Why Vegetable Oils Are Killing You

Video transcript below:

​​​What's up​, Wildlings? Colin Stuckert here, founder, and CEO, WildFoodsCo.
Another video about nutrition. You can take accurate food-based, science-backed nutrition advice to the bank and cash in for better health, life, and longevity.

So, today's topic is vegetable oils, how they are a silent killer, and how they are a very hidden killer in our food system because they're in so many products, and most people have no idea just how bad they are.

So, let's get to some of the primary reasons why vegetable oil is in everything and, two, killing you.

Okay, so this goes back a long way; it goes back to the processed food revolution, the whole anti-fat dogma started by Ancel Keys, which tried to link, through his seven heart studies, saturated fat and eating cholesterol to increase heart disease and to raise cholesterol, and so, there was a lot of issues with this research.

You can Google to find out more about that, but this became public policy. He was a very influential doctor who helped dictate the government, the food pyramid, and everything we were telling the public.

And then the media picked up on it, of course, and he became a very sought-after speaker and public figure. And as a result, we've had this anti-fat dogma for the past 30 or 40 years, basically killing people.

And what happened is the food companies took advantage of this, and what they did, is they were able to figure out that all these subsidized crops that the government has been supporting since World War II to make sure that we had enough food, corn, soy, wheat, things like that.

Well, these big food companies jumped on this opportunity to take these massed produced mono-crops and figure out how to extract the fat from these foodstuffs, right, that in nature you don't have a lot of fat found in these.

​For example, to get fat out of corn and create corn oil, you must have massive quantities of these things right. So these aren't things that are natural to the human diet. There are always reasons why it happened, but generally, the primary thing is subsidized crops and big food companies.

Because the government subsidizes them, and because they already make so much of it so cheap, figure out how to get vegetable oils and seed oils out of these foodstuffs and then use them in most processed foods.

That's why almost all processed, refined food, you find the fat in those foods are either from corn, soy, cottonseed, canola, grapeseed, whatever, these are the oils, these cheap oils that are used most of the time.

You won't find tallow, lard, and even coconut oil, avocado oil, all these other oils that are generally better for the human being; you don't find those because they're more expensive and not subsidized, right?

So you have all this cheap junk oil that is exthighlyega-6 heavy, pro-inflammatory, and in the bulk of all processed food. The thing that is bad with this stuff, guys, is in the majority of all restaurant food.

It's in the bulk of all food that you eat out, even if I'm going to go to Whole Foods and eat at their food bar, which I don't do much of anymore; they're using canola oil in almost everything.

Or they're using some low-quality fryer oil that they use multiple times, and each time they use it, it breaks down more and more.

Is a ton of this stuff hidden under, like plain sight, in the kitchens, in the food processing, in the bag of chips, suitable?

And people don't understand how bad they are for you, and I'm going to go into why they are that bad for you, but that's why they're so ubiquitous and so prevalent because governments subsidize them. The process food revolution has made them a staple in our food system.

This is why you must eat at home and cook your foods using approved salt and oils that will bring out the best in your genes; home cooking is still the key to good nutrition.

Now let's get into what they do to the body and why they're so wrong.
Alright, we need to discuss the two things with these PUFAS and P-U-F-A-S Polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Now, these are the fats primarily found in plants, right? And then you have MUFAS monounsaturated fatty acids, which you typically find in macadamia nuts, olive oil, and things like that.

Those are typically more shelf stable and better for you than the PUFAS.
The PUFAS are the ones you watch for one oxidization and two omega-6 to omega-3 balance levels.

And I'm going to talk about number two after this clip, but this one, I'm going to talk about oxidation.

PUFAS quickly oxidize and turn rancid, and it's a breakdown of- and you know, again, I'm not a science buff; I respect science, and I appreciate science, but I don't get too nitty gritty into the reasons why so that is something that you should research on your own. Still, it's a breakdown of the carbon chains, and what happens is when this breaks down, it is not natural for your body.

So it goes into your body and causes oxidative stress and free radical damage so that when you eat these foods that are damaged, you, in turn, will also be damaged.

Through various mechanisms that, again, I'm not super keen on the exact why, or I should say how, so look into that on your own if you are interested, but in general, when fat is oxidized, it's terrible for the human body.

That's the straightforward way to think about it. Oxidized fat equals terrible, okay?
And you get oxidation from omega-6's because they're so sensitive to light and heat, and processing right, you get these oxidized oils.

As a rule, they are oxidized when they're run through heavy machinery, grown the way they're grown when they're processed through machining, and these massive agri-farming mono-crop things they do.

They spray these crops with hormone-disrupting antibiotic type, Round-Up, and all these other weed killers that have been proven to destroy parts of the human body.

And that's a whole other topic for another day. But you get this mass processing of these not a natural vegetable and seed oils that are then used in and then transported in giant vats, and who knows how they're stored, who knows how they're fascinated, and who knows what temperatures they're exposed to.

