Lesson #1 - The Worst Food for Your Health
(Approximately a 5-minute read)
In the first lesson of this series, I am going to reveal the worst type of food, or category of food, so to speak, for human health.
This category of food contributes the most to all sorts of chronic conditions, chronic disease, and premature aging!!! Its effects can be recognized externally on the body as brown spots and hair loss. It is the most common dietary contributor to things like generalized fatigue, digestive issues, and, over time, to serious chronic diseases such heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
This type of food can be categorized as a “macronutrient.” Macronutrients constitute carbohydrates, including sugar, fatty acids (fats and oils), and protein. One of the ways to determine the effect of the consumption of any type of food on health is to observe how the consumption patterns of various foods over time correlate with chronic disease patterns.
For example, review the graphs below (going from left to right, top to bottom). These graphs reveal the mortality rate from heart disease from 1909 to 2009, the heart disease rate in the population from 1997 to 2011, the rate of diabetes in the population from 1958 to 2013, and the mortality rate from Alzheimer’s and dementia in the population from 1984 to 2003.
These graphs show a clear, significant rise in the incidence of chronic diseases and mortality from chronic diseases. Now, the graphs below show consumption patterns of various macronutrients. The one on the left shows the patterns of consumption of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, in general, from 1909 to 2009, and the one on the right shows the consumption of sugar from 1980 to 2013.
It is common nowadays to hear that carbs and sugar are to blame for poor health and chronic diseases. However, as you can see in these graphs, the consumption patterns of these macronutrients are not associated with the rise we have seen in chronic disease. The overall consumption patterns have been trending downwards (with sugar more so in recent years), while chronic diseases and obesity have still been trending up.
Protein consumption has been relatively flat, and so, it doesn’t seem to affect chronic disease patterns.
Fat consumption has trended upwards but not as steeply as a chronic disease.
However, take a look at this graph:
This graph shows the consumption trends of various oils and fats, including, butter, lard, margarine, and vegetable oil since 1909. The sharp upwards trend of one type of oil resembles most closely the rise om in the rate of chronic diseases. That oil is vegetable oil.
Here is the main dietary culprit! The most dangerous ingredient to your health, more than carbs, sugar, or even butter or margarine, is vegetable oil, and oddly, hardly anyone talks about it, or knows about it.
This finding has been further supported by studies, (the links are provided below), showing the relationship between the intake of vegetable oil and mortality from cardiovascular events as well as the promotion of cancer growth. You can click on the links below to read about these studies.
So, what is vegetable oil? Basically, it is oil derived from grains, seeds, and nuts. This includes commonly used cooking oils, such as canola, sunflower, safflower, soy, corn, and grapeseed oil.
Where do people encounter vegetable oil?
These oils are often used in preparing snacks such as potato chips, pastries such as donuts, cookies, and muffins (often deemed healthy), as well as in the preparation of salad dressings and other foods.
What is it about vegetable oil that makes it a culprit of poor health?
Here comes a short scientific part and maybe boring for some, but it if you want to understand what makes it harmful then read on.
Vegetable oil consists predominately of polyunsaturated fatty acids (sometimes referred to as omega 6 oil). These types of fatty acids are chemically unstable and are prone to interacting with another class of unstable compounds known as reactive oxygen species to form a destructive type of compound called lipid radicals.
Lipid radicals literally damage cells they come in contact with (brain cells, heart cells, immune cells, intestinal cells, etc.).
To further contextualize this, I am going to briefly explain the nature of the three classifications of fatty acids you may have heard of before: saturated fatty acids (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). I will use acronyms.
If you look at these diagrams of fatty acids, you will see that the fatty acids consist of a backbone of atoms of carbons (shown by circles with the letter “C”), which are attached to atoms of hydrogens (shown by the circles with the letter “H”). There is also a “head” that consists of two oxygens and hydrogen, which is not relevant to this discussion.
If all the carbons are bound to hydrogens, then, the structure is said to be “saturated” by hydrogens; therefore, it is a saturated fatty acid.
If at one carbon location there is no hydrogen, it is said to be monounsaturated - “mono” means “one.”
If multiple hydrogens are “missing,” it is said to be polyunsaturated - “poly” means “multiple.” The lack of multiple atoms of hydrogens makes the fatty acid chemically unstable and prone to formation of lipid radicals. The other two fatty acids, SFA and MUFA, don’t lack hydrogens in multiple locations, and therefore, are stable and don’t form lipid radicals.
Other Problems with PUFA
In addition to forming harmful lipid radicals, PUFA interfere with cells’ ability to utilize glucose. What do cells utilize glucose for? For the production of energy, which allows them to function properly. PUFA block that production.
Now, our cells can technically burn fatty acids, including PUFA, to generate energy. However, due to the lack of hydrogens, PUFA is burnt in a “dirtier” way resulting in the creation of more free radical, toxic biproducts.
So, not only do PUFA produce free radicals and rob the cells’ ability to produce energy efficiently, but they also predispose people to diabetes and all of its related conditions that may occur before or after the onset of diabetes, such as obesity, heart disease, dementia, and cancer.
This reduced ability to produce energy along with the damage from free radicals is stressful to the body; thus, in response, the body produces stress hormones, such as cortisol.
Cortisol reduces the production of the thyroid hormone - the hormone that “tells” the cells to produce energy from the food they get (like glucose). This creates a vicious cycle that leads to even less energy available for cells to function properly, resulting in further disease and premature aging.
Reduction in energy production is the “hallmark” of aging. Those who have consumed and accumulated lots of PUFA in their bodies can be of one chronological age (say 60 years old, for example) while being biologically older (say 70 years old, for example).
The images below represent some of the things that excess PUFA consumption can cause over time: brown spots, fatigue, depression anxiety, memory loss, low immunity (leading to frequent colds and flu), digestive conditions, diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease (lipid radicals cause plaque build-up in the arteries).
What should you do about this?
A good start is to limit or avoid vegetable cooking oil and food made with vegetable oil as well as nuts and seeds, especially nuts and seeds roasted in oil. While nuts and seeds contain various healthy nutrients, they are also a primary source of PUFA, which should be limited when conditions, such as the ones I just mentioned, exist.
For cooking or other food preparation, use oils and fats rich in MUFA, such as olive oil and avocado oil and sources rich in SFA, such as coconut oil, butter, and cream. For decades we have been warned against using SFA, like butter, but these warnings have waned and disappeared as increased research showed a tendency towards health versus disease with consumption of SFA.
Afterall, they are stable types of fatty acids which don’t form free radicals.
It is a good idea to ensure adequate intake of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) which help protect against damage from PUFA. Three of the most helpful vitamins are vitamin E, vitamin C, and niacinamide. These nutrients work to neutralize lipid radicals.
Now that you know that these three nutrients are vital to protect against lipid radicals, you could go online to find out some of the highest sources of these vitamins, so I will spare you too many details, with one exception - vitamin E. When you look at its food sources you will see that nuts and seeds are some of the highest sources of vitamin E, so take heed of my earlier warning and avoid consuming too many.
If you have a health issue associated with PUFA intake, then, perhaps supplementing with these vitamins may be helpful, this is something you could something you could discuss with your health practitioner.
To Summarize…
- Avoid vegetable oil, read the labels and do not consume things that have vegetable, canola, grapeseed, and similar oils
- For cooking use olive oil and avocado oil, such as coconut oil, butter and cream.
- Ensure adequate intake of three vitamins: vitamin E, vitamin C and niacinamide
Next up another misunderstood topic in the realm of nutrition.
