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Transcript

Kevin: Hey, Michelle, how are you doing?

Michelle: Well, Kevin, frankly, I'm a little pissed off today.

Kevin: Oh, no. So first off, don't call me Frank. And second off, I'm sorry to hear that. And I hope it wasn't anything that I said.

Michelle: No. Oh, good.

Kevin: Oh, oh. It's this.

Michelle: Okay. So you know that I'm not on social media that much. And in fact, especially since I sold my business where I had to be on social media all the time, I've really enjoyed, frankly, the freedom from that being unplugged.

Kevin: Yeah.

Michelle: Like I don't even have the tick tock app downloaded on any of my devices because I refuse to just go there. I think it's it becomes a trap and a productivity drain, of course. But people send me all kinds of stuff. And then it still comes up in Instagram and Facebook feeds. This whole thing about seed oils being evil.

Kevin: Yes. I've seen a lot of those recently. They've been coming up in my feeds and even in my podcast feeds. I've heard some podcast episodes about this debate. So I'm confused.

Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. Mine, too. And the tipping point for me, though, was that when I went to my Church Connect group, they started talking about seed oils.

Kevin: Really?

Michelle: I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And it's all I can do to bite my tongue. And I'm just like, well, actually, I think that's very overhyped. But, you know, I just changed the subject. Church Group was the last straw.

Kevin: This episode is brought to you by Michelle's Church Group.

Michelle: I'm sure we don't even have to introduce this topic to listeners. But it sounds like you've seen the ads, too. So I'm looking at one right now that popped up in my feed this morning. And it's this giant graphic that's very provocative. And it says, seed oils hide in everything. And it's got like a little picture of baked goods, salad dressings, snacks, protein bars, sauces, frozen meals. And then there's there's a picture of a random carton that just says healthy food.

Kevin: Oh, the healthy food carton, yes, I'm well aware of that, Food Group.

Michelle: And vegetable oil is the last thing in the infographic.

Kevin: What? There's there's vegetable oil in vegetable oil? No, say it ain't so, Michelle. Hard-hitting news on nutrition for noobs. There is vegetable oil in vegetable oil.

Michelle: Honestly, you would think that, you know, like a relatively well-educated, free-thinking individual would just see this picture and know it's ridiculous before they even read what it says.

Kevin: But Michelle, Michelle, these infographics are not made for relatively intelligent, free-thinking individuals. They're made for the sheeple. Didn't you know that?

Michelle: Right. So so the the byline on this picture is always read the ingredients. If it says canola, soybean, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower or vegetable oil in quotes, put it back on the shelf. And then the caption on the feed was seed oils were never real food. They're industrial byproducts disguised with, quote, unquote, nutrition labels hidden in almost everything. They drive inflammation and disease, protect your health, read labels, avoid them and choose real fats that your body recognizes.

Kevin: So just as a bit of a refresher for anyone in the audience who isn't aware, somehow, if you're completely not plugged in at all to social media, there's a bit of a trend right now where a lot of influencers and, you know, people who claim some sort of medical or scientific degrees or some sort of expertise or not are saying that seed oils in particular, but vegetable oils create inflammation in your body and you're better off going with butter. And basically their their argument is the inflammation is worse than any potential cholesterol increase because the world has got it wrong about cholesterol and butter and fats and all that animal fats. So you should abandon seed oils and vegetable oils and go for animal fats. Is that a good summation?

Michelle: Yeah, yeah. And this this is like a recurring thing that comes up periodically, because I remember attending a nutrition conference, I think it was like back in 2018, where they had that big Time magazine, Butter is Back, like was on the front cover and they were and it was all about this one study that butter doesn't raise cholesterol or LDL and butter is good and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I remember them talking about it at this conference, like doctor and scientist after scientist. Basically, the scientific community immediately responded and rebutted that article to the journal and pointed out all of the flaws in the study and how it was poor study design. It was misinterpreted that when you controlled for the factors properly, the study actually found the opposite of what the what the sensational article was saying, what the message was. Time magazine did post a rebuttal to that in the next issue. But you know how they do that. And it's like inside the front cover or something.

Kevin: Yeah.

Michelle: The next article, nobody ever read the rebuttal.

Kevin: The damage has already been done. Yeah, of course.

Michelle: They only remember the original headline. Right. So this is kind of like that all over again. And, you know, before we dive into this problem, I want to just skip ahead to the end, to the punchline.

Kevin: OK, sure. End of podcast.

