Vegetable Oil Consumption Has EXPLODED…
Americans now get 80% of their fat calories from processed vegetable oil.
Which equates to a HUGE 650 CALORIES a day!!!
As opposed to generations ago when it was less than 100 calories a day.
Around 100 years ago, there was very little vegetable oil in the food supply, and it did not form a significant part of the diet.
Refined vegetable oils are the ‘new kid on the block’ in human diets. It’s a live experiment and I think we’re starting to see the disastrous effects on human health and fat storage.
With the popularity of fast food and changes in consumer lifestyle toward more convenient foods, the demand for vegetable oils from the food processing and food service industries has significantly increased.
The US vegetable oil market alone is projected to reach $130 billion by 2027.
Veg oils now account for 20% of Americans’ calories and have made their way into nearly every packaged food and restaurant meal we eat, from oat milk, tortilla chips, margarine, and mayonnaise to Subway’s breads, Domino’s pizza crust, and Chipotle’s rice.
It’s all pervasive in the human diet in 2023, seeping into all manner of even perceived ‘healthy’ foods such as salad dressings, marinara sauce, health bars, dairy-free spreads, plant-milks, mock meats, breakfast cereals and bread etc
Oils. Are. Everywhere.
PUFAs are making us gain weight FAST
Back in our ancestors’ day, their diets contained equal amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, found in nuts and fish, and omega-6 fatty acids, from seeds and plants. Naturally the ratio was one to one, that was a healthy balance, and if we could have maintained that ratio, our bodies likely would not be holding onto fat, and suffering with disease, the way they do today.
Now we eat WAY more PUFAs, or omega-6 fatty acids, at an alarming ratio of 20 to one. So the consumption of Omega-6s has gone up by nearly 2000% in an extremely unnatural way, as the source is completely man made in a factory. These PUFAs zap our mitochondria and short circuit our ability to burn fat. This is why it’s so hard for some women who have become metabolically challenged to lose body fat.
Like a double edged sword, when your body can’t use one form of fuel – such as our locked fat cells – it is forced to use another, so we find ourselves craving sugar. The body tries to protect itself from having to ever burn off our body fat. So it’s as if your body is at war with the largest organ in the body, which is your adipose tissue.
The vegetable oil we eat today is processed in a way that uses heat, chemicals, and even cleaning solvents that end up in our bodies and plays a role in hindering our ability to burn fat.
Your vegetable oil has likely been filtered, deodorized and even bleached. A chemical called Hexane is also often used to extract edible oils from seeds and vegetables – just google ‘Hexane’ and then wonder (or get angry) at how it’s even legal to use it to process ‘food’.
All this heavy processing turns vegetable oil into an ingredient that affects your body differently than fat from whole foods such as olive and avocado, and when it gets into your fat, the body is trying to protect itself by keeping these toxins in deep storage.
Which makes it virtually impossible for our bodies to unlock the fat cells and burn fat for fuel.
A lot of women are so damaged metabolically that it’s impossible to change their metabolic state since they have fat that is essentially locked in and at that point, it’s almost impossible to actually eat in a way to burn fat. The body fat is resisting being burned – which to compound the problem – makes them crave sugar all the time to get hold of some usable energy.
Most women assume that they can starve themselves and start losing fat, but that’s not practical or healthy.
Instead of trying to starve yourself, you have to go about losing fat carefully. You have to craft your daily eating in a way that gives you enough energy but without any processed oils, your body will start to respond, given time and patience.
The key is to eat whole foods.
The way our food is now processed has changed beyond measure in the past 100 years, and the methods used today are having a disastrous impact not only on our waistlines, but even more critically, on our health.
CHRONIC DISEASE EPIDEMIC – Veg oil is the smoking gun
Polyunsaturated fats are highly unstable which means they oxidize easily.
These oxidized fats cause inflammation and mutation in cells.
That oxidation is linked to all sorts of issues from obesity, cancer, heart disease, endometriosis, PCOS, and on and on.
