The Repercussions

You can see the repercussions of 35+ years of pseudo science in just this one little sign hanging in a burger joint.

First - the assumption that the best health measure has to do with cholesterol, specifically, that it be "reduced". Well, you can't live without the stuff, and "low" cholesterol is associated with early mortality just as high cholesterol is associated with early mortality.  But if you lower cholesterol, it does not mean you will live longer, and if you have low cholesterol, it does not mean you aren't going to die of heart disease.

Interestingly, peanut oil is a poly unsaturated fatty acid, or PUFA, and supposedly "healthy" because eating these oils reduces total cholesterol.  However, there's never been a study which proved that "lowering" cholesterol by dietary intervention reduces mortality.  It's all just a guess, and one that looks less useful by the day.

There are as many reasons to believe peanut oil is unhealthy as there are to believe it is "healthy."  Peanut oil is the best substance available to produce atherosclerosis in lab animals. Peanut oil, like all PUFAs, oxidizes easily, meaning it is rapidly degenerated in the body to a useless bit of garbage, or worse.  Peanut oils are part of the reason we are estimated to eat a 20:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids, which is another red flag for our health.  Lastly, it appears that cells which are over-built on PUFAs are also vulnerable to oxidation by reactive oxidation species (ROS).  ROSs are the reason everyone things we should be eating a bunch of anti-oxidants, which is to say, they are bad, and apparently high consumption of peanut oil and other omega 6 fatty acid laden foods (for example, industrial seeds oils and corn "oil") gives us defective and easily oxidized cell membranes.  

Paleo man ate many different things, but he never had a chance to eat a 20:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids - no one did until perhaps 50 years ago - and that alone might make it prudent to be very wary of peanut oil consumption until proven otherwise.

Sadly, pseudo science left us vulnerable to the belief that man-made industrial food chain products like peanut oils were safe and staples of the human diet like lard/tallow were not.  The repercussion - reverso world.

A Good Use For Soy/Veggie Oils

But don't eat it!

Excellent Review of O6/O3 Issues

http://thehealthyskeptic.org/how-too-much-omega-6-and-not-enough-omega-3-is-making-us-sick

BLUF:  Imbalance results in dis-functional inflammation and cell wall permeability issues.

Sense on Omega Fats Balance

One of the major differences between our post-industrial diets and the evolutionary and traditional foods of our past is in the kinds of fat we eat. One huge change has to do with the polyunsaturated fatty acids (or PUFAs), which come in several varieties, but most commonly omega 6 and omega 3. PUFAs are "essential fats," meaning we can't make them from other types of food, and we must eat them. However, never in the history of humankind have we eaten novel omega 6 fatty acids in such massive quantities.


Corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil and/or soybean oil are ingredients in pretty much all processed food. Just check the list on the back of breakfast cereals, bread and other baked goods, fried items, salad dressings, margarine, mayonnaise, and sauces. Vegetable oils are used (along with canola oil) in the fryers at most restaurants. They are cheap and relatively tasteless, which make them perfect for certain industrial and restaurant food applications. They are also universally high in omega 6 fatty acids, and therefore we eat a ton of them in the Western diet, especially since throwing out butter, lard, and beef tallow 30-40 years ago.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201103/your-brain-omega-3

Why does it matter if we eat lots of vegetable oil? Omega 6 PUFAs are used by the body to make certain hormones and signaling molecules. Roughly speaking, the omega 6s are the precursors for many of the molecules that make up our body's inflammatory response. As an example - the omega 6 linoleic acid (corn oil is mostly linoleic acid) is a precursor for many molecules, but among them are the prostaglandins that the enzymes COX-1 and COX-2 work on. If you have ever taken ibuprofen or another NSAID painkiller, you have blocked the effects of COX-1 and COX-2, decreasing inflammation and therefore the easing experience of swelling and pain in the body. 
Here's the real problem - too much inflammation mediated by a high dietary percentage of the omega 6 fatty acid linoleic acid can be reasonably associated with coronary vascular disease, insulin resistance, cancer, hypothyroidism and other autoimmune diseases, thrombotic stroke, headaches, asthma, arthritis, depression, and psychosis. 


This papernotes that "it is intriguing that the dramatic increase in the prevalence of [Alzheimer's disease] in the last century not only parallels the increase in average lifespan, but also an increase from 2 to more than 20 of the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 PUFAs in the average Western diet."



...common sense will tell us that the best result would likely result from decreasing the overall omega 6 burden while making sure we get adequate omega 3s of the right kind for our brain.
In simple terms, that means significantly decreasing the amount of processed food we eat, and making sure we get some oily fish a few times a week. Switching to grass-fed beef and eating lamb or bison (which are usually grass fed) will also help. Olive oil is relatively low in omega 6 (it is primarily a monounsaturated fat and therefore a neutral player in the inflammatory vs. anti-inflammatory war), so olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice can be deliciously substituted for commercial salad dressings. For baking and cooking, use butter, lard (a commenter reminds me it should be naturally sourced and used in moderation, of course), or coconut oil! It won't kill you. Really.