Michelle: Seed oils are, in fact, a healthy part of diet and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, which is an incredibly reputable scientific public health watchdog organization, that they provide the recommendations to the U.S. dietary guidelines. And then beyond their recommendation papers like and this is based on not just one or two people. This is a whole scientific community that puts this together. And then later, you know, lobbyists get to have their say and then the guidelines become what they are. And they usually end up being, you know, just kind of a softer message of the truth.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: Like it's like don't eat less meat. It's like consume leaner cuts of meat and less saturated fat. Right. Right. Anyway. So their their statement is that experts say that many concerns are due to other ingredients and ultra processed foods that contain seed oils and that replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat found in plant oils is linked to lower risk of heart disease. So they debunk the health risk claim that seed oils cause a range of health issues and say that is not supported by scientific evidence. This school distinguishes seed oils from other ingredients and say that health problems associated with processed foods containing seed oils, such as fried snacks, are more likely due to high levels of refined carbohydrates, sugar, sodium and the other things in those foods and not the oils themselves.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: And then they go on to just support that seed oil do confer heart health benefits and say replacing saturated fats like those in butter with unsaturated fats found in seed oils is linked to a lower risk of heart attack and lower risk of death from heart disease. They support that cooking at home with seed oils is not a health concern and that there is a potential health concern that arises from repeatedly heating unsaturated fats to very high temperatures in a poorly maintained deep fryer, such as those that are used in some restaurants, and that there is no reason to cut back on whole foods that contain omega sixes, a polyunsaturated fat that is dominant in many seed oils and nuts and seeds. So that's the truth. And I'm going to take you through a little bit of a journey to to support that that truth is still the truth.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: So are you are you ready to go?

Kevin: Well, just one thing. I'm totally ready to go. But one thing I would like to point out before we go on this journey is just I think it's interesting that the crux of, you know, this group, shall we say, who's who's very anti-seed oil. It's interesting that the crux of their argument is they're taking very processed food and picking out one specific ingredient, ignoring everything else, ignoring all the salt, ignoring all the the the, you know, corn, all the glucose and fructose and corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, the other things and just the the processing itself, like the the process of processing, you know, heating, cooling, whatever. And they're just picking on this one little aspect and saying, if it weren't for this, ultra processed food would be health food in a random carton. But, you know, rather than saying, well, actually, it's everything in ultra processed food. And even if they're as we've as we've covered off in like our McVeggie episode, even if there are good things in ultra processed food, very often everything else completely overwhelms it, making it unhealthy or less healthy.

Michelle: Yeah, it's all packaged up with other ingredients. And the whole is the sum of its parts in that case. Right.

Kevin: Yeah. But it's interesting that they're trying to say like, oh, if it weren't for the seed oil, ultra processed food would be great for you.

Michelle: You know, which is ridiculous, this this feels to me like the Atkins craze and the demonizing of carbohydrates all over again. It's just now the target is on seed oils.

Kevin: So the journey. Sorry. So the journey for the journey.

Michelle: So I thought, well, let me start with, you know how I get these I get these trade industry publications from back when I was a tea buyer. So right. He's part of the food industry. So I still subscribe to this Food Navigator Europe because I find it to be actually a very interesting publication. And sometimes it has interesting articles on topics such as this. What is industry saying? Even industry is saying that this seed oil thing is complete bunk. And in this one article that they posted about this topic very, very recently, I think I got it in my inbox last month, it said that this whole seed oil thing, this was my question. Where did this even come from? Like, who started this? It appears that this all started with Dr. Paul Saladino. And anybody remembers who Paul Saladino is? He's the psychiatrist slash functional medicine doctor who started the carnivore diet fad.

Kevin: Oh, him.

