Americans Have Lost the Plot on Cooking Oil | Hacker News Reader

Americans Have Lost the Plot on Cooking Oil

theatlantic.com

38 pointsfortran77121 comments

Let’s go back and remember that Large Tobacco once had Doctors saying smoking was healthy (even funding research papers), and Large Food telling us the importance of the American breakfast - bacon and eggs, OJ. Both large marketing campaigns with no scientific evidence.

I see a lot of these warnings as a jaded consumer, translating into: “don’t buy this, is expensive to produce and we don’t have margins, but buy this substitute, which is cheap and will kill you, but as is trendy is expensive and leave us a much bigger margin”

Better to ignore all these signs and get your evidence elsewhere.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" is one of the most ingenious lies ever crafted for commercial gain.

There is evidence that it is not a lie:

PMCID: PMC10465444 PMID: 36869181

Habitually Skipping Breakfast Is Associated with the Risk of Gastrointestinal Cancers: Evidence from the Kailuan Cohort Study (2023)

> Results: During a median follow-up of 5.61 (5.18 ~ 6.08) years, 369 incident GI cancer cases were identified. Participants who consumed 1–2 times breakfasts per week exhibited an increased risk of stomach (HR = 3.45, 95% CI: 1.06–11.20) and liver cancer (HR = 3.42, 95% CI: 1.22–9.53). Participants who did not eat breakfast had an elevated risk of esophageal (HR = 2.72, 95% CI: 1.05–7.03), colorectal (HR = 2.32, 95% CI: 1.34–4.01), liver (HR = 2.41, 95% CI: 1.23–4.71), gallbladder, and extrahepatic bile duct cancer (HR = 5.43, 95% CI: 1.34–21.93). In the mediation effect analyses, BMI, CRP, and TyG (fasting triglyceride-glucose) index did not mediate the association between breakfast frequency and the risk of GI cancer incidence (all P for mediation effect > 0.05).

> Conclusions: Habitually skipping breakfast was associated with a greater risk of GI cancers including esophageal, gastric, colorectal, liver, gallbladder, and extrahepatic bile duct cancer.

There is actually a lot more evidence in favor of breakfast if you follow the related links on the aforementioned PMID page.

Interesting, I’ll have to read that one. There was another study discussed here several months ago that had the opposite conclusion.

> that had the opposite conclusion.

I will believe it when I see it!

Meanwhile, here are some more studies showing a benefit of breakfast. It is certainly possible that there are confounding factors, but the relative risks of ignoring the data are too high.

---

Meta-Analysis of Relation of Skipping Breakfast With Heart Disease (2019) (PMID: 31326073)

> The primary meta-analysis combining HRs for Q1 (first quartile, most skipping breakfast) versus Q4 (fourth quartile, least skipping breakfast) from 3 studies together with other HRs/ORs demonstrated that skipping breakfast was associated with the significantly increased risk of heart disease (pooled HR/OR 1.24; 95% CI 1.09 to 1.40; p = 0.001). In sensitivity analyses combining HRs for Q2 (second quartile, second most skipping breakfast) versus Q4 or HRs for Q3 (third quartile, second least skipping breakfast) versus Q4 from 3 studies together with other HRs/ORs, the association of skipping breakfast with the increased risk of heart disease in the primary meta-analysis was confirmed. In conclusion, skipping breakfast is associated with the increased risk of heart disease.

Association between skipping breakfast and risk of cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality: A meta-analysis (2020) (PMID: 32085933)

> Results: Skipping breakfast was associated with elevated risk of cardiovascular disease (relative risk 1.22 95% confidence interval 1.10-1.35) and all cause mortality (relative risk 1.25 95% confidence interval 1.11-1.40) compared with eating breakfast regularly.

> Conclusion: Skipping breakfast increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality. Eating breakfast regularly may promote cardiovascular health and decrease all cause mortality.

Yeah, the risk for those already ailing with heart are important to know, and I mentioned this here in another comment as well.

But, here are some overall counterpoints for the majority of the population:

How lobbyists made breakfast 'the most important meal of the day' - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/28/breakfa...

https://theprint.in/science/scientists-got-it-wrong-breakfas...

