Jeff Nobbs writes about chronic disease and argues that refined vegetable and seed oils are unhealthy.
Commenters cite it in seed oil debates, pointing to its follow-up on the chemistry of oils and its review of the studies.
A few weeks ago,
I wanted to know whether saturated fat (the kind that makes up most of
mammal and bird fat and tropical oils like coconut and palm oil) was
better or worse for you than unsaturated fat (the kind that makes up
most of fish oil and non-tropical oils of vegetable origin). At this
point the evidence strongly suggests that, at least if you live in the
rich world, saturated fat is pretty bad for you, and unsaturated fat
is much less bad for you (not counting trans fats, which almost don't occur naturally and are very bad for you indeed, but were abundant in margarine until they were outlawed).
The Cochrane Collaboration is kind of the gold standard for medical
research review studies. In my search I ran across this recent
open-access Cochrane review of only randomized clinical trials:
Hooper L, Martin N, Jimoh OF, Kirk C, Foster E, Abdelhamid AS.
Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2020, Issue 8. Art. No.:
CD011737. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3.
<https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3/pdf/full>
They conclude that over the four or so years in the 16 RCTs they
reviewed, the decreases in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular
mortality due to lower saturated fat intake, if any, were too small to
detect with the usual p-values, but their measure of combined
cardiovascular events did decrease significantly, with a RR CI from
0.70 to 0.98.
On the face of it,…
Edit: reading this back, it sounds somewhat like an attempt to shill a product. So, disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation with Jeff or the Cultured Oils, I’m just fascinated by it.
Serial entrepreneur Jeff Nobbs recently launched a new product in the food oil space: Cultured Oil*
I came across his writings* on the perils of seed oils earlier this year and it radically changed the way I eat.
After becoming aware of the danger high linoleic acid diets pose, as well as the climate implications of other oils, Jeff’s Cultured Oil looks incredibly impressive, albeit I haven’t had the chance to try it yet as they don’t ship to New Zealand.
In summary, from their FAQ:
“Cultured Oil is cooking oil made by fermentation, resulting in high levels of healthy fats, a small environmental footprint, a clean taste, and a high smoke point!
Fermentation describes the process of microorganisms (or "cultures") consuming natural sugars and converting those sugars into entirely new foods. Just as there are sourdough and wine cultures, there are also oil cultures. An oil culture converts sugar into the healthy delicious fats that make up Cultured Oil.
Cultured Oil is primarily monounsaturated fat, the heart-healthy and heat-stable fat also found in olive and avocados.
In every serving of Cultured Oil (1 Tbsp - 14 grams), there are about 13 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, and 0.4 grams of polyunsaturated fat.
Olive oils and avocado oils contain between 55-83%…
That hunter-gatherer tend to have very low rates of obesity and metabolic disorders is well documeted, for example https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.12785 .
It's also well documented that obesity rates have skyrocketed in recent decades (for example https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-adults-defined-as-obese?tab=chart&facet=none&country=USA~Lower-middle-income~Upper-middle-income~High-income~Low-income ).
From this evidence, we can conclude that obesity isn't a purely natural phenomenon, it's cause by modern lifestyles. But what part of said lifestyles?
We need to look for a culprit(s) that:
a) hunter-gathers are insulated from, and
b) has greatly increased in just the past few decades, following the trend in rising obesity rates.
As you note, there seems to be big change in energy expenditure between hunter-gatherers and us, so that can be ruled out. That would seem to leave us diet changes and environmental contaminants.
Sugar is commonly cited as a cause of obesity, but recent increases in obesity rates have been much higher than those in sugar consumption (https://onlinestatbook.com/2/case_studies/sugar.html ). Also, there are hunter-gatherers who eat lots of honey (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040503) and they are not obese.
So what could it be? I don't claim to know the answer, but there are two possibilities that seem plausible to me, that satisfy conditions (a) and (b) above:
- Environmental…
Hey yeah Im no expert but happy to share some of the stuff that I've looked at.
Glycemic Index - not every gram of carbohydrate is made equal. You can have a drink with fewer grams of sugar but that still has a higher glycemic load. Lactose has a fairly low glycemic index which results in it often having a lower glycemic load of drinks sweetened with lower quantities of maltose/dextrose. In terms of scientific literature I think there are a bunch of well regarded studies on this topic (glycemic load and how it relates to health) since its a pretty key factor in diabetes.
Vegetable Oil - tbh I'm less sure of the science for this but reading https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/why-is-vegetable-oil-unhealthy gave me enough doubt to try to reduce my consumption.
I still occasionally use unsweetened coconut milk, since it has no added sugars and none of the more suspicious vegetable oils. But what I've found is that when you get rid of the sugar/vegetable oils none of the milk substitutes taste anything like milk.
There is a detailed four article series about this which was recently shared here on Hacker News. The first article is here: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease , but the second and third articles probably address this most directly.
>> "the output is novel to humans on evolutionary scale"
>
> This is true for all oils and all other highly processed foods.
That is not true. There is evidence that humans have sought out fats and oils for most of our history. Lard and other rendered fats are made from heating animal fats directly with modest heat being sufficient to liquify animal fats. Butter is made from churning milk. Olive oil and Coconut oil are made by squeezing fruits. All of that is quite different from modern vegetable oil processing which requires high temperatures which in turn convert a fraction of the oil into transfats. When oils refined in these ways are then used for cooking they become increasingly dangerous as they are heated.
> Dietary choices are a personal thing, all the new options are only good for that (not withstanding misleading advertising).
I have some bad news about oat milk with regards to that as well.
https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/is-oatly-healthy
> A 12-ounce glass of oat milk (the amount in a medium latte) has about the same blood sugar impact as a 12-ounce can of Coke.
Please do be careful. I am not saying Oatly is necessarily worse than milk for you or even bad at all but this was a boring long existing brand taken over by a savvy CEO that turned the marketing up to eleven (gearing up towards an ipo) -- we would all obviously like milk alternatives that are both healthier and have lower carbon footprints and that desire is being exploited to the hilt.