Michelle: And so he apparently back in 2020 was a guest on Joe Rogan. And this was where he first made all of these unscientific claims and started to demonize seed oils. He made several claims on the Joe Rogan podcast about negative health impacts of vegetable and seed oils. And it sparked this whole huge public backlash against them. And it has continued to snowball ever since, so much so that now the U.S. Secretary of Health, John F. Kennedy, Jr., has gone on record saying that consumers are being unknowingly, quote, unquote, poisoned by seed oils. So this is how far it's gone. And I think probably why I'm all of a sudden my my feed that I do pay attention to is starting to send me more things about seed oils. Now that the U.S. Secretary of Health is on this topic, there's a great deal of concern about the next U.S. dietary guidelines, which is due to come out next year. And they're predicting that there's going to be a dietary guideline shift away from unsaturated fats towards increasing more saturated fats in diet. And that just simply is not supported by evidence. So even in this food drink industry trade publication, they cite something. I'm just going to read through you this study that they share, because I think it's a really great place for us to start. So the American Society of Nutrition has this huge evidence based conference every year. And so at Nutrition 2025 in Orlando, they discuss that higher blood levels of linoleic acid, which is an essential omega-6 fatty acid found in seed oils like soybean and corn oil and found that linoleic acid is found linked to lower inflammation, better markers for heart and metabolic health. And this directly contradicts the claims that seed oils cause inflammation in the body. OK, Dr. Kevin Mackey, he's an adjunct professor at Indiana State University Public Health, Bloomington. He says there has been increasing attention on seed oils, with some claiming that these oils promote inflammation and raise cardiometabolic risk. Our study, based on almost 1900 people, found that higher linoleic acid in blood plasma was associated with lower levels of biomarkers for cardiometabolic risk, including those related to inflammation. And further, that these results are consistent with previous observational studies that have shown higher intake of linoleic acid is associated with lower risk for type 2 diabetes, lower risk for cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes. And just to remind people, in the United States, where this Nutrition 2025 is held, cardiovascular disease is still the number one cause of death.

Kevin: Right, right.

Michelle: So this is a big deal. And type 2 diabetes is an epidemic.

Kevin: So basically, omega-6 is not connected to increased inflammation.

Michelle: Correct.

Kevin: That's basically what they're saying.

Michelle: Correct. That is what they're saying.

Kevin: OK, seems pretty straightforward.

Michelle: That is what they're saying. Dr. Mackey further explains, although other studies have assessed relationships between linoleic acid and cardiometabolic factors, our study used objective biomarkers rather than diet records or food frequency questionnaires to assess linoleic acid intake. So this is important, Kevin, because omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are essential. We call them EFAs, our essential fatty acids. The reason they're essential is because our body can't synthesize them on our own. So we have to get them from our diet. Therefore, this means that it's meaningful when this study used these biomarkers to assess linoleic acid, because the only way that linoleic acid would be present in the blood plasma is if the person was eating it. Right. Like there's no other place it could have come from. So they can be absolutely certain when they do the study that way that it is a result of dietary intake versus someone saying what they ate. Someone just writing down, oh, yeah, I ate this and I had that. Like, I mean, a lot of studies are done that way because often this is the whole problem with dietary studies, is that often you do have to rely on those things unless you can do a completely controlled environment where you're providing all of the food. So this is cool, right? This is very cool.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. It's very objective rather than subjective by just asking people what they ate. It's proving it.

Michelle: There's no gray area. If there's linoleic acid and biomarkers associated with that in the blood plasma, there's no other place it could have come from. That they had to, these 1900 people involved in this study, if that was true, they would have had to have gotten it from their diet. Right. And then Dr. Mackey's team also measured a range of markers of inflammation and indicators of glucose metabolism. So that is really important for confounding factors, right? So researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis on data from 1,894 people in an observational cohort focused on COVID-19. And they found that higher levels of linoleic acid in the blood plasma of these people was indicative of dietary intake. And they were consistently associated with lower levels of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. So it completely debunks this seed oil thing. And specifically, study participants that did have higher linoleic acid showed lower levels of glucose and insulin as well as biomarkers for insulin resistance. So they were found to have overall lower levels of inflammation.

Kevin: Right. Okay. Seems pretty cut and dry.

Michelle: So why is Food Navigator telling this story? Well, they're hoping that these new findings help to reassure members of the public who have safety concerns over seed oils and that this can also help to inform future regulatory decisions by governance across the globe. So that's just from the industries. Like, I haven't even gone into all of the other studies, but I thought it was really helpful for us to start there.

Kevin: Right. But I think what the Navigator really needs to do more than anything else is to create a really eye-catching infographic to explain all this. That's what they need. That's what they're missing. Fight fire with fire.

Michelle: But their infographic wouldn't be interesting and provocative. You know what I mean?

Kevin: They got to make it interesting. They got to put a big cow with a big red X through it or something. They can they can come up with something.

Michelle: Honestly, if if if something doesn't align with a conspiracy theory anymore, then people aren't even interested in knowing the truth.

Kevin: You know, it's just have a picture of a carton with just something called like animal fat on it or something like that. You know, generic animal fat carton.

Michelle: OK, so I'm going to take you to the next stage of stepping you through this, if that's OK. Are you ready?

Kevin: Absolutely. I'm ready.

