Vegetable oils are widely promoted as a healthful substitute for “Artery clogging saturated fat,” but in reality, vegetable oils are one of the worst things you can possibly eat. I wont even call them a food, they're more of an industrial product that is only technically edible.
The problem with vegetable oils is they're unstable. In fact, most of the vegetable oils displayed on the shelf are rancid before you even buy them. Vegetable oils are mainly polyunsaturated fats, which means they have 2 or more bonds that are not saturated with hydrogen. This leaves them especially vulnerable to oxidation, when free oxygen molecules bind with them causing damage. This is also called lipid peroxidation. Lipid peroxidation is the number one cause of the production of Advanced Glycation Endproducts, which are believed to cause aging, aging-related deterioration, and cancer.
One of the important functions of antioxidant-vitamins E and C is to help prevent the oxidation caused by unstable polyunsaturated fats. The more polyunsaturated fat you eat, the more of these vitamins you need in order to be healthy. Lots of people eat diets that are high in vegetable oils but lacking in vitamins, so what you end up with is depleted, low levels of vitamins E and C. This will leave you vulnerable to further damage from oxidation and chronic systemic inflammation. (When cells throughout your whole body are constantly stressed). You may even accelerate the aging of the skin by using them as a lotion. And most lotions do use vegetable oils in their products.
Saturated fat on the other hand is stable and contains no unsaturated bonds. Leaving it immune to oxidation, and therefore relatively harmless. Which type of fat would you want to have in your body? The fats you eat are a structural material, that are used in every tissue of your body in every cell. Do you really want to be made of rancid vegetable oil?
Have you ever seriously looked at a soybean or a kernel of corn? Where does the oil come from to make those massive jugs of soybean and corn oil at the supermarket? They're chemically extracted by industrial solvents. You could not possibly eat any significant amount of these oils without heavy industrial processing. How can that be healthier for us, then animal fat or butter? How would natural selection favor that? We didn't survive over millions of years, to be intolerant of saturated fat. If that were the case, we wouldn't be here today.
At this point, you may be asking yourself, sure, this all sounds reasonable, but how come so many people have been saying saturated fat is unhealthy for so long? Simple answer is, vegetarian propaganda. Vegetarianism has become fashionable in the last few decades with misguided people who think they know everything.
Fifty years ago, researchers began to speculate that saturated fat was the cause of the “diseases of civilization.” And because saturated fat is found most commonly in animal products, the vegetarian agenda was quick to jump on the anti-saturated-fat bandwagon, and ever since then, researchers have been grasping at straws to support this hypothesis. It was formally adopted by the government not because there was any evidence for it, but because somebody wanted to make a name for himself, and instead of looking at the facts, they just went with the fashionable new theory at the time and based policy on it.
Everyone is replacing healthy butter and animal fat with these industrial oils now, and for no scientific reason. Vegetable oils are in everything; from prepared foods, to virtually every restaurant. The only way to avoid them is to prepare all of your own food from scratch, using whole food ingredients. I urge you strongly to replace everything you have now, with real butter and animal fat. In my next post, I will give you more alternatives to vegetable oils, and the reasons why they are more beneficial.
