Four Foods That are Making You Sick: Part Two
There is so much noise out there in the world of health; so many theories, so much dogma. I decided to do a four part post to make things simpler. By identifying the four foods that are causing the most harm, I hope to make it easier for you to live a healthy life, in a way that is as simple as possible.
I’ll skip to the final takeaway now. The four foods that I’ll cover are the pillars of the processed food industry. You can lose yourself in the micromanagement of avoidance, or you can find ways to eat more whole foods. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with cooking and whole foods, go through these four culprits and slowly learn ways to shift away from them.
I wrote about sugar in part one of the series. You can read that article here.
Now, on to the main feature!
Harmful food #2: Processed Vegetable Oils
I don’t imagine you or anybody else reading was surprised to see sugar as my harmful food number one. This one is different though. I see canola oil, sunflower oil or safflower oil in almost every “healthy” packaged things I see.
As with sugar, I’m only going to touch on the science behind the harm in processed vegetable oils briefly here. If you’d like a thorough and scientific explanation of why these oils are so harmful, I’d recommend reading Deep Nutrition, by Dr. Catherine Shanahan. The cliff notes version is that processed vegetable oils are highly oxidative, and oxidation is harmful to the body. The process of oxidation creates unstable molecules called free radicals, which have been linked to premature aging[1], cancer[2], high blood pressure[3], inflammation[4] and infertility[5]. In a natural setting, your body uses antioxidants to repair the damage done by oxidation quickly, before real harm is done. The issue with these oils is that the processing required to make them stable and palatable also makes them extremely oxidative. The damage done by the oxidation they bring about isn’t something your body can keep up with.
With all foods I recommend asking two questions:
- Did it grow, run, fly or swim?
- How much has been added or taken away?
These questions will tell you the most important things you need to know about whatever food you’re considering. For our evolutionary history, humans have been eating whole foods (nothing taken away) in their natural forms. The more we wander from that, the more problems arise.
Let’s look at how processed vegetable oils relate to question #2: how much has been added or taken away? In this case, almost everything from whatever vegetable we’re talking about has been taken away. The most common oil comes from corn, which isn’t oily. To turn corn into corn oil, the corn is first expeller pressed. From there, hexane or isohexane are added to help with extraction. Next it is refined by degumming and/or alkali treatment, which removes free fatty acids and removes color. Finally, it is steam distilled at high temperatures (450–500 degrees Fahrenheit) to remove waxes and unpleasant odors left behind from earlier steps. The oil that is created in this process is like nothing seen in our evolutionary history. On the one hand, it acts like a food in the body, allowing you to survive on it. On the other hand, it creates a cascade of side effects that are more like those of a drug than any food our ancestors ate. Though you can use it to keep starvation away, it will shorten your life if you have it often, as most Americans do.
Corn oil isn’t the only oil to occupy this category. Soy oil, cottonseed oil and vegetable oil (which is usually corn or soy, whichever is cheaper at production time) have the same problems. You may be surprised to learn that “healthy” oils like canola, sunflower, safflower have the same issues. These come from the methods used to process and refine them. It could be that unrefined versions would be less of a problem, but unrefined versions are mostly unavailable. Healthier choices (which we’ll get to in a moment) are more expensive and harder to find. The real issue in cutting these unhealthy oils is how prevalent they are in processed foods. Why are they in everything? Because they’re cheap and stable on shelves. Because their flavor is innocuous enough to allow the other flavors (mainly sweet and salty) to dominate the products they’re used in.
There are some oils that aren’t nearly as harmful. Looking over this list, you’ll notice that these oils come from plants that are naturally oily. This means less processing to extract the oils; less things are added and less are taken away. Healthier oils include olive, coconut, avocado, peanut, macadamia, and almond. The caveat here is that you’ll want to look for “unrefined” on the label. Even though these oils can be made by simply pressing the source foods, using industrial processing extracts more oil and more profits. It also creates a more shelf-stable product with less flavor, which is great for processed foods.
All oils have a great deal of the original plant taken away. As such, all should be used sparingly. Choosing an unrefined version of oil made from a naturally fatty food will go a long way toward taking away the worst of the damage done. This is consistent with our rules and backed by science.
The preceding article is an excerpt from “Dad’s Place Is In The Kitchen”, a book to be released in 2019.
[1] Lobo, V., et al. “Free Radicals, Antioxidants and Functional Foods: Impact on Human Health.” Pharmacognosy Review, vol. 4, no. 8, July 2010, pp. 118–126.
[2] “Free Radicals, Metals and Antioxidants in Oxidative Stress-Induced Cancer.” NeuroImage, Academic Press, 23 Jan. 2006, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009279705004333.
[3] Giugliano, Dario, et al. “Diabetes Mellitus, Hypertension, and Cardiovascular Disease: Which Role for Oxidative Stress?” Metabolism, vol. 44, no. 3, 1995, pp. 363–368., doi:10.1016/0026–0495(95)90167–1.
[4] Chakraborty, Subhankar. “Free Radicals and Antioxidants Is Now Published with Elsevier.” Free Radicals and Antioxidants, vol. 3, no. 1, 2013, p. 1., doi:10.1016/j.fra.2013.05.001.
[5] Agarwal, Ashok, et al. “REVIEW ARTICLE: Clinical Relevance of Oxidative Stress in Male Factor Infertility: An Update.” American Journal of Reproductive Immunology, vol. 59, no. 1, Dec. 2007, pp. 2–11., doi:10.1111/j.1600–0897.2007.00559.x.