> The health benefit of breakfast has now been completely debunked by a new systematic review and meta-analysis of 11 randomised trials that investigated the impact of skipping breakfast on weight and metabolic rate. The studies vary widely in duration and quality, and seven looked at changes in weight as well as changes in energy usage. Their conclusion is the same as in recent reviews that have been largely ignored, namely, there is no evidence to support the claim that skipping meals makes you put on weight or adversely reduces your resting metabolic rate.

I found a bunch of others, but in any case, do whatever works for you, is my advice.

It's also not unusual for science to regularly swing between opposing viewpoints on dietary matters every decade or so. There are certainly many examples of this in my own lifetime.

I am linking about cancer and cardiovascular disease and mortality, whereas you're linking about weight. Weight is something that anyone can trivially measure and then adjust one's lifestyle accordingly. The others are not. The outcomes for cancer and CVD hold significantly more weight for obvious reasons.

Thanks, I'm convinced and happy to be corrected. Thanks, HN!

There's probably a correlation/causation thing going on that breakfast is associated with a healthier lifestyle.

Yes, something can be just a correlation, but still be a very good idea because it is part and parcel of a healthy lifestyle.

It's a metabolic fact that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. What consumers are marketed to consume for breakfast is another story.

It is not at all a fact, though it was widely disbursed as one for many decades in the 20th century. In fact, recent studies have proven quite the opposite, that it has almost no effect on health or mortality if someone eats or skips breakfast. There are a few exceptions, like people who are at risk of heart failure should not skip meals, but for the vast majority of the public, skipping breakfast actually has proven to have some benefits.

Your claim is in direct contradiction to the current state of the literature. The scientific community is in consensus around the fact that late meal timing is damaging to metabolic health. Meal timing should be aligned to the body's circadian clock, which is the most active early in the day and becomes more dormant as the day progresses. People who delay caloric intake later into the day and into the evening have worse glucose control (a meal eaten in the evening can carry twice the glycemic impact as it does compared to in the morning). They also have increased triglycerides, increased levels of obesity, markers of oxidative stress, increased gut microbiota and hormone dysregulation, etc [1].

As a system, our bodies are more active in the morning than they are in the evening, which most people can identify with, so this shouldn't be surprising. It's not clear if, by skipping breakfast and decreasing caloric intake, but thereby delaying the feeding window, a beneficial effect for some individuals exists. Most of the data points in the opposite direction, but maybe, for the extremely metabolically fit individual who shovels glucose into cells like a snowplow, it's less problematic? I'm just positing, but we don't have good evidence for that. What we do have evidence for is that those who engage in IF but do it with a delayed eating schedule generally have worse health outcomes.

Some references:

[1] "Late eating decreased glucose tolerance, resting energy expenditure, and carbohydrate oxidation as compared to early eating. Besides, the cortisol profile was blunted for late eating as compared to early eating, similarly to that found under acute stress situations [11]. Eating late also affected the daily rhythms of peripheral temperature, towards a similar pattern to that found in overweight/obesity women which was related to metabolic alterations"

Timing of Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Effects on Obesity and Metabolic Risk (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6893547/)

"Dietary patterns that feature meal timing outside of the regular daytime hours can contribute to circadian disruption as food is metabolised in opposition to internal daily rhythms and can feedback on the timekeeping mechanisms setting these rhythms. Epidemiological evidence examining the impact of late meal timing patterns is beginning to suggest that eating at night increases the risk of weight gain over time"

The Impact of Meal Timing on Risk of Weight Gain and Development of Obesity: a Review of the Current Evidence and Opportunities for Dietary Intervention (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9010393/)

There are many.. so I encourage you to look into it yourself.

Eating too late is unhealthy, but that is not the same as skipping breakfast. Eating too late or too early both have negative results.

The first paper says:

"Unlike lunch and dinner, which are recommended early in the day, it has been proved that to have breakfast too early may be deleterious due to melatonin levels, which may still be high in the early morning."

The second paper references a 12 week randomized controlled trial that shows that it is good to skip breakfast, eating within a time restricted window (12:00 - 20:00).

Personally I usually aim for a TRE of 12:00 - 17:00 and that has worked well for me over the past 15 years. Skip breakfast, early dinner, as recommended by those papers. I feel lethargic and tired if I eat breakfast. Listen to your body.

The first paper is not making the claim that eating breakfast is unhealthy—just that you don't want to eat right as you wake up. These are different things. The second paper references two different studies where, when people at more than 33% or 50% of their calories for dinner, they were more likely to be obese.

