The Dirty Truth About Vegetable Oils And Cancer

Vegetable oils increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Oils are fattening, low-nutrient, processed food, consisting of 100% fat. Learn why you should never use oils in your diet again and how to live a life without oil.

What Are Vegetable Oils?

Oil is a processed food that comes from a whole food. It takes 1375 olives to make a liter(34 f oz) of oil!

When they manufacture oils, they separate the oil from the vegetables, nuts or seeds. You can do it in two ways. Either by heating up the produce and then squeeze out the oil.

Or only use a mechanical process. This process is a lot slower than heating up the crop and yield less oil.

So why are vegetable oils bad for you? Let's find out.

Why Vegetable Oils Are Bad For You

Vegetable oils are pure fat and lack nutrients. It's the most calorie dense substance you can eat.

Oils clog arteries which lead to heart disease. Vegetable oils also raise the risk of cancer.

Have you ever done your dishes and let the oil go down your sink? If you do it often, you will clog your pipes.

When fat goes down the drain, it hardens and obstructs sewer pipes. Fats lead to a sanitary sewer overflow where raw sewage backs up into your home and streets.

Not only does this nasty mess cause health issues, but it also can run into a nearby stream or river.

Restaurants are responsible for proper disposal of their fats, oils, and grease (FOG). They must maintain a grease trap to stop oils from entering the main sewer line.

If oils cause all this problem to the sewers imagine what they will do to your body?

Millions of dollars are spent each year cleaning out sewer pipes clogged by FOG.

Refined oils are one of the worst oils. These oils cause serious health problems. So what are refined oils?

The Dangers Of Refined Oils

Refined vegetable oil starts from the seeds of various plant sources.

There are many different kinds of commercially refined vegetable based oils, these include:

Manufacturers create refined oils by using intensive mechanical and chemical processes. Through this method, they extract the oil from the seeds.

This process removes the natural nutrients from the seeds. Oxidation occurs when they separate the oil from the seeds. Cancer-causing free radicals are a result of oxidation.

To create refined vegetable oils it has to take several steps, these include:

If you thought that was bad, then you will not like what I'm going to tell you next.

Hydrogenated Oils And Its Devastating Effect On Our Health

The process of refining vegetable oil damages the fats and makes the oils go rancid.

The makers didn’t stop there. They wanted to create a cheap alternative to butter by using vegetable oils. The problem is that oils are liquid at room temperature.

So to make the oils firm, they had to alter the molecule structure of the oils.

This process is called hydrogenation. During hydrogenation, the producers add hydrogen gas to the oil under pressurized conditions.

Hydrogen particles bind with the fat and increase the melting point.

Margarine is the name of the end product. Did you know that margarine is one molecule from plastic?

If you let, margarine stay in the pantry bacterias won’t touch it.

You can try it for yourself. Take your margarine and let it stand in the cupboard for months. You will notice that it won't decompose by bacteria.

There is no wonder that margarine is bad for your health.

If you love French fries then you need to pay attention next.

French Fries Are Cancer Sticks

French fries raise the risk for cancer. One study examined French fries, fried chicken, fried fish, and doughnuts. They found out that these foods increased the odds of getting prostate cancer by 33%.

Some studies linked acrylamide in French fries to endometrial-, ovarian-, and lung cancer. They also saw connections to kidney-  and esophageal cancer.

Many of us have heard that you need omega 3 by using fish oils. But did you know that fish oil can increase the risk of prostate cancer?

Fish Oils Can Lead To Prostate Cancer

Scientific research shows that fish oil does not lead to better health. Fish oils don't appear to decrease death, heart attack, or stroke, but also elevate the cancer risk.

Men with high levels of long-chain omega-3 fat are at greater risk for prostate cancer. Some industrial pollutants like PCBs increase the prostate cancer risk. The general population gets PCBs from fish, meat, and dairy products. 

PCB is highest in freshwater fish. Because vegans don't eat animal products, they have less PCB than meat eaters.

Fish oil is not essential. Fish get their omega 3 from plants. Being deficient in Omega 3 is difficult. 1-2 tablespoons of ground flaxseeds are enough to meet your daily need of omega 3. Other ways to get enough Omega 3 is to eat green leafy vegetables at several meals.

Those on a plant-based diet become quite efficient in creating their own omega 3.

Trans fat is another death trap you need to avoid.

Trans Fat Increases The Risk Of Sudden Death

Animal fat and hydrated oils are the biggest sources of trans fats. Trans fats increase one’s risks of heart disease, sudden death, and diabetes.

The National Academies of Science concluded there is no safe intake of trans fats. According to the official USDA Nutrient Database, animal products contain up to 1 to 5% trans fats. 

Some of these food include:

They also found small amounts of trans fats in non-hydrogenated vegetable oils. There is a dispute whether the trans fats in animal products are as bad as the fats in hydrogenated oils.

