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Ultra-processed seed and vegetable oils contain high levels of rancid, inflammatory polyunsaturated fatty acids treated with a petroleum-based deodorizer, and when heated release harmful byproducts like peroxides. Yet a recent paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine by Harvard medical students found that consuming seed oils like soybean and canola oil was associated with a 16% reduced risk of total mortality when compared to butter, which they found was associated with a 17% increased risk of mortality.
Those figures were taken from the individuals in their study who were in the highest level for consumption of vegetable oils and the highest consumption of butter respectively.
However, the study, which was reported in various news outlets including NBC and CNN, also found that those who had the highest consumption of butter had “higher BMI and energy intake and were more likely to currently smoke, but they were less likely to be physically active and to use multivitamins”.
This was in contrast to those who ate the most vegetable oils, saying they were “more likely to be physically active,” despite having higher total energy intake and alcohol consumption.
This discrepancy in lifestyle choices between the two groups, despite being adjusted for, represents a large technical hurdle in the conclusion of the study that “cutting back butter a little and incorporating more plant-based oils into your daily diet can have meaningful long-term health benefits”.
That was a quote from corresponding author Daniel Wang of the Channing Division for Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the Harvard Gazette.
The data was taken from the large Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II, and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which regularly questioned health care workers on their diet and lifestyle habits using questionnaires approved by the research institute boards as being the most sensible and effective at gathering data.
Additionally, the plant-based oils included in the study that were found to be beneficial were olive oil, soybean oil, and canola oil. Olive oil is a monounsaturated fatty acid, has a completely different manufacturing process, and is in fact a minimally-processed food item—being simply pressed and cold packed, mostly in dark glass or metal.
By contrast, soybean and canola oil are grown on monocrop acreage and sprayed regularly with pesticides that are known carcinogens to humans. These are collected, and heated in large vats to extract the oil, a process which causes the more chemically sensitive polyunsaturated fats to oxidize, i.e. to turn rancid. They are then deodorized with a petroleum-based solvent called hexane, and packaged in plastic. Once heated, they re-oxidize and release proinflammatory toxins like hydrogen peroxides.
When separated by consumption of individual oils, which is already reaching a level of memory on the part of the nurses answering the questionnaires that is difficult to accept at face value, corn and safflower oil lost their mortality reducing effect, and soybean and canola oil, when examined individually, lost their statistical significant effect of reducing cardiovascular disease risk. When olive oil was excluded, the 16% reduction in mortality risk from high vegetable oil consumption fell by half—well below the level for observational association data to be considered serious in research communities.
The study had to be read by WaL top to bottom to pick out these weaknesses, while major media outlets reported nothing of the same. It’s a demonstration of how critical consumers should be when reading stories and conclusions based on observational data that produce low percentile associations. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Rows of ultra-processed seed oils. PC: Unsplash.