Michelle: So I want to dive into and explain what like what does seed oil consumption even look like today? Like how big is this issue in humans? OK, there's a doctor, Sarah Berry. She's a leading UK nutrition scientist, a professor at King's College, London. I love the way Dr. Berry explains things. So I'm going to just share a little bit of that about what she wrote that the largest contributor of fat in our diet, because she's extensively studied the seed oils. OK, OK. The largest contributor of fat in the UK diet is palm oil, which is not a seed oil due to a combination and it's low cost, high yield and versatile functional properties, blah, blah, blah. It's ideal for processed foods, in other words. Right. And it's and it's very valuable in manufacturing. What happened was in the 1990s, when health risks of trans fats produced by partially hydrogenating vegetable oils, when that became clear, food manufacturers just urgently were scrambling to find an alternative fat. So palm oil became the perfect substitute for trans fats that met the necessary functional and economic requirements. So so I take it back. I think that I don't think this is just the UK. I think palm oil is is now about 50 percent of packaged foods.

Kevin: Wouldn't surprise me. It's everywhere.

Michelle: Because when I turn over labels, I see, you know, I see palm oil. Right. So in things it's not like I buy a lot of these things, but, you know, I'm always looking. I'm always curious. That's a big part of what we're consuming in these ultra processed foods, not just seed oils. Right. And the other thing that's important is that is a major constituent of margarines and shortenings, baked goods, cereals, biscuits, cakes, breads, chocolate, ice cream, even some peanut butter, instant noodles, chips or crisps and fast food, et cetera. Now, a lot of people think that, you know, we often hear people saying, oh, I only use olive oil, extra virgin olive oil. People actually don't consume as much olive oil or extra virgin as you think you would like when you look at it as a percentage of their total intake because it's expensive. Yeah. So I just want to remind everyone, olive oil is not part of this conversation because olive oil is not a seed oil. Olives are a fruit, not a seed. Right. Okay. Avocado is also a fruit and not a seed. So avocado oil is not part of this equation.

Kevin: So stop talking about it, Michelle.

Michelle: Right, right. We might have issues with avocados for other environmental reasons, but seed oils is not one of them. So so seed oils are consumed by and large much more than olive oil globally. Olive oil is a popular and widely consumed oil, particularly in regions like the Mediterranean and the promotion of the very healthy, traditional Mediterranean diet. While olive oil has had significant market and value for its health benefits, high production volume and lower cost of many seed oils are what makes seed oils much more prevalent in overall worldwide consumption. Sure. Makes sense. So the rest of the majority of fat in diet then does come from seed oils, which is soybean oil, canola or rapeseed oil, sunflower, safflower, sesame, even corn oil. Corn oil has been demonized, and it's a seed oil that has, you know, in these studies has, you know, is kind of lumped in there with these beneficial results. So which I found surprising.

Kevin: I wonder if corn oil gets a little bit of bad rap from corn syrup just being associated with corn syrup, because, of course, corn syrup is like the devil incarnate. It's everywhere and it's the cause of a lot of issues. So I'm just wondering if by association it's it's also been demonized.

Michelle: I think corn and soybean and canola consumers get very concerned about genetic modification, right? About roundup ready seed and the kind of that vast unknown of what does that mean? Because it's not it's not labeled on ingredient lists. We don't really know what the impact of those things are. You know, we have our suspicions and they're everywhere.

Kevin: Yeah.

Michelle: So one of the claims about seed oils being poisoned because they're just chemically derived and evil and all of those ways. So I want to just take a minute to say, OK, so how are seed oils processed?

Kevin: Michelle, how are seed oils processed?

Michelle: Well, Kevin, I'm glad you asked that question. So first, you know, it must be extracted from seeds somehow. Right. So such squeezing the seed, which is what cold pressing is. You cold press, you squeeze the seed. You don't apply any heat, hence cold pressed. Makes sense. It is not the most efficient in terms of yield. You don't get all of the oil out of it from cold pressing, which is again why cold pressed oils, I think, tend to be more expensive. So if they're not cold pressed, then they end up being a little bit more refined. And that can either be applying some amount of heat to the seed or using solvents such as hexane, which allows full extraction of all the oil in the seed. And according to Dr. Sarah Berry, even though it sounds nasty that they're applying a hexane solvent, she said there's absolutely no evidence to suggest that this is harmful. Most oils that are added to foods that are sold on store shelves also go through further stages of processing to remove other minor components in the oil, such as bleaching and deodorizing. The oil you end up with after all of that processing is very, very stable, but there's no harmful chemicals left behind, as these smear ads might suggest. Occasionally, more of the issue is the issue that I have with decaffeination, that that process occasionally may lose some of the beneficial nutrients such as phytonutrients and micronutrients like vitamin E, polyphenols and phytosterols that you would find in these seed oils because they come from plants, right? So they'll have these nutrients.

