Thoughts on Seed Oil | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on Seed Oil

dynomight.substack.com

137 pointspaulpauper109 comments

> My real worry about seed oil theory is that it’s a distraction.

Which do you think is worse: smoking, or seed oils?

Which do you think is worse: smoking, or not exercising?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Look at Figure 2C in particular. The hazard ratio of smoking is 1.41. The hazard ratio between "Low" (<25th percentile) and "Below Average" (25th-49th percentile) cardiovascular health is 1.95.

In other words, it is better to be a smoker than in the lower 25% of non-exercisers. By far. It's not even close.

Seed oils are 100% a distraction. Once you're in the upper 2.3% of vo2max for your age/sex, _then_ you have the right to worry about seed oils. Until then, save your energy for interval training.

Minor in the minors, major in the majors.

Are you aware of research that studies cigar smoking specifically?

I’ve never been a cigarette smoker but enjoy a cigar a few times (2-3) a week in the summer (4 months or so out of the year). Obviously not smoking is better, but I’d like to have hard data what kind of risk I’m taking.

Ex: is the risk similar to two drinks a day, is the risk similar to enjoying a bonfire or is it similar to an entire pack of cigarettes.

I've been curious about this as well. For me I smoke maybe 2/month...one cigar a week at the very most. My guess is it's negligible compared to all the other toxic clouds we walk through in a given week. But hard data would be useful to see.

Edit: Table 1 might have our answers https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/sites/default/files/2020-08...

I would guess it’s roughly linear. Should be good enough as an approximation. So if smoking daily is, say, -8 years life expectancy then smoking weekly is probably around -1 year. Once it’s very infrequent like once a month it’s probably negligible.

This is exactly what I was looking for. It seems like toning down to 1-2 cigars has measurable benefits but is about what I expected, especially with lung cancer.

Pipe smoking is even better. The 1964 Surgeon Generals report found that so long as you don't inhale or smoke more than 3 bowls per day, pipe smokers actually lived an average of 2 years longer than NONSMOKERS.

This is a joke right? 1964 was deep in the era of tobacco companies paying for studies that “proved” health benefits. I could believe pipe tobacco was less harmful than cigarettes by a large margin, but not better than not smoking.

The 1964 Surgeon General's report was the first major government acknowledgement of evidence that smoking was harmful. You might visit this hyperlink: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/history/index.htm

Interesting, I’ll read it, thank you.

Cigar and Pipe smoking increases the risk of oral, throat, and esophageal cancers at a similar rate to cigarettes.

Here's one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3755640/

That study does not address occasional cigar smokers vs frequent. And almost no cigar study makes the important distinction between black & mild type products (which are considered cigars, often inhaled, and smoked daily if not many per day) and Cuban cigar type deals, which are not inhaled and smoked far more seldom

I had the following items on cigar/pipe smoking bookmarked, I have not read them yet but they may be of interest to you:

https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/91/8/697/2519397

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/

https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...

thank you for the links!

The idea that someone can't or shouldn't focus on both exercise and diet is nonsense, as if you can't do both at the same time.

You seem to be hiding an assumption, which is that it only makes sense to completely solve the highest hazard ratio before even considering the next highest hazard ratio. But why would that be the case?

> it only makes sense to completely solve the highest hazard ratio before even considering the next highest hazard ratio. But why would that be the case?

Seed-oil harm is nowhere close to the second-highest hazard. That's the point. If you're obsessing around optimising your oil consumption for health, you're probably missing lower-hanging fruit. It's fine to optimise on around the margins, but any more attention than that--assuming you are not a researcher--is overkill.

They listed the specific numeric figure for the harm from smoking, but omitted any such numbers for consuming seed oils, so how are we supposed to judge that? You saying "it's nowhere close" is not data.

If there was actually a huge harm from consuming seed oils then we would probably be seeing a strong, clear signal from epidemiological studies. So far, the data is ambiguous.