I agree that eating from noon to 5pm can be an optimal eating window, but you are going to have to eat a large amount of food at noon and a relatively small meal at an early dinner if you're not eating breakfast. That's possible for some people; but I think the vast majority of people prefer to eat 3 meals a day and are better off consuming the bulk of the calories earlier. My personal experience with people that skip breakfast: they tend to have a moderately large lunch and a moderately large dinner, which is probably not optimal. And that's because when delaying food intake in the morning, they tend to grow relatively hungrier as the day progresses.

One thing the papers show is there is a natural rhythm of hormones and metabolism, which is adaptable to some extent, and you just need to listen to your body. But if you are addicted to sugar / excessive carbs, and don't exercise, then playing around with meal times is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Your body signals are malfunctioning.

Personally I have found a moderate size lunch and larger dinner, with a snack or two before or after dinner, is just perfect. Most people don't need three full meals a day. With moderate carbs I never go into a food coma. Worst is eating a large breakfast which makes you feel tired just when you are starting the day and trying to be productive.

If you have trained your body to burn fat (moderate or low carb diet) then you will be running on fat reserves efficiently through the day until the first meal.

Yeah, I agree with your assessment here. The statement "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" is a bit hyperbolic given all of the nuances introduced. But, still, at the end of the day, clinical recommendations have to be made; and physicians have to talk to patients in a very straightforward and un-nuanced manner. I still think the adage, breakfast being the most important meal of the day, can ring true for most people; as placeholder advice to "try to eat more earlier". The statements are not synonymous as you've pointed out; but my goal was to plant a flag because I think most people throw the baby out with the bathwater when they decide to skip breakfast (i.e they tend to consume too many calories too late).

I haven't eaten breakfast regularly for thirty years. Ride a bike very day, healthy as a horse.

For a kid maybe, they are small and can run out of fuel so quickly. But after the age of maybe fifteen, forget it.

> But after the age of maybe fifteen

Fifteen year olds are still growing, in the anabolic phase, so they should eat more often if they have the appetite. Forget it when you are a fully grown adult.

Anecdata is interesting but it is not actual data :-)

Usually true. But it is an apparent aberration of a wanna-be hard rule. A single data point is important if it refutes a rule.

How so? On HN you state facts with references usually.

See my comment above

> It's a metabolic fact that breakfast is the most important meal of the day

Based on what scientific evidence? Some do better without breakfast.

See my comment above

Yes those papers show that it is good to skip breakfast. Replied above.

OK, but back to the actual article you're responding to, it isn't a very good one. The author is actually saying "don't worry about which oil you fry stuff in" at one point in it, which is dumb. Like can you technically deep fry stuff in extra virgin olive oil? Yes, but it'll be expensive and EVO has a low smoke point so yes you will need to be careful or you risk burning it, creating carcinogens, it will be more dangerous to use than a proper frying oil etc.

Dumb dumb dumb.

As far as I know there have always been two serious considerations around cooking oils, one is the smoke point for the reasons above, and the other is quantity of saturated/trans fats with less generally being healthier. This article is on to a good general idea that you don't need fancy and exotic oils unless you want to do something fancy and exotic. But the execution is poor. I keep two oils in my kitchen, a light/EVO oil for salads/breads/quick sautees and one with a high smoke point for frying. Haven't seen any evidence in 20 years that this needs to change.

BTW if anyone really wants something to worry about, it's probably going to a restaurant - pro chefs know what sells and are using twice the amount of butter you would if you cooked at home. Love me some butter but the amount being used at restaurants is wild

EVO has a low smoke point, but AFAICT this doesn't result in serious problems when burning. The suggestion I read is that the high level of antioxidants prohibit the formation of too many nasties, but I'm not sure the study author knew.

EVO's smoke point is not great for deep frying or high-heat frying, but it's great for quick medium-heat stir-frys and anything in the oven at 350f/180c or below.

> the high level of antioxidants prohibit the formation of too many nasties

Source? All sources I found just now say: "burning olive oil very bad".

Here's an article written by someone from what looks suspiciously like an olive oil lobby group. That said, it makes explicit reference to the standards complied with to achieve the measurements, so it's plausibly valid:

https://actascientific.com/ASNH/pdf/ASNH-02-0083.pdf

Here's another paper from authors with less partisan credentials:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092422442...