Recent studies support the claim that all trans fats increase heart disease. That is true whether it comes from animals or the industry. The safest way to avoid trans fats is to eat a vegan diet void of any oils.

Okay to this point I have talked about refined oils and trans fat. But what about coconut oil and olive oil? Aren’t they supposed to be healthy? Read on and find out.

Cold-pressed Olive Oil And Coconut Oil Are Good For You, Right?

Most of the studies on the adverse effects of olive oil used refined olive oil, not extra virgin. So what did these studies say about olive oil?

Olive oil may cause the same paralysis of your arteries as fast food and cheesecake. It impairs the endothelial function as much as the rest of these high-fat meals. Olive oil isn't far better than eating a sausage or Egg McMuffin.

But what about extra virgin olive? Extra virgin olive oil retains a fraction of the phytonutrients found in the olive fruit. It doesn't induce the same spike in inflammatory markers caused by regular olive oil.

Cold pressed olive oil may have more of a neutral effect, compared to butter. Butter has a harmful effect on your body that can last for up to six hours.

There is a large study that examined the link between olive oil and heart attacks.  They found that virgin olive oil may be better than regular olive oil.

But neither reduced heart attack rates after controlling for healthy dietary behaviors.

Eating olive oil is like going from worst to bad. It is still a poison for the body and is a calorie dense liquid with little nutritional value. 1 cup(2.4 dl) of olive oil contains a whopping 1909 calories.

Many praise coconut oil as a health food. It has a lot of saturated fat and is not much better than butter. It is as harmful as butter when it comes to our cholesterol.

But didn’t research show the Mediterranean diet is healthy? They used a ton of olive oil and thrived. Well, let's find out!

The Heath Benefits Of The Mediterranean Diet

People on the  Mediterranean diet eat more vegetables than the Standard American Diet. Recent studies show that the Mediterranean diet reduces several health risk factors. These include heart disease, cancer, brain disease, and death.

The famous Lyon Diet Heart Study compared this diet to the SAD diet. In this study, they randomized 600 patients who had their first heart attack into two groups.

The control group got no dietary advice. They then told the other group to eat a Mediterranean-type diet.

The Mediterranean group ate more bread and fruit. They also consumed less meat, butter, and cream. Other than that, there were no significant changes in wine, olive oil, or fish consumption.

After four years, the control group had 44 individuals with a second heart attack. But only 14 suffered another attack in the group that changed their diet.

So they reduced the chance of having a heart attack from 4% down to 1%. Their disease progressed a lot less than the regular diet group by about four times .

But is it still the healthiest food you can eat? Or is an high carb low fat diet better?

The Amazing Results Of A Low Fat Vegan Diet In Heart Patients

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn is the author of the book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. Esselstyn published a case series of 198 heart patients. He made them switch to a whole plant diet with no animal products or oils.

Of the 198, 177 stuck to the diet, whereas the other 21 quit.What happened to the 21 patients who jumped the wagon? More than half suffered from heart problems within four years.

They either had a fatal heart attack, needed angioplasty, or a heart transplant. Of the 177 who stuck to the plant-based diet, only one had a major incident after the same period. That's less than 1% recurrence.

The Mediterranean diet may be better than the SAD diet because they eat more plants. So, improvements in health may be in spite of, rather than because of the oil.

Vegetable oils are bad because they are in liquid form. But what happens if you eat whole foods before they become oils? Is it better for your health?

Are Nuts Better Than Olive Oil?

A Spanish study wanted to examen the effect of replacing refined olive oil in people's diet.  They created three groups. One group ate refined olive oil, the other one extra virgin olive oil. The third group replaced oils with almonds and walnuts.

They wanted to know the risk of heart disease after a month on each food plan. The only difference in each diet was the main source of fat. So what were the results?

The people in the nut groups did much better than the other groups. They dropped their total cholesterol about 7%. Knocking about twenty points off their bad cholesterol.

The extra virgin olive oil did somewhat better than the refined olive oil. But nuts and seeds remained the best source of fat.

So if you want to get fat the healthy way then eat the food in its whole solid state instead consuming it as an oil. If you like olive oil, eat olives.

Instead of using flaxseed oil buy flaxseeds. Replace sunflower oils or others seed oils with sunflower seeds and so forth. But if you don't eat vegetable oils or animal products won't you get too little fat?

Almost everything we eat has fat in it. It's difficult to be deficient in fats, and many people get far too much. If you are eating a plant-based diet, then getting enough fat is not an issue.

Much like you get all the protein you need from eating plans, you will get plenty of fat. There is loads of fat in nuts, seeds, and avocado.

You don’t need to add much. If you have heart disease, type 2 diabetes or are overweight, then avoid high-fat plant foods.

Okay, so I convinced you that oils are bad. But how do you cook your food if you can’t use oils? That’s a great question.  Let's summarize what we learned today and then find ways to replace oils in your cooking.

Okay, so here is how to remove cooking oils from your diet and become healthier.

Please comment if you want to discuss this topic further.