Yea but it’s easier to eliminate the use of seed oils, assuming they are the cause of some harm, versus trying to get lazy people to exercise. You can force people to exercise, but as evidenced in the past few decades, you can force them not to eat as much trans fats.

This.

Sure exercise is a overall bigger impact, but adjusted for effort, eliminating seed oils is likey a higher effort/value proposition, and that means that at scale, more people are likely to follow through

Speaking of smoking, it's been shown to have a significant impact on obesity. In that, it dramatically lowers your body weight because it increases your energy expenditure and decreases your hunger. Nicotine is a stimulant. As soon as you stop taking nicotine, your BMI is going up. The delta between smoker and non-smoker BMI in this study was 1.5kg/m^2 [1]

The article argues that the median increase in BMI over time was 0.05kg/m^2/yr. The prevalence of smoking starting in the 80s dropped from 60% to 10%. So smoking rate is going to account for a non-trivial amount of the increased median BMI. In fact, the rate of obesity really started skyrocketing in 1980 which is right when we hit peak cigarette in the US.

If it's true as you say that it's better to be a smoker now than a non-smoker -- it's only because you're going to lose weight, and that's your biggest risk factor for all-cause mortality.

Makes sense when you consider bupropion, a nicotinic receptor antagonist, shows statistically significant weight loss (clinically signifiant when combined with naltrexone). It’s like 60% of the population was on bupropion.

If it’s just to lose weight then you’re probably better off with ozempic than a pack of American Spirits.

Also I dislike the article's use of BMI over very long timescales, going back to the 1800s. BMI is fine for most people these days (because most people have a lot of weight on them, see the article) but a lot of the 1800s BMI gain was probably just due to better nutrition not higher fat percentages. Over long time horizons we probably want to measure waist-to-height ratio or body fat percentages. The 1890s BMI delta was probably all lean mass, and good-to-neutral whereas the 1990s BMI delta was probably all fat mass and overwhelmingly bad. I’d argue that probably continued until 1940 where the thinnest 10% begin to remain constant, having their basic nutrition needs saturated.

tl;dr: it's almost certainly not seed oils — and maybe not smoking is making us fat? I’m gonna look for a trend a write up a blog post haha.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3195407/

If it's true as you say that it's better to be a smoker now than a non-smoker -- it's only because you're going to lose weight, and that's your biggest risk factor for all-cause mortality.

the negative health effects of smoking negates the weight loss . despite being slimmer, smokers die 10 years earlier compared to the general population. obese people only lose a few years (1-3 years for moderately obese men).

Moreover the obesity effect is mostly counteracted by exercise. (Of course being obese makes it harder to exercise)

I'm definitely not proposing that people should smoke, lol.

That study is “fitness” not “exercise”. Not exactly the same. Also smoking is bad for other reasons than just cardiovascular health (it’s not even the single biggest problem). There’s no chance smoking is less bad overall than not exercising.

While you are technically correct that fitness is not the same as exercise, it is almost impossible to achieve a high level of fitness without purposeful exercise. Especially for the mostly sedentary users of HN.

As for smoking being less bad than not exercising, citation needed. Did you read the article linked by @AlexErrant above?

“What’s the hazard ratio for seed oils? Oh we don’t have one? Ok just completely ignore the potential problem then.”

I think the final paragraph is a great way to frame it:

> Look, I wish strong seed oil theory were true. That would be great. All we’d have to do is reformulate our Cheetos with different oil, and then we could go on merrily eating Cheetos.

The problem with our (Western) diet isn’t that we’re using seed oil. It’s the diet itself.

Fries fried in canola oil is very different than fries fried in tallow.

The author seems to suggest that it’s all the same because “of course fries are junk food” but there is a significant health difference if you recognize that reusing seed oils at high frying temps over and over again degrades the oil in a way that is not the same as with saturated fats.

That's actually indirectly mentioned in the article, where they talk about how the polyunsaturated fats can be turned into transfats at temps over 200C.

Yet the author insists it doesn't matter because "of course Cheetos are junk food", even though it's just a fried corn puff.