Kevin: Right. And I think we covered that in our oil episode, that it's always better to get the whole food origin of the oil, like eat an avocado rather than having avocado oil.

Michelle: I agree. Yeah. So that's episode 10. If anybody wants to go back and listen to it, we covered a lot there, but we're going much deeper because I'm riled up about this seed oil thing.

Kevin: Exactly, because you are pissed off.

Michelle: So if you take that piece that we just learned, the takeaway for the consumer is cold press oils are going to contain more of these beneficial nutrients because they don't have all of that additional processing. But in terms of harm, processed oils based on large bodies of evidence and research, the difference is quite minor and the more processed oils. Actually, if you look at it at a very, very, very large macro level, end up having similar amounts of these nutrients as coal plus oils, meaning that the difference isn't as large as we might think. And if the relative increased cost of those more bougie oils makes it less affordable for you, the difference like... Don't sweat it. You shouldn't be having a whole bunch of oil anyway. Exactly. So don't get focused on that, right?

Kevin: Okay.

Michelle: Yeah, because it's like the whole thing. What did I say? When people turn around a plant milk label and they'll see soy lecithin or in an ingredient and they're like, well, like how much processed food are you eating? Like that's more of the issue than the fact that down at the end and one of the last ingredients you see soy lecithin, you're not really sure of where it came from.

Kevin: Look at the big picture.

Michelle: We can really lose the forest for the trees.

Kevin: Exactly. So... What's next on our journey?

Michelle: So consuming directly or added to food. So most of the seed oil exposure that we actually get that is actually at issue is the fact that it's coming in these manufactured ultra processed foods. Now we do also use our vegetable oils that are primarily seed oils when we're cooking, when we're frying, lining our sheet pans, our cake pans, like whatever. But I think much more of the issue is the package and processed foods. And like you said before, not necessarily the seed oil in those packaged foods, but the whole package of all of the things that are in there.

Kevin: Everything. Yeah.

Michelle: An interesting fun fact, Kevin.

Kevin: I love fun facts.

Michelle: Which seed oil is more predominant in diet kind of depends upon where you live. In the United States, the number one seed oil consumed is soybean oil is number one and canola oil is number two. In Canada, it's the reverse. The number one seed oil is canola oil, probably because we're big canola growers in Canada, right? Soybean oil is number two.

Kevin: Interesting.

Michelle: And in Europe, the number one is canola oil. Number two is olive oil.

Kevin: OK, which doesn't surprise me because they've got Greece and Italy and Europe and France and all those places where olive oil is a religion of itself.

Michelle: Right.

Kevin: Basically.

Michelle: So even though these are all classified in the same category of seed oils, it's important to not lose sight of the fact that the composition of each individual oil is going to be in terms of what fatty acid and what fatty acid ratios are made up of is going to differ because they come from different plants.

Kevin: Right. Of course.

Michelle: Right. Because because a corn kernel and soybean don't don't look the same. Right.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Michelle: So I suggest that listeners do go back and listen to episode 10 if they're confused about that. But I'm going to do a really, really, really quick primer just to set context here. All the dietary fat that we consume is made up of fatty acids, which are that can be categorized into one of three types based on how they impact human health.

Kevin: OK.

Michelle: Think of these fatty acids as the building blocks of a fat the same way that we talked about amino acids as being the building blocks of a protein. Right. Right. Or in many different types of proteins. So we've got saturated fatty acids and then we've got unsaturated fatty acids, which can either be monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. Saturated means there are no double bonds of carbon. The atom is fully saturated with hydrogen, and that's what makes it shelf stable, solid at room temperature. Right. Tolerates extremely high heats, etc. And then of the unsaturated fats, it means that the carbon chain has lost some hydrogen atoms because a carbon to carbon double bond has formed instead in its place. So in the case of a monounsaturated fat, there will be one unsaturated double bond. And in a polyunsaturated fat, poly meaning many, meaning there will be two or more double bonds. And therefore, the polyunsaturated fat is even less saturated with hydrogen than the monounsaturated fat. Every seed oil difference in terms of these what fatty acids that they're made up of, olive oil is high in monounsaturated fatty acids, but it's also very high in polyphenols, which is why it's so favored in the Mediterranean diet. Seed oils generally have high levels of mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids and many beneficial polyphenols, but they don't have quite as many as is present in olive oil. And the main difference here is the proportion of mono to polyunsaturated fatty acids. And then that determines whether one is slightly healthier than the other or whatever. But generally, generally speaking, let's not get mired in these weeds.

