The Dr. Hyman Show - Why You Should Avoid Vegetable Oils

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

Many of us grew up believing that vegetable oils were good and butter was bad. We were told, even by government and medical associations, to use more vegetable, seed and bean oils (like soybean, corn, safflower, canola). Now we know this advice was completely wrong. In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman explores the origin story of how Americans began embracing vegetable oil with his guest, Nina Teicholz, and we consider what the best oils actually are. Nina Teicholz is an investigative science journalist and author. Her international bestseller, “The Big Fat Surprise,” has upended the conventional wisdom on dietary fat–especially saturated fat. It was named a 2014 *Best Book* by The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Mother Jones, and Library Journal. Teicholz is also the Executive Director of The Nutrition Coalition, a non-profit group that promotes evidence-based nutrition policy.  Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Nina Teicholz: https://drmarkhyman.lnk.to/NinaTeicholz

Coming up on this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. When they said avoid saturated fats, you were supposed to replace them with vegetable oils, right? That was the idea going back to the 1960s. Hi, I'm Kea Perot at one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. We have unfortunately been taught to think that fats and oils are damaging for our health and lead to things like cardiovascular disease. But this is not necessarily true. When it comes to fats, the type of fat we eat matters.

As a society, we've been conditioned to believe that unsaturated fats from vegetable and seed oils are best and that butter, lard, ghee, and other saturated fats are toxic. In fact, the reverse is true. Dr. Hyman discussed some of the history behind this misunderstanding with leading science journalist Nina Teicholz. Well, this is where the food industry does come in a little bit, just to start off this story. So the vegetable oil industry was kind of born in the early 1900s, right? The first vegetable oil product was Crisco. Oh, yeah. Right? So it used to be that those oils were used for the

Industrial Revolution. They were used to lubricate machinery. And then they figured out how to harden them to make them, and they learned how to bleach them and make them look white. And then they thought, and it was actually Procter & Gamble that figured out how to do that. They were going to make it into a soap. You know, soap is made from oil. Instead, they're like, hmm, that looks an awful lot like lard. Let's try to sell it as a food.

So they started to sell it as a food yeah so they started to sell it as a food um and yeah so it turns out that they contained you know that it's what they hardening vegetable oils is done through a process called hydrogenation and that produces trans fats but so these these trans fatty hardened oils were started to be sold to americans 1911. Um, so coincidentally, um, heart disease starts to take off right, uh, right around maybe like 10 years later. Um, we started seeing increases in death from heart disease. So, um, so then Procter and Gamble figures out how to just sell oil as oil. So one of the things to understand about, um, these oils is they're pressed. Procter and Gamble produced like shampoo.

Yeah. Well, they, they were a soap maker. Socter & Gamble produced like shampoo. Yeah, well, they were a soap maker. So that's why they came up with this. But Crisco was like a best-selling thing. They convinced, you know, in America, so all these immigrants, and they want to become American, right? And so Procter & Gamble had this brilliant advertising campaign basically saying,

you know, give up lard. Those are the bygone days of your grandmothers, like the spinning wheel of the olden days and, you know, have Crisco instead. And this is the newfangled thing made in, you know, shiny scientist kitchens. So Procter & Gamble figured out how to then make vegetable oils that were fluid in bottles. They kind of tinkered with the fatty acids to make them stable. And then, so here's where they started to influence nutrition science. In 1948, the American Heart Association, which is really just an association of cardiologists, right? Remember, heart disease is new.

Tiny little association. They barely had an office. They were just like, they barely had any funds. Procter & Gamble comes in and says, we're going to make you the designee of this radio show for a week. And it was this huge deal. Overnight, literally according to the official history

of the American Heart Association, they said millions of dollars flowed into our coffers. We became overnight the powerhouse, opening offices all across the country that we are today. They're still the number one largest non-for-profit in the country. All thanks to Procter & Gamble. And pretty soon thereafter, they started to recommend that you start eating vegetable oils to prevent a heart attack. Which was the worst idea because it turns out that trans fats, everybody agrees in this,

have killed hundreds of thousands, millions of people over the decades. So that's, yeah, the trans fats and the hardened vegetable oils in Crisco are bad for health, clearly bad for health. But in the liquid form... And now they're ruled as not safe to eat by the FDA after 50 years of pressure to change that. Right. And finally took a lawsuit from a 97-year-old scientist who first discovered this 50 years ago to get them to change that. And finally took a lawsuit from a 97 year old scientist who first discovered this 50 years ago

to get them to change. So vegetable oils, so it turns out that when they're in the oil form, they're also dangerous. So they don't contain trans fats, right? But in the oil form, the oils are highly unstable. That means that they oxidize easily. Go rancid. They go rancid. Oxidation is, remember, that's why we take antioxidants the oils are highly unstable. That means that they oxidize easily. They go rancid.

