Whether you like Dr Stanfield or not, this is a well organized review on seed oils.
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A good video. What do people put these oils on when they eat? I don’t use added fats on anything because I can’t afford the calories.
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It could be that there are unique benefits as an oil which can’t come from the whole food, at least Dr. Willett says he eats both.
I use olive oil in home made salad dressing. That’s the only time I use oil.
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Yeah, the calories are the problem. That said my wife puts a splash of olive oil on beans and buckwheat in a bowl, which we then split, maybe like half a tablespoon, so each of us gets slightly less than quarter tablespoon, like 2 times a week. Canola oil only a splash on the frying pan for some very brief salmon+spinach heat up once a week. So all in all, really basically trace amounts per week.
I have zero worries about EVOO and canola oil healthwise. I consume so little of it only because of calories.
But, is olive oil better than canola oil?
Olive oil sure does taste good. If I was going to have a little oil, I would have olive oil for sure. I understand olive oil has more goodness than just monounsaturated fats. I just can’t afford the extra calories of oil and nuts. I kept the nuts (walnuts).
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I think the point is that it doesn’t matter.
Then there are people like this woman (Catherine Shanahan MD ) who seems to think seed oils are the worst poison possible… I’ve not listened to the above podcast by Stanfield et al, but hope to. It seems like this topic has turned into almost a religious war, and I’m not sure why and haven’t had the time to dig into this. I’m mostly a Virgin Olive oil kind of guy anyway - so its not a huge concern for me.
She has a new book out apparently, see this link: Dark Calories: How Vegetable Oils Destroy Our Health and How We Can Get It Back
Seems to have a reasonable background. Has anyone evaluated the two seemingly contrarian perspectives on these issues? I wonder how much of it is due to “influencers” trying to sell the controversy to increase attention…
Dr. Cate holds a BS in Biology from Rutgers University and trained in biochemistry and genetics at Cornell University before attending Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
I just drive down the street to the Olive Mill.
She seems like she’s a zealot or in it for the money.
The lack of science is shocking with individuals who somehow think seed oils are bad. Yes, we need to maintain a reasonable ratio of Omega 3:6. Ultimately, there is no reason to have any added fats at all.
The issue with Olive Oil or any other is whether it is better than no oil. Everything needs to be considered in the context of the opportunity loss with each calorie you consume … does it improve or worsen health? So Hamburger vs. some sourdough with a bit of olive oil … yes go for it. Olive oil vs. having some nuts and seeds … and a nice salad with lots of fiber and diversity of plants … plus or minus a little salmon … I think the benefit goes to the latter.
We use no added oils … just whole foods. But if someone is going to add fat, EVOO is the clear winner. But the overall clear winner is adding no fat.
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What studies does she cite? Human studies? Cherry picked or the totality of evidence?
Canola oil and other oils are healthy.
Canola oil improves LDL when replacing EVOO, so I wouldn’t say it is the clear winner.
Overall I’d disagree on this … and see no reason to add any oil over dietary fat in whole plant based foods. Now on the EVOO … I’d encourage a review of:
Neil Barnard M.D. does a good job of dissecting this and my overall conclusion is, if you have added fats apart from a direct source of DHA/EPA, EVOO would be the favored source.
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The consumption of seed oils has increased dramatically in this country in recent years, as has obesity, fatty liver, etc. Causation or correlation? I don’t know. But I’ve heard the average American currently gets close to 20% of their calories from these oils now. 100 years ago, we got essentially none.
It is hard to find processed foods that don’t contain seed oils. This is the primary reason for the increase in consumption.
In general there is reason to be cautious with oils that need special refinery type processing, such as high levels of force, heat, various chemical processing to remove odors and colors, etc. These are not products you could make on a farm in 1850.
We are bio-concentrating something from seeds such that we get orders of magnitude more of it than we’d get if we ate the seeds directly.
Does that mean it is unhealthy? No. This is very weak evidence; speculation, really, not even evidence. The evidence we have that it is healthy is also weak, as far as I know, and typically involves surrogate markers for health such as LDL rather than clinically meaningful health outcomes (mortality, or heart attacks, or diabetes, or etc.).
My non-expert thought is we might as well avoid them for now while we wait for more convincing evidence of their benefit or harm. They aren’t needed for a healthy diet, so we can afford to wait and see.
Again, not an expert.
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Canola oil has half the amount of saturated fat than olive oil.