Kevin: Right. Go to episode 10 for that.

Michelle: More unsaturated fat good, you know, more saturated fat bad.

Kevin: Right. Exactly. That's the new takeaway. Unsaturated good, saturated bad.

Michelle: Exactly. And don't worry about the mono, poly, whatever. I mean, if that floats your boat, go for it.

Kevin: We're equal opportunity unsaturated.

Michelle: Honestly, even even me, like where I'm obsessed with this content all the time, even I, you know, lose track of, you know, is this oil more poly or more? Like, I don't even remember. Right. So I just do what I do and I minimize the oils and I buy the best quality that I'm aware of based on where research is looking at the time. I sometimes course correct just a little bit. If I learn something about environmental impacts, etc., I do the best I can as a consumer. And that's all I think anybody can be expected to do. Right.

Kevin: And I think that's the key takeaway to try to minimize eating fat in that pure sort of fat or oils phase. Try to eat the whole food version of it instead. Right. And try to get the best quality. And if you use it sparingly, it's, you know, not the end of the world. Right. And to stay away from fats that are solid at room temperature.

Michelle: Yeah. Unless you want to use coconut oil as a very inexpensive skin cream, as I do.

Kevin: Exactly. Yeah. For eating, for ingesting. Stay away from fats that are at room temperature. Solid.

Michelle: Yeah. And, you know, again, it's always about, like, how much are you eating? I think the point of all of this body of evidence shows us is that there isn't really any harmful level of omega-3 or omega-6 essential fatty acids in terms of this cardiovascular disease risk. That's one of the key arguments of these seed oil teleterious claims. The correlation that they often show on graphs, it's so provocative. But the real story here is that it's the processed food consumption, not the seed oil consumption. Right. In these ultra processed foods, as well as people that tend to, this is another point that is pointed out by Dr. Sarah Berry. Often the people that have those behaviors of pervasive high levels of ultra processed food intake in their diet are the same people that are also have other lifestyle behaviors that accompany these high ultra processed food diets, including, like, being more sedentary, not exercising enough, not having good sleep behaviors.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: This is all an important part of the context of the healthfulness of a dietary pattern.

Kevin: It's almost a bait and switch. Again, by focusing on the ultra processed foods and the seed oils in the ultra processed foods, almost a bait and switch, like, OK, don't worry about the ultra processed foods and the fact you're eating a ton of these, just switch to butter and avoid seed oils. It's not a very well thought out or honest approach to what the core issue is, it seems.

Michelle: Right. And so one interesting thing that I found is that there is one legacy study often used to trash seed oils, and it's from the 1960s. It was called the Sydney Heart Study. They took this group of men, probably men because it was the 1960s. I don't know.

Kevin: Of course. Yeah.

Michelle: You know, female power.

Kevin: Why study women?

Michelle: So they did this study with men who had had a cardiovascular event and increased the omega-6 seed oils in their diet. And they found that this actually increased their instance of cardiovascular events.

Kevin: OK.

Michelle: But the study used margarine spreads, which we now know in the 1960s largely contained trans fats.

Kevin: Right. Right.

Michelle: So that's not even a relevant study in any way anymore because trans fats are no longer part of the picture.

Kevin: It's also a bit outdated because just people's overall eating habits in the 60s had tons of canned vegetables and tinned goods and a fresh vegetable or fruit was almost unheard of in the 60s. So the baseline diet also wouldn't have been very appropriate to then compare with today's diet, which hopefully should be a little bit better.

Michelle: I'm sure there's a lot of context there, Kevin. And that's why, you know, we should be looking for what more recent. Of course. And we can do much better research now than we could in the 60s, too.

Kevin: Well, it tells me that the people behind this story about anti-seed oils are pretty desperate if they have to go back to the 1960s. This is one bizarre study before they can find solid proof to support their point. That already shows how weak their argument is.

Michelle: Yeah, I don't remember who said it, but somebody in a lecture said that, you know, if you torture data enough, it'll tell you what you want.

