1. Seed oils (canola, sunflower, cotton seed, soybean, safflower, grape-seed, rice bran, peanut and corn) really hit the market in the early 1990s because they were seen as a cheap substitute for cooking. This also coincided with the appearance of the Mediterranean diet which was lauded as healthier by discouraging the eating of animal fats (and red meat) and encouraging a high-bread and high-carb diet (pasta, pizza, tortillas, rice) .
2. Our grandmothers’ generation used butter or animal fats such as tallow or lard for cooking. But in a fantastically successful marketing drive these were painted as unhealthy, even though humans had been using them successfully for cooking for millennia. The greenwashing campaigns re-cast seed oils as ‘vegetable oils’ with the claim they were a much healthier alternative. The fact that they were so much cheaper meant that restaurants adopted vegetable oils en masse for cooking, which persists to this day.
3. In the early 1990s at around the same time, McDonalds changed from using beef tallow for cooking their famous french fries to using vegetable oil. In response to the outcry that the chips had become tasteless, they doubled the portion size.
4. McDonalds also ran into problems with the cleaning of the walls and furniture in their fast-food outlets (the old chemicals wouldn’t work). The uniforms of their staff had to be taken off-site for cleaning, with instances where piles of clothing would spontaneously combust!
5.Aldehyde fumes from the 'low smoke point' vegetable oils are highly injurious to human health. Lung cancer in women in Southeast Asia has risen steeply (despite the low incidence of smoking) from the widespread use of vegetable oils in street markets (who can forget the blue haze hanging in the air in Boogie Street??).
6. The trouble with the vegetable oils is that they're made from seeds which are not naturally very ‘oily’. In order to make them behave like an oil they are chemically doctored in all sorts of ways - seeds cleaned initially with solvents, the oil de-gummed to stop it sticking to the side of the bottle, bleached, coloured, de-odourised - so that they are really closer to industrial engine oil than a healthy plant-based product.
7. But more troubling thing is that seed oils are unstable because of their chemical composition and they go off (rancid) very quickly, both in the bottle and - more worryingly - inside the body. They have a very high Omega6 content and release ‘free radicals’ which are highly pro-inflammatory inside the body.
8. The seed oils become incorporated into the cell membranes right throughout, which has widespread damaging affects - particularly to the nervous system, but no system it seems is left unscathed.
9. Cancer rates have skyrocketed particularly amongst the young and a graph of the dramatic escalation of all the ‘metabolic disorders’ (the autoimmune conditions, arthritis, neurological disorders, obesity, diabetes, thyroid conditions) rises exactly in parallel to the introduction of the widespread use of seed oils. The same oils are used in dog and cat food, which also explains the declining lifespan of our modern pets.
10. The most worrying human pathology attributable to seed oils is blindness in people over 50 from macular degeneration, now called ‘age-related macular degeneration’ or ARMD. This disease has exploded in epidemic proportions over recent decades. In the 1930s there was only a handful of cases worldwide (approximately 50 cases) whereas today the numbers are more like 200,000,000. Growth of this disease is unprecedented and more than any other modern pathology.
11. Our societies today are being poisoned by seed oils. Olive oil is a better alternative for cooking, although it too changes its molecular make-up when heated. It is still best to use saturated fat for cooking (and no - saturated fat does not make you fat, nor does it clog up your arteries, but that's a story for another day).
12. Much as it may seem counter-intuitive (so successful has the brainwashing been - the greatest marketing coup of all time) we really should use tallow, dripping, suet, lard, ghee or butter to cook with. I use duck fat.
13. The most recent thinking is that seed oils are more damaging to human health than sugar - and that’s saying something! My feeling is that seed oils are causing the damage but sugar is feeding the pathological processes (many cancers in particular feed on sugar). Watch this space . . .
David Gillespie is a barrister who has done great work in exposing both the prevalence and the bad effects of seed oils in processed foods.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CsyX3myOIg&ab_channel=PenguinBooksAustralia
Hello Huffmans.
Good to hear from you. Yes my feeling is that I'd like to be able to talk about more than back pain – although in truth I could talk under wet cement until Tuesday about back pain – because there's so much more to Health in a pro-active way. That's why I called my Substack site Beyond Back Pain as a sort of 'double entendre'.
You give me heart, so I will go on from time to time weaving other stuff in . . .
Thanks.
Sarah