Do you need an oil change? I mean you, not your car.
I mean, are you using salad and cooking oils that promote health or are you tearing down your house with your own two hands?
There is debate about what is the best fat to eat. Of course there is, because everyone has their own angle. And everyone seems to have research studies to back up their results and refute everyone else’s data.
There is even debate about whether to eat much fat at all. There is evidence that a very low-fat vegan diet can reverse heart disease. Dr. John McDougal, MD and Dr. Dean Ornish, MD and even some people in the whole-foods, plant-based movement advocate a low-fat vegan diet. And they have some good results. But I won’t focus today on that. I think there is also good evidence that including some foods that naturally have fat in them (especially nuts and seeds), and the use of some isolated fats and oils can be used to your benefit.
So, which fats and which oils?
There are saturated fats like butter, lard, and tallow. They were used for a long time, maybe because that is what people could easily obtain from their own resources on the farm from their own animals. Coconut is also a saturated fat, but with a different fatty acid profile compared to animal-based saturated fats.
There are monounsaturated fats like extra virgin olive oil, and a couple of vegetable seed oils (safflower and corn oil I think have been selected for higher monounsaturated fatty acids rather than polyunsaturated fats).
Then there are polyunsaturated fats like canola oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, and omega 3 oils like flax seed oil, or chia seed oil (is that a thing?) and marine-based omega 3 oils like fish oil and krill oil.
Seed oils have been demonized as a product of industrialized food production. And except for extra virgin olive oil, they are right. Maybe there is some pumpkin seed oil that is old-fashioned and squeezed from a press. But a lot of the modern seed oils are extracted with hexane, then refined, bleached, and deodorized so that they are shelf-stable and have no offensive tastes or odors. They are just vegetable oil.
I’ve written 3 blog articles on seeds oils lately. Here are the links to these articles, if you want to read them at length.
- Seed Oils Under Fire: Are They Really the Villain?
- Butter vs Oils: Was “Eat Butter” Ever a Good Idea? Is Butter Better?
- Is Coconut Oil Better Than Butter? The Surprising Truth For Your Heart
Main Takeaway
The main takeaway is that polyunsaturated fats are heart friendly, while saturated fats are not. While there have been a couple of headlines along the way (“Eat Butter” for example) that proclaim the goodness of saturated fats, the scientific literature has consistently shown that polyunsaturated fats are better for heart health than saturated fats.
Butter Better?
One great line from a recent study was this exchange: If you replace 10 grams of butter with 10 g of polyunsaturated fat you decrease the risk of all-cause mortality by 17 percent, the risk of cancer mortality by 17 percent, and the risk of cardiovascular mortality by 6 percent.
Coconut Oil?
What about coconut oil? It is in the middle. The medium chain triglycerides are not hazardous like long-chain saturated fatty acids. So, coconut oil is a good oil, but shouldn’t be your only oil.
So, extra virgin olive oil, virgin coconut oil are good choices for cooking. Salad dressing oils can be polyunsaturated oils.
Even so, I am not suggesting you use refined, bleached, and deodorized vegetable oil. Those are made with shelf life in mind, not your life. Human life appears to be an after-thought for these products. But seed oils made with human health in mind are still healthy choices. Udo’s Oil is a great example of such an oil. Expeller pressed canola oil and other unrefined seed oils are healthy and are good for the heart.
