Joseph Everett - WIL
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2021–2022
28:21 · 4.4M views · Sep 19, 2021
A What I've Learned video arguing that industrial seed and vegetable oils have displaced saturated fats and harmed health. It covers the history of vegetable oils, the American Heart Association's role, and rising consumption.
HN commenters recommend it as an accessible summary of the case against seed oils, and some say it changed what fats they cook with.
7 comments from Hacker News
I started on this path when I was trying to nurish myself back to health over a decade ago when I suddenly got fat. I thought science was the way to go... but was robbed of that notion a couple of years into it when I discovered that the path to health was in the opposite direction of what the science tells us. Turns out the food industry fully controls the science of food and nutrition. You can start by reading Unsavory Truth or Food Politics by Marion Nestle for better understanding of why that is the way it is. Having said that, Marion Nestle doesn't really explore one side of it... which is that because of ethical reasons, we'll never have proper human experiments, thus nutrition science will always be limited and incomplete, which leaves a lot of room for manipulation, which the industry is happy to do for profits. This has been covered very well by the YouTube channel What I've Learned: [LINK] The same channel has several other videos on food and nutrition, one of the most important ones imo being the one on seed oils: this video Nutrition and Physical Degenaration by Weston A. Price as described in this thread is one of the best works in support of indigenous foods. The Hidden Life of Trees is a great book on plant intelligence. Other than those resources, we have to piece these things together, take long term views... like should we trust a diet that kept a culture of people alive and well for 100s of years over several generations or do we trust studies with couple of d
> Soybean oil I saw this video about seed oils a few months back.[1] Some of the information there tracked stuff I have been reading for a while. Decided to switch over completely to coconut oil and ghee (clarified butter). A comment on the video that matches my view on the subject: > If you want to be healthy just do the exact opposite of everything we were told about nutrition by mainstream experts for decades [1] The $100 Billion Dollar Ingredient making your Food Toxic ( this video )
For me it's enough to look at the process of making vegetable oils (acid wash, oxidation caused by high temperatures, bleaching, deodorization, degumming, etc.) to conclude ultraprocessed oils are not healthy for you. this video From personal experience, my health significantly improved after replacing vegetable oils with butter, coconut and olive oil.
IIRC, vegetable oils (unsaturated fats) exploded in popularity in the middle of last century when chemical companies figured out how to mass produce them. Prior to that, we got most of our fats from saturated fats. Very interesting video about this and more from What I've Learned: this video
These should cover some of it: - Book: Food Politics by Marion Nestle - Book: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price - YouTube Video: The $100 Billion Dollar Ingredient making your Food Toxic: this video (28 minutes)