Posted on 08/10/2015 3:59:38 AM PDT by huldah1776
If you think that sugar is the unhealthiest thing you can eat, you're wrong. Apparently, the Worst Food on the Planet Award should actually go to soybean oil, suggests new findings published in the journal PLoS One.
Setting up a sort of dietary cage match, researchers fed mice a series of diets each containing 40% fat. The fat in the first diet was primarily saturated and came from coconut oil, while the fat in the second diet was primarily unsaturated and came mostly from soybean oil. The researchers also fed mice two altered versions of the high-fat diets that also contained fructose.
The assumption was that the fructose-eating mice would pack on the most fat and develop the worst insulin resistance. But that's not what happened. Instead, the mice who ate the soybean oil diet without fructose gained the most weight—9% more than the fructose-eating mice and a whopping 25% more than the mice who got their fat from coconut oil. Compared to their fructose-eating counterparts, the mice on the soybean oil diet also had fattier livers and more insulin resistance—both signs of impending diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
"That was a surprise, given that most people think that unsaturated fatty acids [like those found in soybean oil] are supposed to be healthy," says lead study author Poonamjot Deol, Ph.D., a cell biologist at the University of California, Riverside. They're also everywhere. A full half of all the vegetable oil produced in the world is soybean oil. And since it's cheap, the stuff is used in endless packaged foods. It's also a favorite at restaurants—many of which tout the fact that they use soybean oil right on their menus because it's perceived as healthy.
Deol and her colleagues aren't totally sure what makes soybean oil so horrible, but they guess that it could have something to do with the way the stuff influences genes that determine how the liver metabolizes fat. And other processed vegetable oils might not be much better. "We've actually tested corn oil, and we found that it was also causing more obesity than coconut oil, but not as much as soybean oil. We haven't tested canola yet," she says.
But how much weight can you actually give to a study that was done on mice? Actually, more than you'd think. The amount of fat and fructose in the rodents' diets were designed to mimic what the average U.S. adult eats on a daily basis. What's more, the genes in our livers and the genes in the livers of mice act fairly similarly. So if loads of soybean oil turns a mouse's liver to fat, it probably isn't great for us, either.
That's why, even though more research is needed to unveil the nitty gritty details of how soybean oil wrecks our health, it makes sense to cut back where you can, says Deol. So, avoid processed food that lists the stuff as an ingredient as much as possible. As for cutting it out altogether? It's worth a shot, but good luck. "It's so prevalent in our food system. If something says vegetable oil, it's most likely soybean oil, or soybean oil is a component," warns Deol.
Yeah, and they claim that the new hybrids don’t cause blindness anymore, but that remains to be seen.
LoL!
We should not eat many things, not because we are 'leftists' but because real science shows they are unhealthy - poisons. There are 'fast acting' poisons, like arsenic, and slow acting poisons, like refined sugar. You wouldn't eat arsenic on a regular basis. Small amounts won't hurt you, but large amounts will kill you quickly.
This is the same with certain 'foods' in our diet. Avoid refined sugar. Avoid grains. Avoid processed foods. Avoid all soy products, unless fermented. Eat most everything else. Bacon, meats, butter, vegetables. I fry my eggs in bacon fat every day. I fry my French fries in lard.
I am not a 'leftist' but an educated consumer of food.
It was developed in Canada (hence the CAN part of the word) from oil (or rapeseed).
It does, to the opposite sex.
ive read that all soybeans in the U.S. Are genetically modified.
Yes, the food fetish market is pushed by leftists.
/johnny
“Back in the day ...before junk science the experts were proclaiming that the mass cultivating of soybeans would help save mankind.”
One of the events that opened my eyes to just how out of touch most academics are was having a college prof tell me that that in the future we wouldn’t need farmers because we would synthesis everything from soy beens.
bkmk
I guess it depends on what you're using the canola oil for.
It’s rapeseed oil. Rape grows well in Canada. The natural variety of rape was slightly poisonous and did not yield an edible oil, but Canadian scientists developed a hybrid that eliminated the poison.
Since rape and rapeseed are rather unpleasant sounding, and unlikely to be the first choice of shoppers, they called it canola, CANadian Oil Low Acid since the poison in natural rapeseed is an acid.
You are correct 10 years ago...
There are tons of research that the cheap ingredients, some are low level toxins, put in our food we consume being manufactured and sold by the major food companies is very unhealthy long term...
Diabetes, dementia, alzheimer's, heart disease, hypertension are all at record levels compared to pre-processed food being manufactured and consumed ...
You first cig won't affect your health, but the 30 years later and 100,000 more does.
The same thing happens with much of the cheap crap they put in processed food today...
People of all strips are getting informed about what they are consuming, and they are finding out it's slowly killing them...
I'm one of them...
I’d be interested to see them do a similarly structured study comparing the effects butter and lard to soybean and canola oils. Look at crowd pictures of Americans from the first half of the twentieth century. Very few fat people at a time when published recipes simply used the word “fat” for added shortening, and with the exception of Mediterranean cooking that meant butter or lard. And sweetener meant real sugar, not corn syrup and synthetic rubbish. Of course, people back then also were more physically active, walking most places and doing work instead of pointlessly exercising at the gym on treadmills, basically human size mouse cage running wheels.
It’s not in diets of those of us that have Hypothyroidism either. Got to read the labels on any pre-made stuff.
And you don’t take Calcium or Vit E at the same time you take your Synthroid they are not compatible.
Grass fed cows tend to produce meat that is less fatty and higher in omega. I’m not against corn fed, I just think it’s good to know.
I wasn’t around when it started, but it seems to me that the entire history of government involvement in food (with a few exceptions) consists of making a problem where none previously existed, “solving” the problem with alternating and often conflicting advice and action that generally caused more harm then good, and, where we are now, eventually coming to the conclusion that the best course of action would have been to have left things as they were before they got involved.
Not surprising...
I spent 30 years eating basically the normal American diet, soft drinks, fast food, pizza, subs, processed foods, few vegetables, little fruit, etc..
As a result of that I developed hypertension, Type II diabetes, got obese, unhealthy...
I was at one time on six medications for all the consequences of eating like a idiot...
About two ago I started really digging into the research on the foods we are eating determined to get off as much medication as I could and regain my health...
Down to two pills a day, probably don't need one of them but waiting to see my doctor to get his approval when he sees my numbers...
We are what we eat, just look around and it isn't hard to see what we are eating is a BIG part of why Americans are fat, sick and unhealthy, yet pay the most for their healthcare...
bfl
Soy oil derivatives are used as lubes in bakeries and other food facilities.
I found salad dressing that has yogurt as its base rather than soybean oil. It still has some soybean oil in it but a much smaller amount.
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