Deep fryers are usually 175 to 190C so trans fats shouldn't be much of a concern. I'm more concerned about everything else about deep fried foods -- being high calorie, low nutrient, zero fiber. The choice of oil is irrelevant

Yeah that's absurd. Go to a fast food place and they are reusing the oil over and over again for as long as possible. Believing that the vegetable oil is in a non degraded state by the time they switch it out is naive.

That is going to create a lot of oxidative stress and inflammation.

> That is going to create a lot of oxidative stress and inflammation.

Can you define "a lot" in this context?

Excessive saturated fat consumption is not going to be good for your LDL levels.

Aren't cholesterol meds good and cheap enough now that you basically never even have to worry about your cholesterol?

On top of that, it's all genetics and pointless to worry about. Just enjoy the ride. BD

Did a Pharma exec write this message?

The high cholesterol scare is another thing that needs to be explored.

You are operating under the assumption that raising cholesterol levels is somehow a terrible thing.

The latest take seems to be related to ApoB numbers (which correlate to LDL numbers).

I resisted for a long time but I'm finally swayed and am medicating to take the ApoB levels down (diet and exercise can help but medication seems to be the strongest factor).

I am pretty convinced by the scientific consensus that LDL levels (even by themselves) are strongly predictive of Atherogenesis and overall CVD risk.

"An overwhelming body of multiple, converging lines of evidence has established a causal role for LDL in atherosclerosis and CHD/CVD progression as a fact, beyond a hypothesis."

https://sigmanutrition.com/lipids/ has a very good overall survey of the field.

Cholesterol is only a problem when it forms plaques on arterial walls. While reducing blood cholesterol is one way to slow the growth of those plaques, it it better to prevent the damage which causes those plaques to form in the first place.

Seems the number one recommendation is "Eating a diet low in saturated fats and cholesterol, with less sugars and simple carbohydrates", what do you propose and whats the proof?

I don't know where you're getting that recommendation but it's at least partly misinformation.

“Cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.”

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/panel-suggests-stop-warn...

That’s been debunked

It absolutely hasn't.

"An overwhelming body of multiple, converging lines of evidence has established a causal role for LDL in atherosclerosis and CHD/CVD progression as a fact, beyond a hypothesis."

https://sigmanutrition.com/lipids/ has a very good overall survey of the field.

Tallow is more expensive, so if it were the only option, fried food would be less profitable. And that would mean there would be less fried food in our diets.

so a good thing? i think the big probably with all these substitutions is they are to make us eat more of the bad thing. if you could only eat fried food or sweets on an occasion then no issue. however, those are the things that are made cheap.

then again maybe its cause those taste the best due to being evolutationary selected and companies arent trying to kill us but get us to buy whatever our bodies easily go for.

Burger joints essentially get tallow for free.

There are some recyclers now that will pay you a bit for used oil, but I doubt it's enough to make it cheaper to buy fresh vegetable oil rather than cooking the fries in the beef fat you already have.

Ah, but does the diet cause the seed oil, or does the seed oil cause the diet? I suspect our diets would be better if addictive unhealthy food was less profitable.

if the seed oils in Cheetos are not the problem, what is it? the flour?

The amount. The western diet includes tons of snacks and additional sources of calories like soda.

Could be ingredients that are complete non-foods, such as artificial colorings.

Every 5 years or so a new food bogeyman appears and all the fitness/diet influencers hop on the bandwagon and blame every ill on it. Seeds Oils are just the most recent of these memes pushed by the power of group think as opposed to the power of the evidence. I think only the carnivore diet people are more out of touch right now...

I really wish there was a magic bullet to the obesity epidemic. An ingredient we can just stop using, or a diet that will fix all our problems - but that's just not realistic. The evidence points to this being a messy multivariate problem that extends beyond just diet to things like lifestyle, poverty, and cultural norms.

It's so much easier to believe that "with this one trick" we can fix everything but when has that ever worked? Thanks to the author for writing this up.

