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.

Masterjohn w Moore

http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/1326/chris-masterjohn-on-cholesterol-episode-314/
Chris Masterjohn weighs in on Jimmy's great podcast, and provides a model for oxidation that is "scientifically valid and accessible to the common man."  His model - oxidation breaks molecules, so a human with oxidative damage has an excess of broken molecules infused in the cells/bloodstream.  The oxidized, broken cells are like broken glass on a kitchen floor, and cause damage to surrounding tissues, and require cleanup.  The result is a hyperactive immune system, which is so busy cleaning up damaged cells, it cannot take care of regular business as it should, AND may be causing unintended damage to normal tissues through chronic inflammatory response.  So, imagine that you are consuming a lot of easily oxidized poly unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs - seed oils and worse, hydrogenated oils), and your system becomes saturated with all that oxidized junk - it just can't be good, and the evidence indicates it is not, which is why efforts to move people to PUFAs vice saturated fats have not proved to be an effected measure to reduce CVD.
Chris also does a good job of clarifying the difference between the diet/heart hypothesis and the lipid hypothesis.  The diet/heart hypothesis is that eating saturated fats and cholesterol results in higher serum levels of cholesterol and therefore contribute to CVD.   The lipid hypothesis proposes a connection between plasma cholesterol level and the development of coronary heart disease. 
In summary, this is another good session with Jimmy Moore.  More of Chris' writing can be found on the Weston A. Price Foundation web site - http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/blogger/CMASTERJO/ - this dude's got a big brain.

For a great survey of aging, oxidation and low carb diets, see this very detailed post by Dr. Mike Eades - http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/low-carb-diets-reduce-oxidative-stress/  

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.

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.