Vegetable oil associated with greater risk of CVD than animal fat
sciencedirect.com
sciencedirect.com
And of course the usual link to wider socioeconomic status needs a bit more exploring.
I always forget this part, and you're right – it's critical, and often used by industry interests to help indicate healthier options are in fact less healthy. It can be hard to catch sometimes, and before I knew how to read these studies, I was tricked by it very, very often.
We also know in the case of the disease they're concerned about here, that without radical dietary changes (i.e. eating plant fats OR animal fats won't save you here) then the damages you've likely been exposing yourself to for decades are probably going to kill you soon, anyway. Arterial plaque doesn't vanish when you start frying eggs in canola instead of pork fat.
Another thing to consider here is: what do elderly Chinese consider to be healthy? Are the ones switching to animal fats doing that because it's culturally perceived as healthier? Or are they more like North Americans, thinking canola is the heart-healthy oil? It's hard to tell, not being around the age of 65 and living in China.
I do appreciate that they accounted for diet composition to a degree, though it's self-reported and again, not reliable particularly among people trying to change old habits.
One could reasonably phrase the question this way: what evidence is there that polyunsaturated fatty acids are healthy?
Also, it's unreasonable to say that in a study of 15,000 people, the cause of those who used vegetable oil were those with ASCVD and therefore chose to cook with it.
In any event, this possibilty is ruled out:
>Based on 15,242 Chinese elderly people over 65 years old who had long-term adherence to dietary habits and types of edible oils,[...]
>And of course the usual link to wider socioeconomic status needs a bit more exploring.
This is accounted for in the article. In fact "evaluation of other variables" makes up the entire alaysis.
I would include olive oil in this too. I once tried to eat an olive off the tree. Never again. Completely inedible. Heavily processed for human consumption.
Edit: canola and rapeseed are the same thing
You can buy beef that is frozen the same day its butchered from small local farms, and from the people I know who have done that (and have half a cow in their chest freezers to prove it), it's absolutely delicious and tender.
[0]https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/eat/bodybuilder-brian...
[1]https://nypost.com/2021/10/05/man-has-lived-on-raw-meat-diet...
[0] https://www.greatveganathletes.com/category/vegan-bodybuilde...
>The cultivated olive seems to have coexisted with humans for about 5,000 to 6,000 years, going back to the early Bronze Age (3150 to 1200 BC). For thousands of years olives were grown primarily for lamp oil, with little regard for culinary flavor.
In the case of rapeseed:
>Rapeseed oil is one of the oldest known vegetable oils, but historically was used in limited quantities due to high levels of erucic acid, which is damaging to cardiac muscle of animals, and glucosinolates, which made it less nutritious in animal feed.[19] Rapeseed oil can contain up to 54% erucic acid.
>While that's not conlclusive in itself there has actualy been a lot of research on polyunsaturated fatty acids lately with worrying results.
I don't see why you've put quotes around the word "natural" as I didn't use this word. I also never said the being processed is why vegetable oil is bad, only that it's necessity precludes it from having been consumed by humans historicaly speaking. The apeal to nature argument is that something that exists naturaly is good. My arguemt is that since food consumption is a primary driver of evolution, foods consumed by a species are generaly better for that species than a random food. You can say that one class of argumet contains the other but it's a meaningless statement for our discussion. And as I said much research as already been done on this subject in the last two decades.
Your conclusion is surprising considering omega3 and 6 fatty acids, both PUFAs, are essential for the human diet
Some passages:
>More direct evidence demonstrating that canola oil and soybean oil - 2 major vegetable oils consumed worldwide - differ in their effects on markers of DM in rats is shown in figure 25. In the figure 25, the 19C (19% canola oil) group showed higher insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) and more damage to pancreas β-cells than the 19S (19% soybean oil) and 7S (control) groups. The 19C group presented lower percentage of pancreatic islets area in comparison to 19S (-41%) and 7S group (-70%, p < 0.0001) [51]. DM patients in Japan are characterized by exhibiting both insulin resistance and impaired insulin secretion. This animal study is the first to demonstrate that a common vegetable oil, accounting for more than 40% of vegetable fats and oils consumed in Japan, impaired pancreatic function to secrete insulin. Similarly, these 2 vegetable oils differentially affected oxidative stress-related enzymes in erythrocytes and vascular properties in the SHRSP rat [52].
>Despite the palatability of palm oil, its safety has not been established even though many articles from exporting countries emphasize its safety. For example, palm oil unusually promotes mutagen-induced colon carcinogenesis comparable to high-linoleic safflower oil, using perilla oil as a control (fig. 31) [61]. The difference in the rate of carcinogenesis between perilla oil and safflower oil has been explained in terms of the n-6/n-3 balance and the established concept of the arachidonic acid (ARA) cascade promoting carcinogenesis. However, given that the linoleic acid content of palm oil is very low, unidentified minor components must be responsible for the unusual cancer-promoting activity observed. Similarly, olive oil increased mutagen-induced aberrant cryptic foci in rats [62], and the involvement of minor components in olive oil is suspected given that oleic-rich safflower oil with a fatty acid composition similar to that of olive oil does not promote carcinogenesis [63].