It also lowers LDL when replacing olive oil like I said before. I don’t see him mentioning or comparing it with canola oil.
I don’t know whether they the fats have unique benefits in oil form. That would be interesting to investigate.
In a prospective, randomised single-blinded secondary prevention trial we compared the effect of a Mediterranean alpha-linolenic acid-rich diet to the usual post-infarct prudent diet.
After a first myocardial infarction, patients were randomly assigned to the experimental (n=302) or control group (n=303). Patients were seen again 8 weeks after randomisation, and each year for 5 years. The experimental group consumed significantly less lipids, saturated fat, cholesterol, and linoleic acid but more oleic and alpha-linolenic acids confirmed by measurements in plasma. Serum lipids, blood pressure, and body mass index remained similar in the 2 groups. In the experimental group, plasma levels of albumin, vitamin E, and vitamin C were increased, and granulocyte count decreased. After a mean follow up of 27 months, there were 16 cardiac deaths in the control and 3 in the experimental group; 17 non-fatal myocardial infarction in the control and 5 in the experimental groups: a risk ratio for these two main endpoints combined of 0·27 (95% Cl 0·12-0·59, p=0·001) after adjustment for prognostic variables. Overall mortality was 20 in the control, 8 in the experimental group, an adjusted risk ratio of 0·30 (95% Cl 0·11-0·82, p=0·02).
An alpha-linolenic acid-rich Mediterranean diet seems to be more efficient than presently used diets in the secondary prevention of coronary events and death.
Mediterranean alpha-linolenic acid-rich diet in secondary prevention of coronary heart disease, 1994
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The way to go if you want the pros without the cons is to find some hi-polyphenols EVOO (600-700 ppm or mg/lt) . It’s not easy and pretty costly, but this way you can ensure a viable dose of secoiridoids (the EVOO polyphenols) with just one or half a tablespoon of EVOO.
One or two olives will have much more polyphenols than that, though. If you match by calories it will probably be an order magnitude more.
There are also no added sodium olives.
I’m not so sure about it, it’s a point to be ascertained, olives got the fibers, don’t know if they concentrate so many polyphenols.
Those who wish the polyphenols alone usually take olive leaf extracts, which come in many guises, from the traditional supplement to the dry leaves, to the aqueous solution.
It’s at least one order of magnitude more polyphenols in olives than EVOO matched by calories:
Which is still far ahead of olive oil. To translate this to relateable numbers:
About 30 olives will have the same polyphenol content of over a quart (+4 oz) of olive oil. Maybe even double as much.
Or put another way, a single olive will have a polyphenol count of about 16.6mg.
A tablespoon of olive oil, which came from roughly 100 olives, has the polyphenol count of a single of 6.94.
To get the equivalent polyphenols of a single olive (3-4 calories), you’ll need to eat about 2.4 tablespoons of olive oil, 288 calories.
Analysis and studies:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantBasedDiet/comments/ug5prz/polyphenols_in_olives_vs_olive_oil/
AnUser, I read with interest the reddit post, but there is at least one clear issue:
- the poster is clearly biased against EVOO, by the tone of his writing. Am I applying a logical fallacy? Only in part, since his emotional involvement may have caused a lack of objectivity, or perhaps influenced a cherry picking, or similar pitfalls. It’s all speculative, but when I start to hear tribal nuances, I assign much less credibility to the source.
Another issue is more technical.
- Dry weight of olives. The poster at first cites a concentration per 100 g of dry weight:
In contrast, the phenolic content decreased in green olives from 652 to 460 mg gallic acid/100 g dry weight
Then he seems to forget about the dry weight:
So, while fresh (but bitter and mildly toxic) olives have over 2,000 mg to start with, after processing it gets reduced to about (averaging) 500mg/100g. 100 grams of olives are about 115 calories.
From some sources, an olive is about 75% water, so the polyphenols concentration in the natural, undried fruit would be about 500mg/400g = 1.25/1000 = 1250 ppm
Table olives and health: a review - PMC)(8%2C9).
The figure above would not be an order of magnitude, although it would be much more of what I would expect, about twice the amount of a hi-polyphenols EVOO.
There are other aspects though, for example, are the secoiridoids in olives the same and in the same amount than in EVOO, since the extraction process could concentrate specific varieties.
I’m afraid this issue would deserve a far wider search, with the exam of many specialistic articles.
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