I thought you should use regular olive oil for cooking (harder to burn)

And Extra Virgin olive oil would be good directly, like in a salad.

If only 'Extra Virgin' mean anything. You can get good stuff, sure. But you can get corn oil in a can with the same label.

By nasties I guess you mean carcinogens. Those aren't the only problem with using EVO for high heat frying:

1) You can fry under the smoke point but it's close, so you need to monitor temperature more carefully

2) If you do accidentally hit the smoke point you're going to burn the oil, make whatever you're frying taste worse, stink up the kitchen and gunk up your range hood, if things really go south, you can start a grease fire.

3) EVO is expensive and it doesn't fry any better than any other oil so kind of a waste to use it

4) One of EVO's main selling points is its flavor, which gets neutralized by heat

And then yeah if you hit the smoke point, carcinogens maybe/probably/idk.

You just never want to get near the smoke point of oil when you cook. EVO is best for lighter and lower heat applications.

I'm not a professional, just a guy who likes to cook, but I doubt any professional kitchens are frying or using EVO for any other high heat applications.

Olive oil prices will soon rapidly climb where they haven't already:

https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/production/australian-olive-gr...

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00362...

There's been a lot of commercial crop failures about the globe for various reasons.

We recently raked through a slew of "old" quasi abandoned trees about the district that were once (decades back) commercial trees and now stand alone; they've done better than the mono fields of more recently planted commercial trees.

There's a local olive farm that's doing good business processing small trailer loads from locals bringing in small loads to process at a flat rate (up to a ceiling) for own use .. we've got in two years worth of anticipated demand for our family this way at about half the going rate let alone the predicated per litre price.

Rising olive oil prices is what brought my attention to this article: only 6 months ago I could buy olive oil for 20 cents/ounce and this week the lowest price was 48 cents/ounce. Alternatives at far lower prices piqued my curiosity.

Olive oil prices will soon rapidly climb where they haven't already

My go to mid level olive oil is up almost 50% over the past few month. Interestingly the much more high end olive oil I sometimes buy is up less than 20%.

If the sellers are aiming for a flat rate of profit per unit, then a 20%-only increase makes sense.

https://archive.is/HTsw7

If you’re frying / sautéing with it, pay attention to the smoke point. Otherwise, if you’re topping with it or using it as a prominent ingredient in a sauce, pay attention to the flavour.

What else is there?

Don't cook with cold-pressed oil. Not necessarily because it's unhealthy, but it would be silly to pay more for cold-pressed oil and then heat it up.

The biggest problem right now is that something like "extra virgin olive oil" is often everything but.

At least the ones that claim to be 100% California have some level of the law checking on them. Everything else is a crapshoot.

Spanish olive oil is very strictly managed with clear definitions of what extra virgin oil is as well as the other grades of olive oil. We also have quite a selection of small batch local olive oils. Some people here are as fanatic about this as wine enthusiasts.

If you can find original package Spanish olive oil you will get what it says on the bottle. When it comes to white label brands in places like the us all bets are off. In that case better stick to California olive oil.

It’s not really that simple any more. There’s a magazine in Germany called ÖkoTest and they do a lot of testing of all kind of products. We were shocked at the results for olive oil (and these were all from Europe, Italy and Spain), most of them all had mineral oils from processing probably and only one or two from the 20+ brands tested were free of mineral oils and had decent or ok overall results. Even some of the BIO/organic ones were not so good.

Italy's EVO Is already a joke currently. Most brands, even old, famous ones are re-selling oil from Spain or Greece (and sometimes even Morocco and rest of Northern Africa). In Spain the situation is a bit better, for now, because olives are still a bit cheaper (even if last year the thing changed drastically due to draught and very bad harvesting, and prices skyrocketed like 2.5x)

PS: I cannot buy their test results because I'm in Switzerland, do you know by chance how well the Alnatura one did?

As I understood the magazine article, the mineral oil could come from a couple of sources, including for example harvesting machinery.

I wonder if seed-based oils (like rapeseed a.k.a. canola) would be better in this regard, as the seeds are maybe a bit more protected until a later stage of processing... just guessing here though. Olives seem to be a bit of an outlier because there it's also the fruit that is oily and used is used for making the oil.