>Fig. 31
>Unusual cancer-promoting activities of palm oil and olive oil in animal experiments. Data for palm oil (left) are from Narisawa et al. [61] and those for olive oil (right) are from Onogi et al. [62]. Refer to figure 22 for the fatty acid composition of vegetable oils used. In the left figure, * p < 0.01 vs. other groups. In the right figure, * p < 0.05 and * p < 0.01 vs. olive oil group. http://www.karger.com/WebMaterial/ShowPic/509075
>In addition to its cancer-promoting activity (fig. 31), palm oil was shown to shorten the survival of mice [64] and induce hyper-insulinemia in rats [65]. We strongly argue, therefore, that increasing the supply of palm oil as an alternative to industrial trans-fat is not a safe path to take.
Regarding your point about omega 3 and 6: yes, they are necessary, but that doesn't make vegatable oil "good." Additionaly, there may be too much omega 6 in many vegetable oils:
>thus, it is not the saturated to polyunsaturated ratio but the n-6/n-3 ratio of dietary lipids that is crucial for the prevention of CVD, DM and several other elderly onset diseases [39,58,70] as Bibus and Lands [94] recently reviewed. Currently, people in industrialized countries generally ingest several-fold more linoleic acid than is essential (0.5% of energy) and the intake of n-3 fatty acids is relatively deficient. The more than 3-fold higher CHD mortality in the US as compared to Japan is likely to be due to the higher n-6/n-3 balance of ingested foods in the US.
However none of what you've posted here says "polyunsaturated fats are bad". The statement I responded to is a gross mischaracterization which lacks the nuance that PUFAs are important for the diet, but the amount we consume them in is what's important.
I keep seeing people shouting about how PUFAs are all bad, but that's actually entirely wrong when the statement is taken at face value
I've found Peter Dobromylskyj particularly interesting on this topic:
>One could reasonably phrase the question this way: what evidence is there that polyunsaturated fatty acids are healthy?
This comment is not worded the best way. But I point out later what I meant:
>Regarding your point about omega 3 and 6: yes, they are necessary, but that doesn't make vegatable oil "good." Additionaly, there may be too much omega 6 in many vegetable oils
You are also technically correct in saying 'However none of what you've posted here says "polyunsaturated fats are bad"' as that includes my own comments, which never directly said polyunsaturated fats are bad, only that vegetable oil is bad. I admit that my innitial wording should have been better.
>The statement I responded to is a gross mischaracterization which lacks the nuance that PUFAs are important for the diet, but the amount we consume them in is what's important.
The statement you responded to does not mention PUFAs at all. In regards to my earlier comment, it is not a "gross mischaracterization" but semantics. That it "lacks the nuance" of qualifying the statement to "oils high in PUFAs" rather than PUFAs themselves is not relevant to the argument of whether vegetable oils are healthy compared to lard and meat, being that the latter two also have PUFAs. What is then meant is this: (Meat) protien is healthy even if one consumes 200g a day. protein itself is therefore healthy. Same can be said about some carbs. For an admittedly extream example, sodium is not healthy, and neither is cholride. When we say food x contains y amount of sodium we do not mean pure sodium. Since usual consumption of PUFAs found in vegetable oil exceeds a healthy ratio, it is reasonable to question the necessary assumption that "PUFAs are healthy" which is the entire extent to which I said 'PUFAs are bad' that is, not at all. This isn't as stong of a question when it comes to meat because taken as a whole it must be "healthy enough" as it is naturaly consumed by the species and also has lower concentrations to begin with. All this leads to the fact that when people talk about PUFAs, they are talking about vegetable oils, which is a misnomer technically spesking but that is how it has developed. But even not reading my statement that way it still does not read PUFAs are bad.
In regard to your specific argument that "consuming equivalent amounts of vegetable oils or lard are equally unhealthy" it's hard to know as when people used lard they were healthier but also consumed less and exercised more. We can also speculate that vegetable oils might lend itself better to be used in baking than lard was and by some process increases total consumption; perhaps it tastes better or lasts longer, for example. It seems from the study linked in the OP, however, that lard is better than at least rapeseed/canola oil. But like I said more research should be done: our speculation today should not preclude investigation and ultimately conclusive understanding. That said we do need to "pick a side" for the time being, if not as a colective then as individuals because we can't stop eating until conclusive results are found.
>Diet is not all that simplistic and we shouldn't jump to conclusions and paint things with broad brush strokes
Agreed. I don't think Iv'e made that mistake, even if my comments perhaps read that way.
The frequency with which it’s found “natural” food is better for us is not to say only “natural” food is better, but it is a real trend, as such worth taking into consideration when making choices about what to eat.
First, most vegetable oils belong to one of two groups that have very different health properties: vegetable oils where the dominant fatty acid is linoleic acid and vegetable oils where the dominant fatty acid is oleic acid.
Second, there are two ways of using a vegetable oil, with very different health implications. The vegetable oil can be added to food after cooking, when the food will no longer be heated to high temperatures, or the vegetable oil can be used during cooking, for frying and similar procedures.