There is a clear carcinogenic effect of processed seed oils in rodents. Mechanistically they break down into compounds that are harmful. It's far worse when the seed oil is reused in restaurants.

If you want to wait for conclusive evidence when all of the studies are financed by the companies that earn revenue from processed seed oil, be my guest.

Link an actual study with verifiable results, otherwise you’re just another commenter shouting into the void.

Processed, polyunsaturated seed oils are rich in linoleic acid, which promotes cancer in rodents.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3921234

Requirement of essential fatty acid for mammary tumorigenesis in the rat. http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/4/3/153.full.pdf

However, when the corn oil was replaced by hydrogenated coconut oil the tumor incidence never exceeded 8 percent, while in most groups it was zero. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b44f/0f82cbb7d9473ac99c3866...

Thus the substitution of hydrogenated coconut oil for corn oil definitely inhibited tumor induction... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6704963

These findings suggest that dietary unsaturated fats have potent cocarcinogenic effects on colon carcinogenesis. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6815624

Inhibitory effect of a fat-free diet on mammary carcinogenesis in rats. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02531379

Experiments with 10 different fats and oils fed at the 20% level indicated that unsaturated fats enhance the yield of adenocarcinomas more than saturated fats. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7285004

Thus, diets high in unsaturated fat appear to promote pancreatic carcinogenesis in the azaserine-treated rat while a diet high in saturated fat failed to show a similar degree of enhancement of pancreatic carcinogenesis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6577233

...tumors grew to a larger size in C3H mice fed the 10% corn oil diet...than in those fed the 10% hydrogenated oil diet (without linoleate). The C3H mice fed diets with 1% linoleic acid developed significantly larger tumors than did those fed 1% oleic acid... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6587159

...corn oil (CO) diet, which contains linoleate...hydrogenated cottonseed oil (HCTO), a diet free of the polyunsaturated fatty acid...Both incidence and growth rate of tumors...were greater in mice fed diets containing either 0.3, 1, or 10% CO than in those fed 10% HCTO. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1255775

...mammary tumor growth was depressed by a fat-free or saturated-fat diet and enhanced by dietary linoleate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/817101

The cumulative incidence of tumor-bearing rats among DMBA-dosed rats was greater when the polyunsaturated fat diet was fed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3459924

...animals fed the HF safflower and corn oil diets exhibited enhanced mammary tumor yields when compared to animals fed HF olive or coconut oil diets... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/107358

These results show that a certain amount of polyunsaturated fat, as well as a high level of dietary fat, is required to promote mammary carcinogenesis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6782319

...the addition of 3% ethyl linoleate (an ethyl ester of a polyunsaturated fatty acid) increased the tumor yield to about twice that in rats fed either the high-saturated fat diet or a low-fat diet. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3476922

...animals fed HF diets rich in linoleic acid, such as safflower and corn oil, exhibited increased incidence and decreased latent period compared with...animals fed HF diets rich in oleic acid (olive oil) or medium-chain saturated fatty acids (coconut oil). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/416226

The differences in tumor incidence suggest that carcinogenesis was enhanced by the polyunsaturated fat diet during the promotion stage of carcinogenesis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6488161

...they suggest an association between promotion of mammary cancer and elevated levels of linoleic acid in serum lipids. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2979798

These results suggest that a diet high in unsaturated fat alone, or in combination with 4% cholestyramine, promotes DMBA-induced mammary cancer in Wistar rats. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26091908

Groups of animals fed the corn oil-enriched diet showed the highest percentage of tumor-bearing animals, significantly different in comparison with control and HOO groups. Total number of tumors was increased... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6583457

...effect of dietary corn oil (CO), safflower oil (SO), olive oil (OO), coconut oil (CC), and medium-chain triglycerides (MCT)...The incidence of colon tumors was increased in rats fed diets containing high-CO and high-SO...whereas the diets containing high OO, CC, or MCT had no promoting effect on colon tumor incidence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6778606

...an increase in fat intake was accompanied by an increased tumor incidence when corn oil was used in the diets. A high saturated fat ration, on the other hand, was much less effective in this respect. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9066676

The promotive tumorigenic effects of the other high-fat diets were associated with their high levels of some polyunsaturated fatty acids... https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-1097....