Do you know by chance if ÖkoTest also did tests with other types of oils?

Edit: Just checked the recommended articles, they also tested rapeseed. TLDR; nope, not better

https://www.oekotest.de/essen-trinken/Rapsoel-Test-Die-meist...

The tests I'm finding seem to be mostly white-label brands with who knows what kind of oil. I'm talking about single source olive oil. It's a bit more expensive but you generally get oil from small operations and co-ops that can be either eco or not.

https://www.elcorteingles.es/club-del-gourmet/aceites-y-vina...

The parent poster (not OP) mentioned was specifically about organic brands in the German markets. The brands there are pretty known around here.

How do you know you are past the smoke point? Doesn't cooking always produce some smoke?

No cooking produces steam. Unless you’re intentionally burning your food there shouldn’t be a ton of smoke

How do you tell steam and smoke apart?

Smoke has a distinctive smell, and steam is damp. Both have a distinctive appearance.

Linoleic acid (a particular polyunsaturated fat) is possibly implicated as one of the major villains in skyrocketing obesity rates; eg, correlation between obesity and linoleic acid content in body fat, theories about it being a trigger for an archaic hibernation metabolic shift. (Its use has risen hugely over time, along with obesity, but of course you could say the same thing about global warming and pirates.)

Why do people look for unknown causes of obesity when there are so many obvious known causes? We aren't lacking an explanation!

I am a fat guy and I can explain why I am fat - I eat too much food and don't do enough exercise.

Guest what happened when I ate less food? Lost weight

It's not just less or more food. Calorie density matters, as does taste.

Yes, one can lose weight by drinking some Soylent Green mush with the exact correct caloric count and macros for steady healthy weight loss.

You know what else that person will lose? All happiness and the will to live =)

Some people really are just "food is fuel" and don't care what stuff tastes like, others (like me) actually get enjoyment from eating food, different foods on every day.

This is why there isn't a one size fits all solution to weight loss. Even "calories in calories out" is a bit hazy, because not every single calorie in the food is consumed with 100% efficiency - it depends on your gut bacteria, which we know way too little about.

Nah dude it really is as easy as eat less = lose weight. In all cases if you reduce your food consumption you will eventually weigh less this is thermodynamics 101. Nobody has to drink Soylent green mush or even just salads. Just eat less. And maybe go for a run here and there that helps too.

If bodys were thermodynamic engines. We aren't! We have hormones and steroids and various receptor sites we have the stomach to brain connection... That's how someone can be put on antipsychotic medication or certain bipolar medications and then end up gaining a whole bunch of weight without changing their diet. We aren't simple calorie and calorie out engine machines we are extremely complex.

Regardless of your disease, if someone else controls your food input and limits it the weight will go out.

No one will gain weight with 500G of plain bread and water 3x daily + supplements

No one's getting fat on cucumbers

Sure we aren't simple thermodynamic engines but we are thermodynamic engines.

Calorie counting works. If you input less energy than your body consumes, you WILL lose weight. If you disagree with basic physics like that then you're deliberately misunderstanding.

And sure, many factors affect the exact balance, but it remains true that reducing calorie intake will reduce your weight.

When people say "calorie counting doesn't work" they really mean "calorie counting is hard to stick to", which is fair.

Yea, that works.

But WHAT you eat is also significant for long term weight loss. Anyone can eat 1000cal deficit of only kale and unseasoned chicken breast. But nobody can do it for 40 years, which is needed for a lifestyle change.

And now we’re back to the psychology of things, the food needs to be balanced and tasty. Not just 100% healthy.

Also if two people eat the exact same amount of the exact same food, they get different amounts of calories from it. The body isn’t a 100% efficient engine, there are losses.

I agree. Some people don't realize how many calories some of the things they regularly consume have, though, and I think that's why many have trouble losing weight, which is why it's important to track your calorie consumption when trying to lose weight.

People have different gut/intestinal flora which affects the amount of calories digested from different foods.

There are actual studies on this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10368799/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8291023/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7463616/

We all know that one person who can eat literally anything and is still fit and that one person who sees an ad for ice cream and gains 5 pounds (hyperbole of course). According to these studies it's the difference in gut microbiota that's the difference here.

Thanks for sharing; I hadn't known that there were studies that show that the microbiome affects weight gain in the body.