Kevin: Of course. Yeah, exactly. If you go back, I'm sure there's studies in the 1930s, too, that could support just about any viewpoint. You know, it's a bit misleading.

Michelle: So contrary to the argument that they make using that study as the clickbait, epidemiological research shows that increasing polyunsaturated fat consumption decreases risk of cardiovascular disease and other diseases. Randomized control trials show that increasing polyunsaturated fat reduces LDL cholesterol, resulting in a 32 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease. So not only is it not increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, increasing these polyunsaturated fats in diet or swapping them out for the saturated fats results in a 32 percent reduction. So that's not a small difference.

Kevin: Yeah, that's significant. Yeah, it's a third.

Michelle: The other thing in play here is the issue of the omega 6 to 3 ratio. And I've talked about this a lot as well, but they will use that. They will kind of weaponize that to promote this seed oil argument. So in an ideal omega, you know, it doesn't matter whether you say 3 to 6 or 6 to 3, as long as you know, you know, the first number, which one is which, right? You see it characterized both ways. I often say 3 to 6 and say that it should be 1 to 1 or 1 to 4. Right. Because 1 to 1 isn't really that realistic anymore. In seed oils, there is more omega 6 than omega 3. So it's often used to state that this is kind of the proof that the seed oils are harmful because you get too much omega 6, which is a precursor of arachidonic acid, which is part of a pro-inflammatory pathway. But the truth is that high omega 6s do produce arachidonic acid. And they mechanistically, meaning when we look at this in studies that don't involve humans and they involve animals and lab environments or whatever, they do see that it's pro-inflammatory. It can make the blood more sticky and promote blood clotting a little bit more versus the omega 3s produce chemicals that are very anti-inflammatory that will be anti-coagulating. And, you know, that's what the concern is. But the long story short is they find that when it comes to these cardiovascular disease risks and diabetes risks and other chronic disease risks where this inflammatory mechanism is in play, when they look at large cohorts, large randomized control trials in humans with diet, they don't see this, even though it may be mechanistically true, they don't see this proving out. They don't see this being an issue. What I would say is that where the omega 3 to 6 ratio matters is when that high omega 6 ratio is really indicative of the quality of the diet that you're intaking. It's not because you're using too much canola oil. It's because you're consuming too much ultra-processed foods in your diet as a whole and you're not eating whole. That's a problem. It comes back to that. That's going to be incredibly pro-inflammatory. So what they're saying in these large randomized control trials is we're not seeing that using the oil as a part of your diet with your salads and your cooking oils, etc., is not correlated on there and there's no causation with this cardiovascular risk. So where it would be an issue for me, Kevin, is at the end of the day, as not harmful as these oils are in that context, when you've removed the fiber from the food, you're still left with 9 calories per gram. So in terms of caloric intake, it's a poor trade-off for getting those calories from whole foods where you've got the beneficial of all of those other contexts of fiber and the full context of the nutrients that that food had to offer. Does that make sense?

Kevin: Yeah, you covered that off in episode 10. So everyone should go back and get a primer on that.

Michelle: Right, right. And so what I saw when I was kind of looking at this to prepare for the episode, the emphasis when scientists are defending the seed oils in their argument and saying, don't worry about the 3 to 6 ratio because the ratio doesn't matter. It isn't even a role in this inflammation cardiovascular disease risk issue. But still, when we look at people who have chronic disease or wanting to prevent a chronic disease, then the amount of dietary fat intake does matter. Right. No matter where it's coming from. Right. So that's the story there. Makes sense. Okay.

Kevin: Myth busted.

Michelle: All right, Kevin, I just want to take a second and I want to touch on one of my health heroes. Dr. Walter Willett is a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, but he's also co-chair of the Eat Lancet Commission when it last convened in 2019 and then most recently in 2025. You know, he has a lot to say on this issue and he's very succinct. So I just want to read to you one of his statements. The idea that omega-6 fatty acids are pro-inflammatory is propagated over and over again in social media. Dozens of studies have looked at this and about half of them show no effect, while the other half show reduction in inflammatory factors. His bottom line is that seed oils are basically a very healthy part of diet. When you look at some of the other alternatives like butter or lard, and he said that they are much, much better. This is the one thing that he always says when you see him interviewed is that they'll say, you know, is such and such an oil healthy or is such and such a food healthy? He'll always say, compared to what?

Kevin: I like them already.

Michelle: Compared to what, right?

Kevin: Of course. No, that is always the question. Like any food, besides a few obvious ones, no food in and of itself is healthy or unhealthy, but it's always in comparison to something else and looking at the whole picture. So yeah, it makes sense. Yeah.

