And I often wonder if the stress of worrying about all this stuff negates what moderate good a restrictive diet might do.
In the end adages become adages because they speak to a truth.
I think "Everything in moderation, including moderation" will probably give you as good a result as anything.
I thought the problem was partially hydrogenated oils, not all vegetable oils. The one study you referenced was cold-pressed turnip rapeseed oil vs butter. This doesn't mean much to me. I still think labels that list "canola oil" may or may not be hydrogenated and or heated with the use of solvents. This is what I would try to avoid. Check your labels, canola oil is in everything.
You were almost there, then you lost the thread.
The answer to "what does this actually do," is the same answer as when people ask about this with food dyes.
Nutritional research is janky and easily manipulated. Therefore largely useless. But what we all know -- in our bones, and one can know things in other ways beyond the scientific method -- is that industrialized and global food production is cruel, bad for the planet, and encourages us to eat things that are unhealthy. This, it seems, at least partly explains the explosion of chronic disease and mental health problems paradoxically concomitant with advanced medical science and prosperity.
These initiatives point us towards addressing *that* problem.
Ah the whole “there are many problems therefore seed oils are causing them” argument
This isn't even a remote attempt to engage with what I wrote.
I like your work. That response is disappointing.
That's funny, because that's actually exactly what you did about my post. What am I supposed to do? Say yes, you're right, we can ignore science, why did I bother because we can just intuit the answers? I obviously don't agree with that or else I wouldn't have written the post.
This is also incorrect. What I'm *adding* to the post is an answer to your question "Why bother with these things?" You restricted yourself to a narrow set of acceptable reasons.
If you'd like to make the case that the scientific method and maximized utilitarianism are the only ways to know things, and then select action items, feel free to do that.
But this post and your responses have that as an embedded assumption not explicitly stated. My aim was to point this out, and suggest an answer to the questions that appear to confound you.
You still seem combative and defensive. Given your recent life experience I can understand why. But a bit more "yes/and" might help defuse that. If that interests you. Maybe it doesn't!
How can we reconcile an unbridgeable epistemic difference? It's not personal at all. But I've believed those things and know that mindset. There's no real talking about it. The only thing I'll say is that when things become decided based on collective intuition--well, how is that different from Covid, or any other philosophy that seeks to constraint man out of a concern for safety? This is why evidence is important. It's an ethical, political, existential issue. Not to get too deep here, but it's not about epistemology but about how you see the end of humanity.
Interesting observation ... as holding collective intuition more closely would have led to a more humane and sensible COVID response, no? It at least would have bought time for the actual evidence to blow through the institutional fear porn.
Nobody anywhere, as an example, thought in their hearts it was a good idea to let Grandpa die alone.
I hear the exact opposite of what you say from doctors who also sight studies. So who should we believe? All I know is when I follow the advice that is currently standard, that is what you are saying, i am overweight and my cholesterol is high. I have to be on cholesterol Controlling medication and high blood pressure medication. But when I switched to a low carb diet and use tallow and butter, etc., although I do eat vegetables, my cholesterol levels seem to be good and my weight dropped by about twenty pounds. Im gonna stick with what works for me.
You made several changes at the same time. It wasn’t the switch from seed oil to tallow that caused your improved health.
I didn't say what changes I made other than the diet. In fact the only other change was to not eat breakfast because I'm no longer hungry in the morning like I was with the higher carb diet.
When I say I was previously doing what is taught to be healthy I mean that. I haven't eaten sugar or sugary products for years with very occasional exceptions. Any food with added sugar has been on my no go list for a long time. I only ate whole grain breads and went to the gym regularly, etc. I even cut way down on meat for a while. But I still had high cholesterol, high BP, and was overweight. It's only been since i went low carb and cut out the seed oils that all that changed. In fact my HDL was low previously and now it's normal. My LDL is high but it was high before as well. One other thing I've done is to cut out all highly processed meets that have any kind of preservatives or added chemicals.
You said you used a low-carb diet. That's a huge dietary change.
I see what your saying. I misunderstood. Yes I realize the low carb lifestyle is doing the heavy lifting. I didn't mean to say cutting out seed oils was making all the difference. Yet, I can't see how using highly processed oils that use harsh chemicals to get produced can be better than using natural oils which are produced without all the harsh chemicals. Even though they say no significant amount of the chemicals remain.
It's similar to coffee decaffeinated with chemicals. They say no significant amounts of the chemicals remain but when I drink decaffeinated coffee I get headaches. If I just give up coffee completely I don't get headaches. So something in the decaffeinated coffee is causing the headaches. What else is there but the chemicals used?
I went off statins for high cholesterol and switched to Berberine. My cholesterol, with no changes to my diet, was lowered from 205 to 170. Statins cause more harm than good after reading A Midwestern Doctor here on Substack.
Excuse the typos please. It won't let me correct them.
I think every person is different. I don't believe in percentages and numbers. My blood pressure is my blood pressure. To compare my numbers to the numbers of other people takes away my from my personal being. Everyone is telling you should store your stuff in glass containers, but everything from the store is packed in plastic.
If that is what people worry about that is okay with me, but why? If people like the taste of butter, let them eat it. Some people love read meat. I think it smells weird. A former doctor told me I should stop eating pork, because I had a rash and he thought it was from milk and pork. It turned out to be from gel shampoo. I don't believe in one science fits all, even though someone comes with 1000 'studies'. A few years ago a study showed, that quite a lot of studies were either never done, badly done, and if they compare food, how can they compare my digestion system to that of anyone else? Interesting to read, just like the 1950s proof that smoking is good for you.
