Dr. Chris Knobbe - 'Are Vegetable Oils the primary driver of Obesity, Diabetes and Chronic Disease?'

[Lasse]

Came across this video of a lecture by Dr. Chris Knobbe on Vegetable Oils that scared me.

The video is based on statistics from several countries from before 1900 to the present. He compares the increase in the use of Vegetable Oils and sugar with the increase in a number of lifestyle diseases where there is a clear correlation between Vegetable Oils and these lifestyle diseases that are not found in sugar.
There are many indications that ME/CFS is also linked to lifestyle and what we eat as it also has an increasing trend.

Dr. Chris Knobbe - 'Are Vegetable Oils the primary driver of Obesity, Diabetes and Chronic Disease?'

 

[Creekside]

The problem with such correlations is that there can be many other factors that correlate, but not be a cause. I wouldn't be surprised if they found that lack of exercise also strongly correlated with sugar and oil intake.

Vegetable oils are just different ratios of basic fatty acids, the same as animal fats. It would be different if there was a strong correlation between a specific fatty acid and a specific disease.

 

[Lasse]

The problem with such correlations is that there can be many other factors that correlate, but not be a cause. I wouldn't be surprised if they found that lack of exercise also strongly correlated with sugar and oil intake.

Vegetable oils are just different ratios of basic fatty acids, the same as animal fats. It would be different if there was a strong correlation between a specific fatty acid and a specific disease.

In the video the rise of these lifestyle diseases followed the rise of Vegetable Oils all the way from when people started using them to the present in all countries including China which ate little sugar.

When he did the same with sugar, it didn't match the increase in lifestyle diseases at all.
As this correlation goes so far back in time, I don't think exercise fits either.

Humans have never eaten a diet with a lot of Vegetable Oils and Omega 6 (Linoleic Acid). Many believe that since humans have never eaten such a diet before now, we are not adapted to eating it.

Vegetable Oils are very cheap so I suspect that the food industry use as much Vegetable Oils in the food as possible as long it will not have negative consequences on sales. The food then becomes much cheaper to produce and they saves a lot of money. That's what the food industry do when they add sawdust to their food to save money (listed in the nutrition information as cellulose).

Linoleic Acid: The Disease-Causing Toxin Lurking in Our Foods

 

[pamojja]

Omega-3 and Omega-6 oils are essential fatty acids important to get from food in small amounts. Simplified, the former responsible for resolving inflammation, the latter for enabling inflammation (in acute situations lifesaving, chronic with much damage). Since omega-6 intake has increased manyfold, and omega-3 from natural sources are almost none existing in the usual diet, the increase in chronic inflammatory diseases is no surprise to me.

 

[Lasse]

Here are some scientific article on NIH on what pamojja mentions above.
Historically, human diets provided a 1:1 omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.
But today most are between 10:1 to 50:1 - a big imbalance.
A healthy target ratio is 2:1 to 4:1 omega-6 to omega-3.

The Effects of Omega 3 and Omega 6 Fatty Acids on Glucose Metabolism: An Updated Review

The Importance of Maintaining a Low Omega-6/Omega-3 Ratio for Reducing the Risk of Autoimmune Diseases, Asthma, and Allergies

The Importance of Maintaining a Low Omega-6/Omega-3 Ratio for Reducing the Risk of Inflammatory Cytokine Storms

Importance of maintaining a low omega–6/omega–3 ratio for reducing inflammation

The importance of a balanced ω-6 to ω-3 ratio in the prevention and management of obesity

 

[Creekside]

Humans have never eaten a diet with a lot of Vegetable Oils

I'm not sure that's true. If you accept coconut as "vegetable", then plenty of humans lived with that as a major part of their diet. There are probably regions where other tree nuts were a significant source of fats. Then there's olive oil. Flax oil probably was used long before modern processed oils.

Humans evolved with different diets at different times. Our digestive systems are still evolving away from carrion diets, which were preceded by vegetative diets. Also, humans didn't evolve with only one diet in one region; our ancestors had local diets and spread their genes to different regions. I've read several claims of "humans evolved with a <whatever> diet, usually to push some product or sell books&seminars, but really humans evolved with drastically different diets in different regions at different times, so there is no "one true human diet".