Mice fed 20% saturated fat were almost completely protected from UV tumorigenesis when compared with mice fed 20% polyunsaturated fat. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8973605

...the highest tumour [loads] (fed 15% or 20% polyunsaturated fat),... in comparison with the mice bearing smaller tumour loads (fed 0, 5% or 10% polyunsaturated fat). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27033117

...we found an inverse association between SF content and tumor burden...at least in male mice; there was a decrease in mortality in mice consuming the highest concentration of SFAs. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7214328

Increased tumor incidence and decreased time to tumor were observed when increasing levels of linoleate (18:2)...Increasing levels of stearate were associated with decreased tumor incidence and increased time to tumor. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1732055

A positive correlation between level of dietary LA and mammary tumor incidence was observed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6064952

Enhancement of mammary carcinogenesis in the high-corn oil diet group is detectable in most of the parameters studied. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8317898/

...increased the tumor number of rats fed corn oil, but not those fed palm oil....

The evidence doesn't seem clear.

https://davissciencesays.ucdavis.edu/blog/what-does-science-...

See my post above.

Just for awareness, rodents used in research are genetically engineered to develop tumors whose rates and prevalence are well understood. When we do research, we study the changes and composition of the tumors, among other effects.

The rats will "get cancer" either way. How else would we know whether something has a positive or negative effect on tumor growth?

I don’t see any reference to genetically engineering the rats to get cancer in the studies I linked. The results are terrifying in rodents.

A little more info on that: https://www.criver.com/eureka/evolving-mouse-model-cancer-re...

You might have to search for "transgenic" or other specific terminology to locate what model they used in the study, but they're assuredly not field mice or something you'd find in a pet store.

Here's a sample of a catalog: https://emodels.criver.com/search?term=*&species=Mouse

Yes, I remember when movie popcorn was the demonic food of the day.

Now, no one is going to argue that an all-movie-popcorn diet would be healthy, especially with the fake "butter", but realistically how much movie popcorn do people eat?

According to Gallup, the average American goes to the movies about 1.4 times a year. Not enough for the popcorn to have any measurable effect at all, I reckon.

And now I'm hungry for popcorn. Going to make some. :-)

>new food bogeyman

Nothing new, but Citric Acid consumption is skyrocketing in parallel to other more well-recognized commodities involved in the food processing industry:

https://www.imarcgroup.com/global-citric-acid-market

I don't know if flying under the radar makes it more or less of a boogeyman but I'm not a very happy camper with having added citric acid in every meal and snack.

Chemically being "tribasic", citric can absorb up to 3 times the alkalinity per molecule compared to the acetic acid (vinegar) it is often used as a substitute for. That doesn't mean 3x is always the ultimate ratio if all the acidity were to be neutralized either in vitro or in vivo. Even if the same number or molecules were substituted. Remember pH IS NOT acidity. They are just closely related. An excess of citric can be added without lowering the pH as uncomfortably as an excess of acetic, so you would never know without careful multi-endpoint titration vs pH measurement response.

Now there may be some basis in fact underlying a few ultimately bogus phobias, but you should probably be careful what you consume whether as a food, drink, or a more potent concentrated ingredient like purified liquids or even crystallized solids. Everything which can have toxic effects does have a different toxicity profile.

Not surprisingly, there's a song about the boogie man relative to what toxins you consume:

"I was lying in bed late one night

Had my eyes almost closed I was feeling alright

Looked to the East, looked to the West

Yonder come the Boogie Man doin his best"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj_lZ4hkJd8

> Anything fried, obviously, but also instant noodles, chips, crackers, tortillas, cereal, energy bars, canned tuna, processed meats, plant-based meat, coffee creamer, broths, frozen dinners, salad dressing, and sauces. Also: Baby food, infant formula, and sometimes even ice cream or bread. People eat a lot more vegetable oil.