> We all know that one person who can eat literally anything and is still fit and that one person who sees an ad for ice cream and gains 5 pounds (hyperbole of course). According to these studies it's the difference in gut microbiota that's the difference here.

I know people who seem to eat the same amount of food but gain different amounts of weight from it, but I had always chalked it up to a combination of these factors: 1) bigger, taller people naturally burn more calories than shorter people even while sedentary; 2) people may do different amounts of activity (e.g., one person jogs 30 minutes daily and another doesn't); 3) you can't know if someone is actually eating the same food as someone else without observing all their caloric intake over an extended period of time, which only happens in scientific studies.

Now I know there are more factors. Thank you.

European obesity rates are also growing, but are much lower than US.

Contrary to anecdotes, most people in Europe are also pretty sedentary, don't cycle to work and don't do sport (there's probably more active people in Europe than US). We probably walk a bit more but there can't be that much in it.

So I'm still baffled at that difference.

What I noticed in south Europe at least is that food in small quick restaurants is cheaper and way better quality than fast food. It naturally forces people to make good choices.

For example, in Portugal a McDonald’s meal is about €12.

Meanwhile you can get a meal of fish or meat, mashed potatoes and some veggies plus Coke Zero in a glass bottle for €8.50.

Or a plate of rice, good quality salad (not a token one) and quarter chicken plus a coffee for €7.50.

Have you been to the US? It's mostly the food. The bread aisle in American supermarkets smells of sugar. For real. Very weird.

Also... yeah we are pretty sedentary in Europe but it's another level in America. In many parts of US cities there are literally no pavements so you can't walk even if you wanted to. I can't think of anywhere in Europe like that.

I think there are two reasons for that. The first is just many people don’t like to take accountability for themselves, so they look for other things to blame. There’s now enough obese people in the population for this delusions to get a lot of mainstream acceptance. The other is that doctors know they can’t actually get their patients to do the necessary lifestyle changes, so their interventions tend to revolve around the assumption that the patients will happily lifestyle themselves to death.

Lifestyle is definitely a problem to an extent, but people didn't just all decide to be lazy at once. The environment and culture changed.

Culture is just the sum of the things people decide to do, so I’d question whether there’s any real distinction between the things you’re saying here. People who lead obese lifestyles can simply decide to lead a more healthy lifestyle. Why many people don’t make this decision, and what caused these lifestyle choices to be so widely adopted in the first place are interesting questions. But lifestyle choices are the totality of the problem.

> People who lead obese lifestyles can simply decide to lead a more healthy lifestyle.

This is a greatly simplified POV and also incorrect. Lifestyle is influenced by a lot of things that are not merely choices. Stress, depressions, addictions (sugar is highly addictive), trauma, your social environment. Saying that someone can simply choose a healthy lifestyle is like saying someone can simply choose not to be depressed or addicted.

These things can influence the choices people choose to make, but they cannot make those choices for them. You’re simple stating the shared delusion of obese people who can’t confront accountability. None of the factors you’ve mentioned require anybody to have a donut and a milkshake for breakfast every morning. They might make somebody more likely to make that terrible decision, but it’s still a decision only they are accountable for.

> You’re simple stating the shared delusion of obese people who can’t confront accountability. None of the factors you’ve mentioned require anybody to have a donut and a milkshake for breakfast every morning.

I'm not saying that. I'm merely saying that things aren't so easy as you make them out to be. Read my post again.

Your claim is very explicitly that people are unable to make healthy lifestyle choices. This claim is complete nonsense. Posting a list of vague reasons why people may choose to make unhealthy choices doesn’t support your central claim in any way.

No, they're not.

If a problem is systemic in its existence, then it has a systemic cause. Looking at it as an individual problem is fine for yourself, but if you want to fix it for a society, you have to look at the systemic cause instead.

The main problem here is that millions of people somehow convinced themselves that they’re not responsible for their own lifestyle choices. Which is certainly a systemic problem worth investigating. If people want to stop being obese though, there is no substitute for lifestyle changes

People weren't extra responsible before, it was that their diet and exercise patterns were healthier even without them particularly trying.

Getting stuck on individual responsibility as a route to society-wide change is a smooth road to failure.