And then they get to a factory, and they sit, who knows where they sit, and they go through who knows what machinery, right? And go through even more processing and refining and all these things, you know, the heat used often, mechanical friction used often, and then that goes into the food you eat yourself, need I go on?

Do you see how disconnected that is from something you might find in nature? It's just a disconnect.

Almost all omega-6s in processed food, more likely than not, are oxidized.

And when they're oxidized, they cause oxidative stress, and then they generate free radicals and all these other things in your body that age you, that make you fat, that make you sick, that do everything wrong in your body that you don't want for your body and your health.

Processed food, stay away from it. You will get the bulk of these omega-6's out of your diet, except if you're buying food cooked by a corporation like Whole Foods.

I was eating 90% of the crap at Whole Foods, I can't eat, and I won't eat, and I don't think anyone should eat; it's healthy junk food because they're still using highly mechanized processes. They're using many of these cheap oils, and even when they throw an organic label on it, it's still crap; they just happened to pay for an organic brand.

There are a lot of issues with organic that I won't get into today, but that's something to look out for, is even these healthy foods, when they're packaged, organic label, read the ingredient list because you still find a lot of this junk in there, in fact, there's like soybean oil and crap in a lot of the products at Whole Foods, which shouldn't be the case.

Make sure you're reading the ingredient list because you can still find it, especially canola; it's a big one; canola's been the one that's flown under the radar that food manufacturers are using to let people think that it's better or heart-healthy or whatever, even though it's not.

It's a highly refined processed oil that is probably damaged and will not do you any favors because the omega-6 load is what we'll discuss in the following clip.
Okay, so to review, most omega-6 that you find, especially in processed food, is heavily processed, refined, and oxidized, which will cause issues for you and your body.

And then restaurant food, they use these seed oils, these vegetable oils, and a lot of times even trans fat in their fryers, on the grill, on the griddle, to marinate things, to cook, even some of the best restaurants in Austin I know they're using these oils, I know it because it's just standard for the restaurant business.

This is why you can't control and honestly eat Real Food if you're eating out or letting corporations cook for you.

Just get in the kitchen, guys, get in the kitchen, cook your food from raw, natural ingredients, you can control the fat, and you can control the salt. You can own the spices and control everything that goes into your plate; you get to control it, and that's the only proper way to manage your health.

So we have the omega-6 to the omega-3 balance. In nature, for the human body, from the animals we consume and the natural human diet, we would have something around a one-to-one or a three-to-one of omega-3 to omega-6.

For every gram of omega-3, we would eat about one to three grams of omega-6. So if we eat 10 grams of omega-6, we should get at least three to five grams of omega-3.

And ideally, in closer to a one-to-one ratio because the more omega-6, the more this balance is off, the more you get inflammation, and the more you get rash, the more everything goes wrong.

Inflammation is a blanket term for things in your body that are just effed up. So you don't want inflammation; you don't want oxidative stress. For our purposes, it's the same thing.

So when you eat foods high in omega-6, the typical western diet is something like 20 to 40 to one of omega-6 to omega-3. The balance is that because we eat so much omega-3sega-3's trailing so low, we will have inflammation by eating the standard American diet.

Even for someone like me who pays attention to what I'm eating, it's much easier to eat omega-6 because it's the primary fat you find.

It's accessible, ubiquitous, and cheap compared to omega-3, which you find in fatty fish, grass-fed meats, wild game, and other things. Typically more expensive, naturally rare, and harder to consume.

Of course, suppose you're eating wild meats or grass-fed meat. In that case, that's going to do a lot for you, but just in general nuts and seeds, just all of the different foods like the snack foods and things like- even when they're healthy, even they're organic, whatever, or I should say better options, more beneficial, they're still going to have primarily omega-6, omega-3.

And so, if we talk about EPA, DPA, and DHA, which are only found in animal products, particularly fatty fish and grass-fed game, it's just hard to get omega-3s.

And the problem with vegetable oils is that they are incredibly high in omega-6 and omega-9. They further skew that balance, further contribute to inflammation, and increase the chance you'll live a shorter life than you would have had you had less omega-6 and more omega-3.

A lot here, I know, but some takeaways for the video would be to watch the foods you're eating at restaurants. Fried food could be better.

They're frying in oxidized oils, probably a giant vat of omega-6 oxidized cancer-causing oils is where they fry foods right, so stay away from that. Then stay away from as many processed, refined foods as you can.

Food cooked by corporations, as I said, has almost always used omega-6s and or using mechanisms and processes and techniques in extensive factory settings that are just removing the nature from the food, they're removing the nutrition, they're doing damage to your health when you ingest those foods.

Alright, the more you take food out of nature, the worse it is for you. Say no to processed, refined foods, avoid letting corporations cook for you, and avoid letting restaurants cook for you.

Do as much cooking at home from raw, natural ingredients as possible, and WildFoods sponsors this video; guys, get all of your natural raw food ingredients and supplements at WildFoods.co.

Use code WILDCEO for 12% off your entire order; leave some comments below, questions, comments, feedback, whatever; thanks for watching.

​Colin Stuckert,
Founder/CEO, Wild Foods