 

[pamojja]

I'm not sure that's true. If you accept coconut as "vegetable", then plenty of humans lived with that as a major part of their diet.

If of the inflammation raising properties of omega-6, or seed oils - but more sloppy of vegetable oils is spoken - then yes, cold pressed olive and coconut olive have been in dietary use much longer than industrially produced seed-oils. But both olive and coconut oil actually contain very little of the omega-6 linoleic acid portion.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/17/linoleic-acid.aspx

Before 1866, the Western world for the most part only consumed animal fats. Tallow, suet, lard and butter are examples of these fats. Eastern societies used cold-pressed fats like coconut and palm oil. Vegetable oils like we know them today simply did not exist.

The single-greatest change to the human diet in all of history was the introduction of industrially processed seed oils around 1866.8At that time Procter & Gamble used a newly invented hydrogenation process to convert surplus unusable cotton seeds into a synthetic seed oil, sold to this day under the name Crisco.

Shortly after that, margarine, which is made from seed oils, was introduced. In recent years the company has largely converted to using palm, soy and canola oil for its Crisco, but cottonseed oil is still very much in use for cooking, especially in restaurants for their fryers.9

Historically, we can see that seed oil use increased from approximately 2 grams per day in 1865, to 5 grams per day in 1909, to 18 grams a day in 1999. As of 2008, the average consumption was 29 grams a day. In terms of percentages, seed oils accounted for approximately 1/100th of total calories in 1865 and increased to more than 1/4th of total calories by 2010 — a 25-fold increase!

A major problem with such increase of inflammatory omega-6 oils, in comparison to anti-inflammatory omega-3 oil (mainly present in pasture grown animal fat in the past), is that polyunsaturated fatty acids are highly oxidizable. Against which only a proportional increase of fat soluble antioxidants would protect. Which contrary even decreased in our diet.

You are free to disagree, but I checked my oxidized LDL in blood tests due to CVD. And from that I know which interventions are able to bring oxyLDL down to healthy levels.

Part of this astounding increase of seed-oils is because they are omnipresent in every industrially produced convenience product. Just as sugar, where there the problem gets compounded. The higher sugar intake itself causes more glycation, especially in the vessel walls, the higher linoleic acid intakes provide for an inflammatory response to get rid of. But inflammation resolving omega-3 is in short supply. The perfect recipe for chronic inflammation.

 

[Creekside]

The problem with modern consumption of vegetable oils probably isn't the omega ratio, but rather in the amount consumed. People like fats in their foods, so cheap fats means that people eat more of it. If people consumed the same quantity of animal fats instead of vegetable fats, they might have more serious health problems. Also, all vegetable oils are not equal, and unfortunately for some regions, less healthy oils (corn, cottonseed, palm) are cheap.

As with most food problems, it's excess consumption at fault, so the advice is to moderate consumption. If you lack the willpower to avoid foods with high fat content, you can choose the least harmful of the many options. It's just wrong to demonize "vegetable oils", since some are healthier than other sources of fats.

Sadly, demonizing a specific food or type of food makes the popularizers more money than telling people they should cut consumption of the foods they enjoy most.

 

[pamojja]

It's a mystery to me with whom you're arguing here?

The problem with modern consumption of vegetable oils probably isn't the omega ratio, but rather in the amount consumed. ...

As with most food problems, it's excess consumption at fault, so the advice is to moderate consumption.

That was the salient point in all contribution here. In the amounts consumed in modern times, the omega-3 ratio is just a corollary.

If you lack the willpower to avoid foods with high fat content, you can choose the least harmful of the many options. It's just wrong to demonize "vegetable oils", since some are healthier than other sources of fats.

Sadly, demonizing a specific food or type of food makes the popularizers more money than telling people they should cut consumption of the foods they enjoy most.

If you followed this discussion, demonization of a specific food type - animal fats - did indeed make some more money since over a hundred years!

Nobody demonizes overconsumption, or writes for monetary profits here. Lasse simply was scared for his own health, and tried to support it with scientific evidence.