Your ruminations about how they problem can or cannot be solved are not relevant to what is causing the problem. Individual lifestyle choices are what causes obesity, this is a plainly obvious fact that a lot of people are in a complete state of delusion about. What caused this massive shift in culture is a seperate question, that you will find plenty of other people eager to debate with you.

How to solve the problem this has created is again another seperate question. But I would suggest that problems caused by individual choices have very few (and very unsatisfying) solutions, other than personal responsibility. Which all tend to require denying people their liberties (like the way you might put a person in jail if they refuse to stop choosing to commit crimes).

> Your ruminations about how they problem can or cannot be solved are not relevant to what is causing the problem.

It is, you just don't want to admit it. People didn't all individually decide to change their lifestyle, their lifestyle changed due to their environmental conditions changing. People aren't fully rational actors, but they are responsive actors.

People respond to their environment, or their circumstances, or whatever else by making decisions. We both know this is true, but it is not possible to reconcile this reality with the position you’re taking here. Unless you want to start taking people’s ability to choose away from them, by say setting up obesity internment camps, then any solution you could possibly imagine must require people to individually start making different decisions. Your insistence on absolving people of this responsibility certainly isn’t constructive.

> People respond to their environment, or their circumstances, or whatever else by making decisions.

And their decisions vary based on their environment and circumstances. Alter the environment, and you can easily get better decisions and results.

One thing some people do when trying to adopt a healthier diet is to change where they keep healthy vs unhealthy food in their house, to make healthier food more convenient and unhealthy food less convenient. They alter their environment to encourage better moment-to-moment decisions. We can choose as a society to do the same thing.

The point is not to make unhealthy decisions literally impossible; it's virtually always possible to make unhealthy or healthy choices, but how easy or hard they are can vary quite a bit. The point is to make healthier decisions the easy, default option.

> One thing some people do when trying to adopt a healthier diet is to change where they keep healthy vs unhealthy food in their house, to make healthier food more convenient and unhealthy food less convenient. They alter their environment to encourage better moment-to-moment decisions. We can choose as a society to do the same thing.

Putting aside the "healthy vs unhealthy" food contrivance, how do you propose that society decides to keep healthier food options in individual people's houses? If somebody chooses to do that, they are individually choosing to make a lifestyle change. According to you this strategy is a "smooth road to failure".

> Putting aside the "healthy vs unhealthy" food contrivance

It's not a strict binary system, but there's definitely foods that are broadly healthier or unhealthier. Unless you think Dorito's and broccoli are equally healthy.

> how do you propose that society decides to keep healthier food options in individual people's houses?

I would focus on the things the government can control. Transportation is a big one: the government already controls roads and streets, and the US has pushed car dominance in transportation options for decades now, and it's been very successful, with most trips done by car.

Switching to a model where walking, biking, and public transit are co-equal with driving overall, would result in more exercise in transportation, among the other benefits of multimodal transportation.

Tons of people actually do like walking, biking, and public transit when those options are actually good -- you see a lot of Americans comment on this when they visit other countries that do better here -- but in most US cities, they kinda suck. There's usually little that's useful within walking distance, biking feels both unpleasant and unsafe, and buses/trains are slow and unreliable, if they even exist at all.

Those are all fixable issues, it's just a matter of where we choose to invest as a society. We've mostly been investing into car-dominant transportation, and so cars usually make the most sense in our built environments. And we're talking about societal-level choices here; people don't get to individually choose if the buses are reliable, or if bike paths are unsafe, or if zoning allows for neighborhood bakeries and grocery stores.

Are you a Fire in a Bottle fan too?

Haven't yet read through it! I probably should at some point.

I'd also recommend Experimental Fat Loss, although some of his stuff can be a bit ranty. He's got good data and experiments, though, which is why I recommend him. Notably, he cured his non-24 with his diet. https://www.exfatloss.com/p/losing-43lbs-in-144-days-on-ex15...

It’s quite good. He’s got a YT channel too that’s very heavy on science. And a Reddit community that experiments alongside. Great resources.

Dynomight recently wrote a good breakdown of anti-seed-oil theories, assessing whether they're plausible:

https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/

Well painted picture of a specific example of a macro issue of our dawning noosphere. We want to be smart, connected to & making smart choices. And there are some reasons to be savvy, to learn and know differences and uses. And interesting theories and ideas aplenty to dig into.

