I bet if you were to walk into your kitchen right now and grab any item that has an ingredients list on it, 90-95% of those items will have canola oil, sunflower oil, or corn oil. They are EVERYWHERE! And I get it… they are cheap to make and have a long shelf life. But are they actually okay for us to consume? The simple “What the f*ck” answer is no, and I will explain why…
Let’s start by looking at what industrial seed oils are and a complete list of each.
Industrial seed oils are highly processed (that should be a dead giveaway that we need to stay away from them) oils that are made from different seeds and plants such as corn or rapeseed. These include:
Canola
Corn
Sunflower
Safflower
Soybean
Cottonseed
Rice Bran
Peanut
For the majority of our time here, these oils were not part of the human diet. The history of these oils is actually really short in the whole scheme of things. They actually didn’t even start out as food if you can believe it. Originally, back in the late 19th century, Proctor and Gamble used it to make soap. They were trying to find a cheaper way to replace animal fats. They came across cottonseed oil, which was a waste product of cottonseed farming. It was actually considered “toxic waste.” Let that sink in for a minute.
Anyway, fast forward a few years, they figured out a way to turn this “toxic waste” into a solid fat that was a lot like lard (or at least so they thought). So, in June of 1911, Crisco was born and was heavily marketed to America’s housewives saying that it was far healthier than lard. After that over the years, the other industrial seed oils started to pop up and make their way into the American diet.
Now for the part that will completely blow your mind (if the “toxic waste” part didn’t do that already) … how these industrial seed oils are made:
First, the seeds are gathered for whichever oil is being produced: rapeseed (canola), corn, sunflower, safflower, soybean, cottonseed, rice, or peanuts
Second, they are heated to extremely high temps. This causes unsaturated fatty acids to oxidize.
Third, to maximize the oil extracted, it is processed with a petroleum-based solvent, usually hexane (this is from crude oil… hungry yet?).
Fourth, at this point the oil has a really off-putting smell and color, so they use chemicals to deodorize it. This is what produces the artificial trans fats (we’ll talk about those in a minute).
Fifth, more chemicals are added to improve the color.
And that, boys and girls, is how industrial seed oils are made. The ones that we eat every. single. day. Yikes!
I promised to come back to the artificial trans fats. One thing to know is that animal products have a small amount of trans fat, otherwise known as a Cis fatty acid. These are different from the trans fats in industrial seed oils because their chemical structures are actually different. Artificial trans fats are straight, while natural trans fats have a kink in them. Even though we can’t see that with our naked eyes, our bodies and cells sure as hell can see it, and it messes with us in bad ways.
To wrap this up, a few other things to really take this point home… keep in mind how new this is to our species. We are talking a little over 100 years vs millions of years. These oils are much higher in Omega-6 fatty acids vs Omega-3’s. Now, I will say that we do need omega-6’s, but not in that amount; PLUS, you want an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of 2:1 to 1:1. To give you an idea of where we are, most Americans take in a ratio of 10:1 or even 20:1! That’s insane! These fats also hang out in our cells for over 600 days (vs sugar we can burn right off). So, if you’ve been consuming these industrial seed oils, your cells are made up of highly unstable, GMO fats that have a ton of additives.
Butter anyone??
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