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Comment by shafyy | Hacker News Reader

> vegetable oils are the worst type of food known to man

Of course, this is wrong.

Of course not wrong, it was lobbyied into existence.

Some of the healthiest and long-living people live on diets that are high on vegetables and vegetable oils (e.g. the Mediterranean diet).

Olive oil is not a seed oil.

I knew I had to qualify for the pedantics. Vegetable seed oils are the worst type of food known to man, and I stand by it. The research is just a google away.

Vegetable pulp oil (i.e. coconut, extra virgin olive oil, etc.) is alright, if not beneficial.

Any RCT's showing it is incredibly more dangerous than butter or other vegetable oils?

Yes, there was the Minnesota Coronary Survey which was an RCT on polyunsaturated fats vs saturated fats. It was launched intending to prove the opposite conclusion, but ended up proving that polyunsaturated fats cause significantly higher mortality rates than saturated fats. It's hard to do better than this as a study because it's an RCT that did not rely on self-reported data (it was conducted in hospitals and nursing homes), and it measured a variable that's challenging to fake and relevant to health (death).

A [meta-analysis of all RCTs](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28526025/) seems to suggest there's no real difference between these kinds of fats. Is there a particular reason you are using only one study to draw strong conclusions?

Can you provide some of this research that's just a google away? What do you even mean by "the worst type of food known to man"? The worst in what way?

Sorry, but this is not me being pedantic. Many vegtable seed oils also have beneficial micronutrients. For example linseed oil has a lot of Omega-3. Sunflower oil has Vitamin E and K.

"Worst type of food known to man" is a very strong statement, and surely there's a long list of foods that come before vegetable seed oils.

I'd never eat linseed oil. Lookup what it's used for historically, varnishing and what not. That rancidification and cross-linking is something you def don't want happening in your body.

Just because something is used for varnishing doesn't mean it's unhealthy. Can you post any serious and credible source that says linseed oil is unhealthy?

It's trash. Unedible. You know how even in the mainstream, it is common knowledge that burnt oil is bad? Linseed doesn't even need to heat up to start reacting.

Opinions about food are full of excessive generalizations that are of little help.

There is no logical reason to expect that seeds, in general—carrying the energy for new life, containing the most valuable and precious resources—would constitute the "worst" food ingredient known to mankind.

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