Michelle: I also want to leave the listeners if they want to, I'm going to put a link to this in the show notes as well. If you want to look at one of these, you know, kind of study abstracts yourself, there was this giant meta-analysis. It was an umbrella review on the health effects of various edible vegetable oils published in Advances in Nutrition, which is a leading journal. And it confirmed that oils high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as canola and olive oil, lower serum LDL cholesterol or the bad cholesterol and total cholesterol contributing to reduced cardiovascular risk. So like studies like that, there's so many of them. And, you know, there's just so much consensus.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: So bottom line, minimize your ultra processed foods in your diet. And that will inherently decrease unhealthy sources of fats and oils.

Kevin: Go figure.

Michelle: Right. I also would say since I got kind of immersed in this, I'm much more convinced than I was ever before that it's a very good idea to consciously consume healthy sources of omega threes, which is in terms of just adding them to your plate, you know, nuts such as walnuts, use of flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, oils such as favoring flaxseed oil, soybean oil, canola oil, legumes such as your edamame, your chickpeas, etc. Seaweed and kelp, if you like those and adding them in or taking a really good quality LJ derived EPA DHA omega three supplement, we can't under emphasize the importance of having these essential fatty acids in our diet, particularly the omega threes. And then, you know, if we if we emphasize the omega three rich foods in our diet and in our supplementation, it's also going to help us balance out that ratio. But generally, if you have a well-planned diet, I kind of agree with the other camp that says, don't worry about the ratio.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: You only need to worry about it if you're going nuts with the ultra processed food.

Kevin: Exactly. Exactly. Makes sense. Excellent. So there, like that's where one very simple infographic took us. That was quite a rabbit hole. I'm impressed. Even for you, that was quite a rabbit hole. It's pretty impressive.

Michelle: In case anybody wonders whatever happened to Paul Saladino, the carnivore diet MD, he was on a podcast January of 2025 describing how after being on the carnivore diet and exclusively eating meat for two years, it made his testosterone drop and caused sleep disturbances, heart palpitations and muscle cramps. And he no longer eats carnivore.

Kevin: Now, if there is any poetic justice in the world that has officially been served, and I can't think of anyone else more deserving.

Michelle: Why are we still listening to what this guy says?

Kevin: Exactly. That's wonderful. I'm glad it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. How very, very ironic.

Michelle: Karma's a bitch.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He got everything he deserved. And the funniest thing is, it's kind of funny that his testosterone dropped because so many of these paleo dudes and carnivore dudes are all about, oh, real men, cavemen, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, his testosterone dropped. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Oh, my goodness. Okay. On that note, let's go for a high testosterone dad joke.

Michelle: Oh, my goodness. Look at that. I couldn't have possibly set you up better.

Kevin: Not at all. Okay. What is brown, hairy and wear sunglasses?

Michelle: Oh, I don't know.

Kevin: A coconut on a cruise. Ah. And here's a bonus one from my son. Why did the student eat her homework?

Michelle: Why did the student eat her homework?

Kevin: Because the teacher told her it was a piece of cake.

Michelle: Oh, no.

Kevin: Okay. Well, thank you, Michelle. It's always fun to do a bit of a myth busting episode. So thank you for helping us out with that.

Michelle: That was fun. I feel lighter. I feel cleansed.

Kevin: Oh, that's good. That's good. And if anyone is interested, we do strongly recommend you go back and listen to episode 10 because Michelle goes into a lot more detail about oils and everything else. So give that a listen. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can reach out over email at noobs or at facebook.com slash nutrition for noobs. And until then, eat your greens.

Michelle: And be real, everyone. Seek the truth. Be real.

Kevin: This has been Nutrition for Noobs. We hope you're a bit more enlightened about how your fantastic and complicated body works with the food you put into it. If you have a question or a topic you'd like Michelle to discuss, drop us a line at n4noobs at gmail.com. That's the letter N, the number 4, N-O-O-B-S at gmail.com. If you haven't already, you can subscribe to the podcast on whatever your favourite platform might be. Also, please consider leaving a review or telling your friends. That's the best way to spread the word. We'll see you next time with another interesting topic. The views and opinions expressed on Nutrition for Noobs are those of the hosts. It is not intended to be a substitute for medical, nutritional, or health advice. Listeners should seek a personal consultation with a qualified practitioner if they have any concerns or before commencing any actions mentioned in the podcast.