In the 1950s we knew that smoking was bad for decades. The science was clear but the politics and special interests were lying. This is not that paradoxical.
Thanks for the info, references. Appreciate your work on this. If you can take the time to compile & present it, I/we can take the time to read it!
Well, now I am really confused. Nutrition information has been corrupted by money for so long. That is why it keeps changing. I don't know what is true anymore. The processed food is made to be addictive and it has loads of bad stuff in it - chemicals, fats, sugar, sodium - even if it is labeled healthy.
Correct. The biggest problem is that processed food is made to be addictive and has too many calories and if you eat too much of it, which is what it is designed for, you’re going to get fat.
It’s actually very simple. Eat the fats God gave in the packaging He gave it. Industrially produced seed oils aren’t it . I don’t care what your “data” shows.
Yes. Ban everything. Data doesn’t matter. Live like the Amish.
I do live with the Amish. Healthiest people I know. They use their own lard, tallow and butter.
If I understand the issue correctly, it's not that using sunflower oil on your salad is going to be a major problem, though the Omega-3 profile is not as good as olive oil. The problem comes when these seed oils, and let's recall that Canola is an artificial creation from the Rape seed which, used to be a machine oil, are put into deep friers and other forms of high heat food processing and cooking which severely denatures their molecular structure. Unstable oils don't do well in high heat applications, whereas Tallow is very good for high heat.
As for being disappointed in RFK Jr, perhaps let's be realistic about expectations. RFK Jr has been fighting various groups for years, has had his head in loads of data, battles in courts and the problems with the 'American' diet are considerable. They won't be undone in 3 months. Apparently minor changes such as this are still positive developments.
Mercola’s recent study found in PubMed. LA appears to be involved in mitochondrial and cell membrane issues with oxidation problems. Obviously in nutritional studies things change, but there are certainly issues with LA.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37513547/
I appreciate this perspective...
"If you’re anti-authoritarian or skeptical of centralized power (and believe me, I understand that), you might be naturally inclined toward skepticism toward seed oils.
And so I think that’s part of where it comes from."
It explains my mindset and attraction to RFK Jr.
TY
A few questions
1) What about the unintended consequences for the eyes using seed oils?
2) Most seed oils are used in processed foods, that may be more the issue. Using an oil alone is different than eating crap food loaded with it.
I didn't supply the research for #1 (if you want me to I will) but there is a lot of already completed research. Did include one.
One thing you have to wonder is seed oils came into wide use in the 1990's. So 20 years. I guess we'd have to see the effects over the last 20 years on health. Not so good. Yes, I know that may not cause all or most of it but it's suspect.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3144752/#:~:text=Previous%20epidemiological%20studies%20generally%20indicate,to%20decrease%20risk%20for%20AMD.&text=Previous%20studies%2C13%E2%80%9316%2C,AMD%20risk%20factors%20were%20available.
"They showed that replacing saturated fat with linoleic acid (from vegetable oils) did indeed lower cholesterol—but paradoxically increased mortality, particularly from heart disease."
https://open.substack.com/pub/maryannedemasi/p/is-the-war-on-saturated-fat-finally?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1k8fsn
Synchronicity this was published around the same time
Well, the two studies that found this were poorly controlled with known flaws. In at least one, the seed oil group had a much higher intake of trans fats. Most other better controlled studies show the opposite outcome. Why doesn’t she mention these three facts? Well, it’s because they do not suit her narrative.
That said, I largely agree with her that the impact of saturated fat on health appears to be marginal, given that 1) there are a number of risk factors impacting cardiovascular disease risk, 2) LDL is just one of these, 3) LDL levels account for a modest minority of net work, 4) the impact of saturated fat on LDL levels is very modest, 5) the differences in saturated fat intake across the population is relatively small, 6) the threshold for saturated fat intake to have an impact on cardiovascular disease risk is much lower than the population average.
Saturated fat intake per se is largely a nothingburger, but not absolutely zero. The inverse is also true of seed oils. And the insistence that swapping seed oils for tallow in french fries or restaurant food is somehow going to “make America healthy again” is absurd.
Do you really think a Big Mac combo is somehow going to be made healthy by swapping the fats that its cooked in? If you’re eating enough of that to matter, you have much bigger health problems to worry about.
I think you need to recheck your data. Try reading “Swallow This” by Blythman.
I thought you said data doesn’t matter. Now it does? Sounds like you pick and choose your arguments based on conclusions you have already decided on. Get out of my comments. You do not belong here.
Gladly.
Really? This is a bold statement ... I question this claim ...
"Nobody has tested a modern diet that's ultra-high in omega-6 and very low in vitamin E. It's worth exploring."
And Yes. Overprocessing is a villain in this story, however, RFK,Jr. is not. Regardless of his effectiveness, his focus on the issues has awakened people who may not have been aware of the pitfalls of modern convenience in terms of their health.
We are a trusting bunch. Our Secular Faith in Pharma is in need of investigation. RFK holds the Bully Pulpit for that. He is the one bright penny in an altogether dismal political pocket.
God no longer exists. Jesus no longer saves. But Big Medico will. Praise Big. All the Bigs! Pharm, Med, Ag, Biz. The catechisms are all there for our perusal. The charts, graphs and conclusions of bought experts.
Believe the Many Lettered! Do not investigate their sources of income, lest ye be deceived.
RFK Jr. is one of them and one of the worst