The common oil that science now shows is worse than sugar

[donnay]

The common oil that science now shows is worse than sugar

By EatClean.com Published August 03, 2015

If you think that sugar is the unhealthiest thing you can eat, you're wrong. Apparently, the Worst Food on the Planet Award should actually go to soybean oil, suggests new findings published in the journal PLoS One.

Setting up a sort of dietary cage match, researchers fed mice a series of diets each containing 40 percent fat. The fat in the first diet was primarily saturated and came from coconut oil, while the fat in the second diet was primarily unsaturated and came mostly from soybean oil. The researchers also fed mice two altered versions of the high-fat diets that also contained fructose.

The assumption was that the fructose-eating mice would pack on the most fat and develop the worst insulin resistance. But that's not what happened. Instead, the mice who ate the soybean oil diet without fructose gained the most weight—9 percent more than the fructose-eating mice and a whopping 25 percent more than the mice who got their fat from coconut oil. Compared to their fructose-eating counterparts, the mice on the soybean oil diet also had fattier livers and more insulin resistance—both signs of impending diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

"That was a surprise, given that most people think that unsaturated fatty acids [like those found in soybean oil] are supposed to be healthy," said lead study author Poonamjot Deol, Ph.D., a cell biologist at the University of California, Riverside. They're also everywhere. A full half of all the vegetable oil produced in the world is soybean oil. And since it's cheap, the stuff is used in endless packaged foods. It's also a favorite at restaurants—many of which tout the fact that they use soybean oil right on their menus because it's perceived as healthy.

Deol and her colleagues aren't totally sure what makes soybean oil so horrible, but they guess that it could have something to do with the way the stuff influences genes that determine how the liver metabolizes fat. And other processed vegetable oils might not be much better.

"We've actually tested corn oil, and we found that it was also causing more obesity than coconut oil, but not as much as soybean oil. We haven't tested canola yet," she said.

Continued...

[angelatc]

Plos One is an open source garbage journal.

That research, presented at a conference in March, found that the new genetically modified, high oleic soybean oil (Plenish), which has a lower amount of polyunsaturated fatty acid than traditional soybean oil, is healthier than regular soybean oil but just barely. Using mice, the researchers found that the Plenish oil also induces fatty liver although somewhat less obesity and diabetes. Importantly, it did not cause insulin resistance, a pre-diabetic condition. It should be noted that both the regular soybean oil and Plenish are from soybeans that are genetically modified to be resistant to the herbicide RoundUp.....

What tipped me off was the reference to Round Up. No real researcher would use a brand name for a product that has been off patent and available generically for 20 years.

Too bad, because I'd like to cheer for the improvements found in the GM soybeans.

I think that the results can't be any clearer: organic food rots your brain and destroys common sense.

[jj-]

That's a bad way to put it, because sugar is a really good, beneficial substance.

That said, it's true that vegetable oils are very damaging to health.

[Dr.3D]

Strange, the veterinarian told me to feed my dog some vegetable oil to help her gain weight. Guess it must be good for something.

[jj-]

Strange, the veterinarian told me to feed my dog some vegetable oil to help her gain weight. Guess it must be good for something.

It slows down metabolism, which helps to gain weight.

That would confirm the results of the study, as those who consumed soybean oil gained weight.

[Zippyjuan]

Setting up a sort of dietary cage match, researchers fed mice a series of diets each containing 40 percent fat. The fat in the first diet was primarily saturated and came from coconut oil, while the fat in the second diet was primarily unsaturated and came mostly from soybean oil. The researchers also fed mice two altered versions of the high-fat diets that also contained fructose.

Which means they really didn't compare consuming "mostly soybean" (other oils too, eh?) in the "primarily" (not totally) unsaturated fat diet to a sugar diet. None of the groups was just given sugar and no fats. (Fructose is the sugar in fruits- it is different from the one in table sugar which is sucrose).

A poor study (or maybe just a bad click-bait headline).