Understanding the different oils you use in the kitchen and how they harm or help you.
People are trying to tidy up their diets, and many people look straight at the sugar content, but as bad as sugar can be, we can burn sugar off (to a certain extent by not overloading our bodies with it). However with the hydrogenated oils such as Canola, Vegetable and Sunflower oils, this is where our health declines.
What made me write this article was I was looking through my sons school book for Food studies, and I saw that the under the FATS chapter they first of all promote the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating by saying we need to be incorporating UNsaturated fats in the diet because they are an important source of essential fat-soluble vitamins.
I agree with the avocados, nuts, seeds etc – but not the vegetable or sunflower oil that they list as servings, plus the spreadable version which have more damaging oils in. (I’ve explained the polyunsaturated information below).
They do explain that the foods such as burgers, pizza and biscuits etc contain these saturated fats that we need to stay away from – it’s not the saturated fats it’s the sugar and refined carbohydrates in these foods that are the culprit.
Please read below where I have pulled information from Cate Shanahan’s well researched book to help you understand why it is extremely important to eliminate the right oils and incorporate the right fats into your diet.
No wonder we have sick children in this world, when they are taught this information that is purely lead by companies that help endorse their unhealthy products as healthy by having muscle power of big corporations!
Dr Cate Shanahan wrote a brilliant book – Deep Nutrition and I have paraphrased parts of this book to help you learn about the scary facts of what vegetable, canola and sunflower oils can do to us.
(I will be publishing the book review later but for now please take note)
Lipid scientists have been telling us for years and the research has supported for years – cholesterol and saturated fats are not your heart’s enemy; industrial fat products, the vegetable oils, are.
Industrial fat products like vegetable oils are toxic to your arteries because they contain delicate polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) that are particularly prone to oxidative damage, especially when exposed to heat and when separated from the antioxidants that would otherwise help protect them from that oxidative damage.
Please check these following products and then remove these from your pantry/fridge if they have the oils in them:
Margarine, salad dressings, rice milk, UHF coconut milk, soy milk, soy cheese, soy based meat products, frozen dinners, pastry, packet soups, canned soups, breakfast cereals, roasted nuts (check what they have been roasted in, most of the time it’s vegetable oils), chips, dry biscuits, shapes etc, granola, soft breads, buns, muffins and trust me french fries would be fried in vegetable oils.
Good fats that can be used are: olive oil, peanut oil, butter, macadamia nut oil, coconut oil, animal fat (lard, tallow)
Did you know?
Vegetable oils impair vitamin absorption and do little to suppress appetite, so you eat more and get less nutrition (makes sense – how many chips do you keep going back for?)
If you eat good fats like avocado – you are satiated easier and not reaching for more food. Avocados do not contain any nasties and are very nutrient dense.
- Vegetable oils contain mostly heat-sensitive polyunsaturated fats. When heated, these fragile fats turn into toxic compounds including trans-fats.
- Products made from vegetable oil, contain trans fat – even when the label seems to guarantee them trans free, but because heat so readily distorts their fatty acids, vegetable oil and products made from vegetable oil also contain something that worse for us than trans. (Cate calls these mega trans)
SCIENCE ALERT:
- Saturated fats can take heat – they can resist a kind of heat related damage called oxidation. Thanks to their shape, saturated fats have no room for oxygen to squeeze in, and even high heat can’t force these tough molecules to be more accommodating.
- Monounsaturated fats have room for just one oxygen molecule to sneak in.
- Polyunsaturated fat – this has two phases where oxygen chemically reacts, which makes oxygen not twice as likely to bind with the fat molecule, but billions of times more likely!.
The real trouble is the fact that after you eat these distorted, mutated fatty acids, they can reproduce inside you.
Mega trans – gangs of bad fats!
These lead to formation of free radicals. Free radicals can damage almost any part of your body: cell membranes, chromosomes, other fats – you name it! They restructure nearly every molecule they come into contact with. They kill your good bacteria, they make your arteries very crispy (same function that makes plastics solid). They also damage other bodily tissue, which can generate inflammation, a kind of chemical chaos that interferes with normal metabolic function. (Once you have metabolic dysfunction, you gain weight and as much as you try to lose weight it becomes an impossible fight).
Frying in vegetable oils doesn’t so much cook your foods as blast them with free radicals – fusing molecules together to make the material (arteries/tendons etc) stiff and inflexible.
Disturbing findings of Vegetable oils
- Vegetable oils attack the brain at seven distinct vulnerability points using seven distinct strategies, this can cause autism and other childhood disorders, it can make your brain susceptible to damage by sugar.
- Vegetable oil robs your brain of the ability to form new memories. Nothing takes away your identity the way Alzheimer’s does, with one possible exception: when the effects of vegetable oil reach past the individual and rearrange the genes that will help define the identity of your children, when consuming vegetable oils before and whilst you’re pregnant can affect the baby and has been linked to cases of Autism.
- Eliminating vegetable oils will enable symptoms of all sorts of brain disorders to improve, from autism to Alzheimer’s.
Please be aware how important it is to stay away from these oils, for you and your family. No wonder we have so many unhealthy people not realising how these oils keep damaging their health.
If you’d like to read a book with legitimate studies and research references I highly suggest you read Dr Cate Shanahan’s book or search podcast interviews she has done – she’s a hero in the NEW HEALTH SPACE.