Some Omega 3s Are "More Equal" Than Others

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/organic_whole_flaxseed.htm
And this is an example of the ones that are less equal. Flax seed does indeed have O3 fatty acids, but they are the short chain variety.  These do not become the long branched chain O3s that we probably do need to supplement, given that most of us ingest too much O6 fatty acids.

Ideally, we don't eat a whole bunch of either O6 or long branched chain O3 fatty acids, as they are poly unsaturated fats which tend to oxidize and create undesirable results.  But since we all likely eat too much O6, we have to get enough O3s to balance the 6s; ideally, a 2 to 1 ratio or thereabouts. The hard part is that the test to evaluate your success in balancing this ratio costs about $150 bucks.

With apologies to Sir Winston, flax seed is the kind of omega 3s "up with which I will not put."

ALA Converts to Long Branched Chain Omega 3 Fatty Acids

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3
"Synthesis of the longer n−3 fatty acids from linolenic acid within the body is competitively slowed by the n−6 analogues. Thus accumulation of long-chain n−3 fatty acids in tissues is more effective when they are obtained directly from food or when competing amounts of n−6 analogs do not greatly exceed the amounts of n−3."
IOW, this is one reason to go for the fish oil vice canola oil or other sources of ALA. 

I think in time we'll find that omega-3 fatty acids are not in and of themselves beneficial, but must be kept in balance with omega-6 fatty acids.  The SAD is biased 20-1 in favor of omega-6 - healthy populations show a ratio of 1-2 or 1-3 of omega 3 to omega 6.  In other words, there's at least some evidence that it's the relative level of omega-3 that matters, not the abosolute level, based on populations that have virtually no omega-3 or omega-6 intake, but are still healthy.

More On Omega 6 Fatty Acids

Interesting analysis by Dr. Sears.

http://www.zonediet.com/tabId/130/itemId/1312/More-bad-news-on-Toxic-Fat-with-a-glimmer-of-hope.aspx?CATAdReferrer=20100701ZLN
"During the conference, his group presented more data on how excess omega-6 fatty acids double the production of endocannabinoids (the hormones that make you hungry). Furthermore, increasing the intake of omega-6 fatty acids from 1 percent of total calories (what it was in 1960 and apparently all the way back to 1900) to 8 percent of total calories (the current level in the American diet) causes massive genetic changes that result in greater obesity.

It should be noted that the American Heart Association recommends 5-10 percent of total calories should be omega-6 fats. Let’s put this into perspective. One percent of total calories represents about 20 calories or about 2 grams of omega-6 fatty acids. That’s the amount to fill about one-half teaspoon. Eight percent of the total calories (assuming a 2,000-calorie-per-day intake) represent 16 grams of omega-6 fatty acids. That’s the amount that would fill a tablespoon.

There it is. The difference between being lean and fat may be determined by a very small amount of the same fats being pushed by agribusiness and the American Heart Association. These fats are ubiquitous as they also represent the cheapest form of calories and are the foundation of American agribusiness.

The only good news from the conference is that if you take 2.5 grams of EPA and DHA per day, you can reduce the inflammatory damage done by the increase in omega-6 fatty acid consumption. So maybe our obesity epidemic started the day that mothers stopped giving their children a daily tablespoon of cod liver oil that would have contained 2.5 grams of EPA and DHA. "

Omega 6 and Omega 3 Balance Affects Fat Gain

I'm not a great fan of Dr. Sears' editorial on the topic, but this study highlights a serious consideration as we wrestle through our choices about what to eat.  It is extremely hard to match the paleolithic diet with industrial foods (eg corn finished beef/chicken).

"an article published in Cardiovascular Psychiatry and Neurology (2009;2009:867041) demonstrates what happens when you take genetically identical mice and put them on different diets for three generations. The diets were equal in calories and total fat, but only differed in the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats. By the third generation, the mice on the high omega-6 fatty-acid diet were considerably fatter, had higher levels of arachidonic acid (i.e. Toxic Fat) and had more damage to their organs.

Thus all the cries for more exercise and eating fewer calories by nutritionists (and politicians) may have little effect on our obesity epidemic. To make the situation even more ominous, the author of this study told me that his group will present even more disturbing research at the International Fatty Acid Conference I am attending next week in the Netherlands."

http://www.zonediet.com/Community/ScienceBlogs/tabid/289/EntryId/26/Ominous-new-warnings-issued-about-Toxic-Fat.aspx

WHS - Seed Oil Hypothesis

Concise, important post about why we don't want to eat seed oils.  Fits the general model of not necessary for health, suspect due to their novelty in the human diet, and some data supporting the hypothesis that these oils have a high, negative impact.

The hard part is - they're everywhere and hard to avoid.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/04/do-seed-oils-cause-multi-generational.html

As per the usual, with Whole Health Source, there's as much to chew on in the comments about the article as there is in the article itself - a benefit of a well established blog with very bright commenters.