The root of all evil is pretty out in front. When I was growing up outside of US, everything we cooked was in peanut oil, coconut oil, rice bran oil and cotton seed oil. Obesity was a rare occurrence and so were heart conditions for adults. But all of our food was entirely home made with the exception of the rare cola, chocolates and ice cream for celebrations. Fast forward 30 years, there isn’t a single item in stores that doesn’t have palm oil. Palm oil is the choice of cooking oil in restaurants. And cooking at home has significantly gone down. Obesity and heart diseases are now common. My parents have a much worse health in their 60s than my grandparents did in their 60s. I have a worse health than my parents did at my age despite being more conscious about health and actively working towards it.

Seed oils are not a problem, how much of it we have is a problem.

> Palm oil is the choice of cooking oil in restaurants

That's interesting, do you have any source for that? Is that in US?

I know Palm oil is used in food production because it's neutral in taste, easy to process at industrial scale and overall stable in its characteristics.

As a European, using Palm oil as cooking oil sounds crazy because it actually provides no benefit in a kitchen at all...

I’ve never heard of that- some restaurants do use fats like coconut oil but I’d imagine most use what’s cheap and inoffensive

There are two types of palm oil. One is the palm oil perhaps you are thinking of (made from the fruit and with more solids/saturated fats). The other is palm kernel oil which is highly refined and basically like any other common vegetable oil

Okay. The question remains: Which kind of restaurants are using such a oil, and most of all why.

Reason is simple. They go for cheapest option that works well enough. Restaurants have tight margins. Thus they choose cheapest viable option. Same goes for most food products. Over the years the migrate to whatever has good price.

It’s cheap and it has a neutral taste. It also has a high smoking point, making it a great option for deep frying.

No it’s not the US. But in Asia, it’s in everything.

Ah, thanks for clarification!

Edit: Learnt now that it's the most-used oil in Indonesia, as Indonesia is also the largest producer of Palm Oil (64% of global production in 2020). So they likely use it locally because it's available in abundance there...

In 2020, Indonesia and Malaysia accounted for ~84% of all the Palm oil production in the world [1]

[1] https://www.iucn.nl/app/uploads/2022/10/Factsheet-Palm-oil_I...

The consumption in US still is top 5 in the world.

https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?commodity=palm-oil&g...

But we do have soybean oil and canola that’s more popular.

It's very likely that you can blame most of what gets blamed on seed oil on diets that are abundant in simple carbohydrates, and seed oils are likely contributing in some way that's yet to be studied, but, eliminating those simple carbohydrates likely fixes things.

I do like the sentiment of the article though, very science-positive with a healthy side of skepticism.

I doubt simple sugars are a serious threat by themselves either. The dose makes the poison. Straight candy is bad for you but having sugary cereal or an energy bar occasionally is not an issue. Industrialized diets encourage us to overcome calorie dense, overly processed foods. The biggest factor in disease related to that kind of diet could just be that the proportions of things are out of whack.

Meant to say "overconsume" rather than "overcome"

Sugar consumption has been declining since 2000: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094768

My gut instinct is that seed oils are probably bad, but I don't have hard evidence of this. Instead, I see them as a proxy for highly processed foods. Usually it's pretty accurate: If you find a seed oil in the ingredients list there's a good chance you'll also find other nasty stuff like HFCS, various preservatives, added sugar, and so on. Real food doesn't need seed oils and often times it's added for the benefit of the processing machines rather than the food.

Eat real food, avoid processed crap, and you are 99% of the way there.

What do you use on the frying pan? I mostly but sunflower because I like the taste but also use olive oil often

Olive oil (California origin), butter, ghee, rendered animal fat

Butter for searing meat, (real) olive oil if I'm starting with onions and garlic. Also beef dripping and ghee from time to time.