I simply found no way to get my blood-marker in shape, and remission from 3 otherwise considered mercilessly progressing diseases.

Different diets work for different people, I hope we all acknowledge.

I could get remissions dietary wise (a small part of all necessary lifestyle changes for me), by changing from a vegetarian low fat diet (for 30 year) to a high fat diet (~70% of calories from fat). No convenience or industrially produced foods, no seed-oils, but some nuts, olive oil, regular eggs and cheese, occasional fish, offal or meat (the later either wild caught, or organically grown). But the most of it from coconut oil.

You take what helps your health the most. Have you already been able to archive remission of chronic inflammatory diseases too - with a diet according to your biochemical individuality?

 

[pamojja]

But both olive and coconut oil actually contain very little of the omega-6 linoleic acid portion.

 

[Creekside]

Have you already been able to archive remission of chronic inflammatory diseases too - with a diet according to your biochemical individuality?

Not of "chronic inflammatory diseases" in general, but my ME is definitely sensitive to various specific fatty acids. I was intolerant of palmitic acid for a while, but that passed with the help of carnitine. Conjugated linoleic acids help my sleep, but interestingly, I have to alternate between canola and sunflower or safflower oil or it stops working. Evening Primrose oil works too, but is more expensive. Ruminant fat is less convenient to buy where I live.

The table in your post shows the variation in "vegetable oils", so I do object to demonizing all vegetable oils. Some of us may find benefits from a specific fatty acid, even if the source is considered unhealthy for normal healthy people. Moderate consumption of even the sources considered unhealthy might actually be healthier than a diet of just one source.

I'm just opposed to demonizing in general. It's not meant to help people, it's meant to benefit the demonizer. Also, it supports ignorance of science (easier to read/hear shallow news clips than scientific papers), and reduces trust in honest science and scientists.

 

[pamojja]

The table in your post shows the variation in "vegetable oils", so I do object to demonizing all vegetable oils

The table shows the linoleic acid content of all cooking oils. If one suffers from a chronic inflammatory disease, the most likely culprit is inflammation sustaining overconsumption of linoleic acid.

That is just a valid statement, and not demonizing. Not the 'seed oils', much less non-seed vegetable oils. It still has to be individually experimented with, if not something completely else could be to blame.

Different diets work for different people, I hope we all acknowledge.

I'm just opposed to demonizing in general.

Lasse simply was scared for his own health, and tried to support it with scientific evidence.

I simply found no way to get my blood-marker in shape, and remission from 3 otherwise considered mercilessly progressing diseases.

Whom you're arguing with?

If you followed this discussion, demonization of a specific food type - animal fats - did indeed make some more money since over a hundred years!

Ah, now I understand. The food industry, who introduced and pushed hydrogenated seed oils for their own profit. For that had to demonize all animal fats. And got rich with it until today.

 

[Ken Lassesen]

Came across this video of a lecture by Dr. Chris Knobbe on Vegetable Oils that scared me.

The video is based on statistics from several countries from before 1900 to the present. He compares the increase in the use of Vegetable Oils and sugar with the increase in a number of lifestyle diseases where there is a clear correlation between Vegetable Oils and these lifestyle diseases that are not found in sugar.
There are many indications that ME/CFS is also linked to lifestyle and what we eat as it also has an increasing trend.

Dr. Chris Knobbe - 'Are Vegetable Oils the primary driver of Obesity, Diabetes and Chronic Disease?'

IMHO, no, the microbiome is -- those items may influence the microbiome -- but the active agent is the bacteria in your gut. See

Probiotics, Obesity and Diabetes​

 

[pamojja]

no, the microbiome is -- those items may influence the microbiome -- but the active agent is the bacteria in your gut. See

As a corollary: no probiotics are needed, but the substrate for not only the whole of the gut bacteria, but of course also what is absorbed directly into the blood without aid of additional bacteria. Who would deny that important potion?

At least that is how I got my diabetes into remission: diet change, comprehensive supplementation along with life-style changes. But no probiotics.

Which of course does imply the already present bacteria thereby got modulated, and did their important job too.