This research study has compared sesame oil, where the dominant fatty acid is linoleic acid, with lard. It is not very clear how the oil and the lard were used, but it seems that they were used mostly for frying and similar high temperature procedures.
Between the 2 kinds of vegetable oils, the healthier are those where oleic acid is the dominant fatty acid. Moreover, for any vegetable oil, the healthy way to use it is to only add it after cooking, so that it will never be exposed to high temperatures.
The resistance of fat to high temperatures increases with the proportion of saturated or almost saturated fatty acids, so it is maximum for animal fats like lard or butter, lower for high-oleic vegetable oils and it is minimum for the oils where the dominant fatty acid is linoleic acid. Depending on the temperature and the time of exposure to that temperature, any kind of fat will be degraded partially, more or less, depending on its heat resistance.
So for frying, there is no doubt that the healthiest is to use lard or butter, less healthy is to use high-oleic sunflower oil or olive oil or avocado oil, and the least healthy is to use classic sunflower oil, corn oil, soy oil or sesame oil, like in this study.
So there is no surprise about the results, they are exactly as expected and well known.
The various kinds of fat must be used for appropriate purposes. When misusing them, any kind of fat may be unhealthy.
Most vegetable oils are linoleic. It is only recently that high oelic cooking oil has become a thing. I'm not aware of how prevelant it is in china. And of course olives and avocados are not vegetables. The study actually represents what vegetable oil is pretty well. The data go back to when HO vegetable oils were not a thing, and I speculate they are still not a thing in china, though I may be wrong. The title is still a bit misleading given that the study is more specific than the conclusion but I think you are overstating the dgree to which that is the case.
The most abundant fatty acid is sesame oil is linoleic acid, it is not a HO vegetable oil, so it will be degraded during frying much more than HO oils or than animal fat.
So the study has not compared vegetable oils in general as food, in comparison to animal fat, but it has compared sesame oil used in high temperature cooking vs. animal fat.
This is significant because pristine vegetable oils are expected to be a healthier food than animal fat, while vegetable oils that have been strongly heated are expected to be a less healthy food than strongly heated animal fat.
Therefore any study that compares vegetable oil with animal fat must make very clear which of the 2 cases have been studied.
Not true. Omega 6 is worse than animal fat even not fried. It just isn't part of the study.
>it is not a HO vegetable oil
Like I said, "HO vegetable oil" is not really a thing in the first place. At the very least it's reasonable to not include it in the plain meaning of vegetable oil.
Maybe because pesticides are not healthy.
A control between industrial and ecological oil could point to interesting results.
Many people have the notion that vegetable oils are healthier than animal fats as well (that's not generally true from what I can tell, but people believe what they will), so they might be likely to use more of it than people who might believe animal fats should be moderated. It's hard to tell because I'm working from popular western ideas around nutrition, and this is data from China. I'm not sure if people there think animal fat should be moderated or that plant fats are healthier – it could be the opposite, or barely a consideration at all.
Another factor could simply be cost. Maybe people who use plant oils use more because it's cheaper, or vice versa.
I think the analysis should ultimately reflect in its conclusion that more research is required because the data isn't sufficient to draw meaningful conclusions. I also find this concerning:
"Our study found that cooking with lard/other animal fat oil is more beneficial to cardiovascular health in older Chinese."
On balance, cooking with refined oils is not shown to be beneficial to any otherwise-healthy population; there is no advantage to cooking with lard, and rather, there is an advantage to replacing those calories with sources of higher quality nutrition in general.
While plant vs animal fat is indeed controversial, it is not controversial that cooking with (especially frying, baking, broiling, grilling) high fat foods is not very good for people. Though the analysis indicates that animal fats may confer lower risk, it's fairly clear that high refined-fat diets generally do confer higher risk than diets with lower fat and/or fats from whole foods.
It seems we shouldn't worry about which fat to cook with so much as how to cook with less refined fats in general. If we consume reasonable amounts of fat (that is, far less than we tend to on average), the question of which type to cook with becomes far less pressing and relevant.
I'm not saying "never eat saturated fat" or "your high-fat cuts of meat are killing you"; I'm specifically saying that through many years of looking at this kind of data, I've never once seen anything indicating that cooking with refined oils is a good idea, ever. Get it from whole foods first, whether it's a plant or an animal, and you'll fare better (according to heaps of the best quality studies we have, ranging back a half-century).
So, that's why I'm not crazy about this analysis.
Apologies if I missed something. I was reading it on my phone, and I'd gladly be corrected. I don't want to put down a good analysis because my eyeballs aren't working.
I make a point of avoiding refined fats in general though. They’re essential to some cooking methods for sure, but normalizing them in my diet seems riskier than it’s worth and there are so many amazing foods that don’t require them.
I also tend to avoid cooking with them, but I think something like a chilli oil on a soup isn’t as bad. You know how much you’re using, it doesn’t have to be exposed to high heat, and it’s affordable to use healthier (and even tastier) oils.