Surely searing meat in butter would burn the butter?

I find the seed oil skepticism makes sense on kind of a lifestyle-y, psychic level. Like, the rhetoric always feels all-over-the-place like the author mentions compared to research on trans fat. It always struck me as a more emotional thing.

Like, it lets people afraid of a seemingly scary, industrialized, effeminate, world feel virtuous, contrarian, and protected by tradition. Plus, you get to eat steaks and butter!

The BMI percentiles over time chart is presumably meant to be shocking, but also shocking to me is how far back it goes being so high. The median [edit: 50yo] American would be obese in the UK as far back as [50yos' births in] 1920; I know it's a stereotype but I didn't realise it was that accurate (or as accurate as even that I mean).

(Edit softens it a little, but still. It's on track to break US's own BMI obese line at 30 before long, I think it's sometimes called an epidemic and rightfully so in that sense? If the median person in a country has a problematic characteristic that's crazy isn't it, should be a bigger deal?)

I’m not convinced the author of this post did enough research. Because some of the best resources were not mentioned. The leading meta researcher in this field is the author of the Fire in a Bottle blog who argues that linoleic acid itself doesn’t necessarily make you fat. But it triggers torpor in animals to trigger pathways to start accumulating fat. It’s like a trigger from nature. Because usually linoleic acid rich foods are available around fall which is when animals need to store weight before the winter.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by 'this field', and I'd never heard of this person, but in spending a few minutes looking him up, his work and his online presence - I find it hard to believe that 'the leading meta researcher in this field' is a very accurate description. I'd be curious for some more information justifying that.

Humans don’t undergo torpor though, so what conclusions can we really draw here about people? Humans didn’t evolve from recent ancestors that hibernate and our ancestors certainly consumed tree nuts and eggs as they were available. This hibernation connection smells like bullshit to me.

Pre-food preservation, grain storage, etc they probably put on as much weight as possible in summer and fall and then lost it in winter though. Not hibernation, but gaining a lot of weight in the fall would be advantageous.

That's kind of moving the bar isn't it? It does not follow that a pattern of some humans and hominids in some environments possibly bulking up seasonally means that oil from seeds is unhealthy. There are so may leaps of logic here that it's meaningless.

A lot of actual research is being done on how gut microbiota affects inflammation, disease, immune system. Obviously health is a complicated subject that includes genetics and environment.

My opinion is there doesn’t seem to be any concerning evidence that not eating seed oils is bad. Therefore I avoid them, as there is little downside and high potential upside.

Unless, as mentioned in the article, your saturated fat intake increases, which seems to be more measurably bad for you than seed oils. Of course, you might disagree with that assessment.

I think using seed oils as a way to engineer food, both from an industrial and spreadsheet standpoint to achieve various goals has created bad outcomes. Dipping bread in olive oil or spreading butter makes sense. Using some science project canola and sunflower oil blend, probably not so much.

In particular, the vilification of fat and shift away from meats and dairy has changed the way we eat in the last couple of generations. More packaged food, less ability to perform moderate complexity cooking tasks, etc.

The sane thing here is Japan: limit intake of all types of fat, but "enjoy your meals".

I think about it like this - seed oils are in nearly all processed foods. Read the labels of anything in your house that's in a bag, or will not expire in the next week. 95% chance there is sunflower/canola/safflower/sesame seed oil in it.

By avoiding seed oils, you tend to eat more whole foods. It's not an awful cue to pay attention to.

I’ve no real comment on the seed oils, etc. but I don’t understand how someone can look at the “Animals vs plant based added fats and oils per capita” chart and conclude first that seed oils have increased in our diet relative to animal fats, and not the glaring fact that total fats have increased dramatically in our diets.

That chart clearly shows animal fat availability is way down, and increase in overall fat intake is all vegetable based

not sure how your comment jives with that at all

Their point is, why is there so much focus on seed vs animal fat, when the fact is that fat consumption overall is way up? Seems like that would be the most obvious cause of weight gain.

because seed oil is cheap in hidden in almost everything cheap and processed

the health effects of eating seed oil go way beyond obesity. that isn't the only thing anyone who discusses the negative health effects is talking about.