Oxidation is, remember, that's why we take antioxidants, because oxidation causes inflammation in your body. Like, yes, that's actually true. On the inside and the outside. Heart, it causes heart disease on the inside. Oxidized LDL is what's thought to provoke that unstable plaque that causes heart blockages in the heart. It's like rancid cholesterol. That's the problem.

Yeah. So this is what, and in those clinical, in that, on all those studies, remember we talked about the Minnesota Coronary Survey where they had people, some people on vegetable oil diets. In all of those studies, again and again and again, the people on the vegetable oil diets died at much higher rates from cancer. This was considered a side effect of this heart-healthy diet. And they actually had a series of very high-level meetings at the NIH in the early 1980s to figure out what was going on with this side effect of cancer. And nobody could figure it out. And they basically just said, look, we believe that vegetable oils will help people prevent

heart disease, so we're going to ignore the cancer effect. These were sort of invented 120 plus years ago, and we now have increased our consumption of soybean oil, for example, a thousand fold. And it's 10% of our calories, and it's in everything. It's stuff that you wouldn't imagine is in. So any processed food that you buy that's made made in a factory, probably has this oil in it or some variety of it. And I think, you know, when you look at the data, it is confusing. There's a lot of people who are looking at large observational processes that show that there's a risk for, you know, saturated fat and a benefit for omega-3 or omega-6 oils. And there's other

data that show this, some actually randomized trials that show the opposite. When you just have people eat only the vegetable oil, they do worse. Right. And let's just remember that latter data from trials is the rigorous cause and effect data, right? So, yeah, I mean... So what do you recommend? No vegetable oils? Well, I was just going to tell briefly about my visit to a vegetable oil factory to explain like what a bungie factory, what a brutal process it is

to get oil out of a bean or a seed, right? They have to go through this, you know, process of extracting the oil when the oil, it's not even really oil when it comes out, it's this gray, rancid, disgusting fluid. It's chemically extracted with hexane and other nasty chemicals right they have to use hexane as a solvent to extract it and then they and then they have and then it's

this bad smelling gray liquid it has to be deodorized winterized uh you know bleached and all this so it goes through like 17 steps in this giant industrial plant um and you know and then it's crisco um so you know compared to and it's Crisco. So, you know, compared to, and this is what we're told to eat instead of, of turning butter. Right. Just like you just milk the cow and then you turn the butter. So I think that, you know, it's, it's sort of, it speaks to our, to me, like speaks to kind of the craziness about food that we live in, which is so, you know, so divorced from our history. Like, can you really believe that something that goes through this, you know, 17 step process in a factory is what you should be eating to restore your health?

How many steps did it take from the field to your fork? You know, if there's more than one or two, it's probably not a good idea. So the huge worry about vegetable oils, to my mind, is that when they are heated, and even if they're left out in a bottle where it's exposed to light, they will degrade. Oxidize. Right, they oxidize, they degrade. That means they break down into these oxidation products. When you put them under heat, like any chemical reaction, that speeds up and it creates literally hundreds of

degraded oxidation products, some of which are known toxins. Americans are eating frightening amounts of refined vegetable oils, seed oils, and omega-6 fats, all of which contribute to inflammation and chronic diseases. Dr. Hyman recommends avoiding these oils altogether. So what should you use instead? Avocado oil and grass-fed ghee are your best bets for cooking due to their higher smoke points. Organic extra virgin olive oil and other organic extra virgin cold pressed oils like flaxseed oil, walnut oil, and hemp seed oil are great for topping a wide variety of dishes. Organic extra virgin olive oil is also great for cooking at very low heat. Vegetable and seed oils are the types of oils used in most

restaurants, especially for frying. They can even be in seemingly healthy salad dressings. When eating out, don't be afraid to ask what kinds of oils a kitchen uses and request a healthier alternative. If you enjoyed this mini episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy, please consider sharing it with friends and family. Thanks for tuning in. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified

medical practitioner. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.