That interest is gullible to or can be played or disrupted by over-excited neurons of the world brain; individuals and media sending strong signals or alarm. Often unduely loudly, disproportionately. Wrecking the noise floor.

I maintain more excitement than worry. This connectivity is so new. And so many people and agencies have only shown up lately, are not the aggressive infonauts. It's no surprise we are only beginning to figure out how we will sort and make sense of information. The torrent of news and revelation still ebbs at us, but eventually I hope and tend to believe we might emerge longer views, where information is only regarded as valuable when it has ongoing lineage & history, when it's expected to be updated & mutli-faceted information.

Speaking of losing the plot, here's extra-virgin canola oil:

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/483501/geo...

Before the 1950’s, soybean oil and linseed oil were used to make paint. These are drying oils that combine spontaneously with the oxygen in the air to form a hard film.

Then the paint industry figured out how to make their products from petroleum distillates. The seed oil industry remarketed their product as vegetable oil, and hired some scientists to tell us the saturated fats we’d been eating for thousands of years were actually the cause of the new wave of cardiovascular disease.

At least we can still use vegetable oil as biodiesel.

Said the dairy industry.

If it says 'vegetable oil' it's palm oil and should be avoided.

It can be but I don't think I've ever seen it. The vegetable oils I typically see in my supermarket are soybean oil these days.

or cottonseed oil (with "non food grade pesticides" then post processed to become "vegetable oil"

Nearly every instance I know of "vegetable oil" means soybean oil.

palm oil is just too damn cheap... and ferrero got to the game early and probably funded the whole RSPO and convinced the world big tabbaco style that maybe THESE palm oil aren't so bad after all.

or soy, or whatever is cheap in that region or the time of year etc.

The point is it will be highly processed whatever it was.

"We’ve improved the fats in the U.S. food supply a lot in the last 20 years,”"

And yet obesity has ballooned in the same period. What could be the cause?

More sedetary life. Before most people worked in physically active jobs and past times tended to be more active too. If you work in an office and watch TV when you get home, your energy use is obviously smaller than working in a field for 12 hours.

Apparently more sedetary life does not effect the apetite of most people.

I think this is just a convenient excuse, there were plenty of sedentary office workers in the 50s and 60s, and they weren't obese at nearly the same rates. It seems pretty clear from where I'm sitting that it's something dietary or environmental.

more sedentary than 20-30 years ago?

Sorry I don't believe it. I don't see much change in people's lifestyles, in fact with alcohol and smoking on the wane, and ubiquitous healthy-diet messaging, I think people may even be living healthier lifestyles now.

It's something in the environment, most likely the food.

There is a total freak out over “seed oil” and their omega 6 vs omega 3 content. I thought it was a load of crap. Glad to see that is the case.

Just use butter or ghee. Problem solved.

Vegetable oils aren’t safe for human consumption in any form.

Plus the majority of olive oil you’ll find on the shelves is fake.

Even EU had declared an emergency and stated that olive oil is the most faked food stuff. And that’s EU that produces said oil and has some of the most stringent food rules on this planet.

> Vegetable oils aren’t safe for human consumption in any form.

Yeah, I'd need to see some sources for your claim.

Americans can do a lot of things. But cooking is not one of them. It already starts at the grocery store where the vegetable section is smaller than the candy, crisps section. Its made very tempting to produce garbage food.

I can't recall any grocery stores where the vegetable section is smaller than the candy and crisps section. Certainly not the ones I've frequently shopped at over the years. But maybe I also have a different definition of "grocery store". I suspect you're not in the USA because of the term "crisps". What we commonly call a "grocery store" here, from what I understand, might be called a "supermarket" in other parts of the world, which may be where the mix up happens.

Edit to add: We do have in some areas smaller grocery stores that are not supermarkets and what they contain can vary wildly.

Also, you might be surprised at some of the cooking us Americans can do. Not me, but others that aren't me.

The vegetable section is about 2-3x as large as the snack/candy aisle at my (American) grocery store. And that's not even counting the fruit area next to it.

we all need to visit Portugal to relearn what is food...apparently less than 2% of their caloric intake comes from processed food, insanity. how is it possible.

I can only account that to some extreme definition of what "processed" food consist of in that statistic. Generally processed food is rather low bar. And lot of reasonable daily food is processed.

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