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.
http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects
Soybean products are not in diets of those susceptible to kidney stones.
So you are saying that it is recommended for those people to not eat any processed foods?
Life just isn’t safe anymore.
Food fetisists can be disgusting.
/johnny
I only have one kidney (don't get one smashed) and soybean products are part of my diet.
/johnny
In general, processed foods also have significant amounts of sodium—another reason to skip processed foods. It would be heart-healthy and kidney-healthy to eliminate all processed foods from one’s diet.
——So you are saying that it is recommended for those people to not eat any processed foods?-——
Do even a little research on processed foods and I think you will be very shocked on the long term ramifications on your health....
What is canola oil?
Once you’ve developed a kidney stone, you pay a LOT of attention to your diet! A diet can get pretty limited when you’ve had a stent put in your heart. (Last October). :(
Canola oil is oil from oilseed plants (mustard family).
So canola oil is not in any way soybean oil? I always thought they were related.
Yikes! That’s bad news.
Back in the day ...before junk science the experts were proclaiming that the mass cultivating of soybeans would help save mankind.
>>> Canola oil is oil from oilseed plants (mustard family). <<<
Yeah, and they claim that the new hybrids don’t cause blindness anymore, but that remains to be seen.
It pisses me off to no end that soy has been foisted upon us the way it is. There are plenty of studies showing that soy consumption correlates to lower libido, erectile dysfunction, and specific kidney and liver disorders in men. Men who live vegan lifestyles often suffer all three.
Meanwhile, if you look at the label on pretty much any bottle of salad dressing, the first ingredient is invariably soybean oil. I went back to cooking with coconut oil a few years ago, and Mrs. Rare and I both see and feel a difference. I do my best to avoid soy in every form, including the sauce used in most eastern cooking dishes. That being said, however, I eat salad every day and sometimes like a break from the usual oil and vinegar, esp. if I have steak as a protein (mmm... blue cheese).
Thank you for sharing this article. My wife’s been on the fence, but I think this’ll help push her into my field.
Canola is probably more related to sunflower than to soy oil.
I get 80% of my food on the perimeter. Eggs, cheese, meat, fish, yogurt, produce, etc.
Don't understand why people eat vegetables out of a can when you can buy them fresh.
Stick with olive oil. I've always avoided the other types of oils. They don't taste as good. You can cook with olive oil, just be aware it has a lower smoke point so keep the heat on medium. I also never use a microwave oven. Not even to reheat things. It just doesn't seem right to me.
BAD!
Go coconut!
Why is canola oil bad?
Soybeans are not human food.
(Some fermented soybean products excepted.)
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