Incredible read. I'm a trained olive oil panelist and the olive oil community has always made very strong claims on the evil of seed oils and he benefits of olive oil.

The question I still have is: is olive oil healthier than seed oils (which aren't really that bad based on current evidence)?

> Many vegetable oils (and particularly seed oils) are high in linoleic acid. And guess what’s making up a rapidly increasing fraction of body fat? (figure from Stephan Guyunet):

No, this can't be true, since HN has repeatedly told me that the body preferentially stores sugar as fat (presumably via de novo lipogenesis, which studies like [1] show to be only a minor contributor to fat balance, but that's probably just more Big Sugar propaganda, right?), that dietary fat doesn't become body fat, and even that you can eat all the fat you want without getting fat because ketones are magic.

1) https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)06404-3/ful...

I don’t know which HNers you’re thinking about. But the only supposed mechanism I’ve heard of why sugar makes you fat is that it affects insulin, and insulin is the mechanism that signals fat cells to store fat. I haven’t heard/read anything from the keto community that argues that sugar being converted to fat is the primary mechanism of weight gain.

I may have read theories that it contributes more to visceral fat, which is really bad for your health? But that won’t be the majority of weight gained I think.

Feels to me like you’re arguing against a pretty big straw man.

Especially because, at least the way I've seen it, the argument is that fat is better calorie for calorie.

> I may have read theories that it contributes more to visceral fat, which is really bad for your health? But that won’t be the majority of weight gained I think.

Yeah, about that: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7171936/

stick with quality animal fat/locally produced cold pressed olive oil you'll be fine no reason to consume much else which may/may not harm you. modern produce is mostly less nutritious and more inflammation inducing due to farming nowadays practically depletes the soil's biology. USDA have a really nice book on it https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/education-and-teaching-m...

I like how a bunch of posters here pooh poohed microplastics until more and more research came out and they couldn't keep their heads in the sand anymore. Don't worry, the same thing will happen here too.

They love their industry-funded “science” too much to take a step back and think critically and objectively.

Reading the comments, I was amazed at how HN commenters are pro seed oil (or anti anti seed oil).

But then I remembered how frothy everyone here was about Soylent when that stuff came out

One thing is for sure, if seed oil is very bad for you, it's probably got very little to with the anti seed oil armchair theorists unverifiable and therefore meaningless ideas.

I say this as an armchair theorist myself, who sticks to olive oil and butter and suspect seed oil is problematic, I'm just not very confident about it. The one nugget of wisdom this article highlights is worth repeating: stick to a variety of natural unprocessed (or minimally processed) foods as much as possible, make it the main part of your diet. For two reasons:

1. Nutrition is a very poorly understood subject, with a history of bad science, we basically know shit about nutrition as a society. For the most part, you Grandma is more likely to give you good advice about healthy eating than most government advice based on bad studies... It's getting better though, there are some decent folks out there trying to understand nutrition properly. And therefore anything we do to adulterate food is very poorly understood, but if you stick to natural foods, you have a better chance of eating healthy.

2. Capitalism's optimises food for profit, not health. This is why processed food exists, it's cheaper because it lasts longer, because cheap unpalatable ingredients can be made palatable, because throwing sugar onto everything makes it hyper palatable, which makes people over eat.

In fact that latter line of thinking made me change my mind about GM food, which I'm not fundamentally against as a concept, but the problem is the driving force behind the idea - The cost function is not human health, it's profit. This is problematic because it's possible to modify things for e.g greater yield but not necessarily for greater nutritional value, it could actually have the inverse relationship, over time this is going to work against you, it's inevitable. I also misunderstood GM to mean less need for harsh chemical pesticides, but it's all about intent again, the same people are usually trying to maximize yield so they will throw everything they can at the land.

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