So Called Healthy Fats… That Destroy Your Brain

Ok so are fats healthy or not? If they are healthy, then which ones? And how do we know?

How on earth are we meant to know what to do about fats? Are they healthy? Are they unhealthy? Which ones are healthy and which ones are unhealthy? Why? Do the health benefits change at different temperatures for different oils, when we use them for cooking, versus a salad dressing?

Look up any fat or oil and start reading up on them and you enter a rabbit hole of twists and turns. Try to Google ‘cooking oils’ to find out whether they are healthy and the contradictory studies are plethora.

Beware the fats and oils and their effects on your biology

I wish the ‘science was settled’, but the science is never settled, saying ‘the science is settled’ is probably the most unscientific statement we can make.

Reading up on fats, we find divergent opinions all the time and it has been like this for so long. One minute margarine is better than butter. Then it’s the case that butter is better than margarine, then seed oils are healthy, then they aren’t. Vegetable oils are healthy and good to cook with, then they aren’t.

Olive oil is good for salad, but not cooking, because raising the temperature changes the chemical bonds and makes the oil harmful. All of this I have heard through the years. I have read and researched through the years in my food industry experience, and the twists and turns keep coming, study after study.

So how do we make sense of the conundrum?

Well, I usually look at clinical trials and meta analysis, meaning the analysis of several studies looking at multiple variables.

What do we see when we look at multivariate and multiple studies?

The latest data reveals that the oxidation of linoleic acid that is linked to increased problems with the heart and increasing atherosclerosis.

I cannot tell you how many times growing up I saw adverts for the supposed ‘healthy polyunsaturated fats’ which were part of the formulation of supposedly ‘heart healthy’ margarine.

Butter was bad, Butter would kill you at ten paces, well it turns out that was all wrong, but may well have been correct as per the ‘science of the day.’ Or maybe as per the sponsored scientific study for the margarine producers of the day. Excuse my cynicism, just been round the block far too many times.

A key constituent of LDL or ‘bad cholesterol’ is linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fatty acid.

Omega-6 fats (linoleic acids) permeate the western diet and when saturated fats, who used to be the bad guys, were replaced with the supposed good guy poly unsaturated acids like linoleic acid also known as omega-6 oils, heart disease and all cause mortality rose, as well as heart problems.

So what do we do?

You are going to have to decide for yourself what you will do. Personally, I am going to steer clear of linoleic (omega-6) oils because western diets are naturally high in these fatty oils. And as the saying goes, too much of a good thing, or in this current case, a bad thing, is not a good thing. Okay, that’s not the saying. I ‘modified’ the saying just like they chemically modify margarine, so it’s applicable in this context.

I will avoid cooking with rice bran oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, soy oil and canola oil, amongst other vegetable and seed oils. They have shown these oils act like a metabolic poison and the linoleic acid found in fatty tissue in humans has a half-life of 2 years. 2 years hanging around in my body? No thanks.

These oils negatively influence the mitochondria in your body and thus the energy production, because of oxidation. These oils also cause inflammation, and inflammation is a first step to most diseases and body pain.

Studies have shown that soybean oil causes genetic changes in the brains of mice, and most noticeably, the parts of the brain that have to do with stress response and metabolism regulation.

Soybean oil has also affected many genes in mice associated with Parkinson's disease and proper brain function.

Even the ‘holy grail’ of olive oil contains linoleic acid and is an oil that I will limit into the future. Suggestions are that we should limit the intake of this oil to less than a tablespoon a day.

Looks like lard and butter and duck fat, will be my cooking oils and I am still studying and getting mixed results on coconut oil. The one thing I do like about coconut oil is that it is higher in oleic acid and contains only2% linoleic acid, but I am still not fully convinced of the healthiness of coconut oil, so I will be cautious.

Right now, saturated fats are back in and polyunsaturated fats that are inflammatory are out. Omega-3 oils, even though they are polyunsaturated oils, are still safe though. As we know, Omega-3 oils are anti-inflammatory.

Keep studying and remain vigilant. One thing I know is that we have not ‘settled the science’ on fats.