Here’s some referenced studies that demonstrate the damages caused:
❌ In The Minnesota Coronary Experiment, participants who increased their consumption of corn oil and margarine had 86% more heart attacks.
❌ A 2020 study in mice showed that consumption of soybean oil leads not only to weight gain, but also to gene dysregulation that could cause higher rates of neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, and depression
❌ In one study (published in The Journal of Nutrition), rats were divided into different groups receiving diets identical in fat, protein, and carbohydrate calories but differing in the source of the fats. The rats in the group receiving fat from safflower oil had a 12.3% increase in total body weight compared to the rats eating traditional fats. To put a 12.3% body weight increase into perspective, the average American would gain 23 pounds on a diet that includes more vegetable oil, even with total fat and total calories remaining the same.
❌ In a study on baby pigs, 1.2% of calories from the primary fatty acid in vegetable oil leads to healthy brain development, but increasing intake to 10.7% of calories compromises neurodevelopment. Americans now consume nearly twice that amount, and most baby formulas include vegetable oil as one of the first ingredients.
❌ In one study, when mice with implanted tumors were fed a diet high in the fatty acid found in vegetable oil, they experienced a rate of metastasis (spread of cancer) 4 X higher than mice fed the fats found in olive and avocado oil.
❌ In a second study, when mice were fed soybean oil that had been previously heated in a deep fryer, they had four times as much metastatic growth as mice that consumed unheated soybean oil.
Tying these two mouse studies together: if deep fried vegetable oil causes four times as much cancer growth as unheated vegetable oil, and if unheated vegetable oil causes four times as much cancer growth as unheated olive oil, then deep fried vegetable oil may be sixteen times more carcinogenic than unheated olive oil.
Of course there are many factors that contribute to today’s chronic disease and obesity epidemic. Refined sugar, pesticides, plastics, factory farms, refined carbohydrates, gluten, hyper-palatable junk food, iPhones, and television all play their part in causing obesity and disease.
We’re a long way off from being in agreement about the true causes of today’s largest health problems, but the more I study the issue, the more I’m convinced that vegetable oils play a much larger role in the diseases of modernity than most people realize.
In a world without vegetable oil, we may be twenty pounds lighter, have half the amount of heart disease and cancer, live longer, think clearer, feel better, and be happier and less depressed.
Choosing healthy fat sources
If you are looking to eat healthier, stay away from processed vegetable oils, such as soybean oil, corn oil, canola, and any type of processed seed oil.
Most of the vegetable oil we eat today is processed in a way that is causing chronic disease and making it harder for people to burn fat. (Note that oils of all types, even olive oil, contain polyunsaturated fatty acids, or PUFAs, especially when heated up).
Instead choose whole-food fats such as avocado, olives, nuts & seeds etc.
If we can cold-press a food, such as olives, and get oil out of it, or if we can eat whole food, such as avocados, our bodies can use the healthy fat in these whole foods, and those fats are not dangerous to our bodies and actually have health benefits.
No more than 25% of our total calorie intake should come from fat, according to the USDA, I say even lower, like 15/20%, as this is the ratio that I have had most success with for myself and my thousands of clients who have lost the weight and won their health back.
Since fat has 9 calories per gram, or more than twice as much as protein or carbs (which have 4 calories per gram), eating any fat, even healthier vegetable-derived fats, is something to limit since too much fat can lead to weight gain.
The heart healthiest oils are those that come from whole foods, like olives, avocados, and nuts. The worst fats for your heart health are considered saturated fat and trans fat, which are solid at room temperature, like butter and lard.
But just because an oil is liquid at room temperature doesn’t mean it’s healthier. Vegetable oils have become popular because they are inexpensive, easy to mass-produce, and are only considered heart healthier than animal fat as they relate to heart disease.
So while saturated fat has been linked to high cholesterol, clogging of the arteries, and other risk factors for heart disease, highly processed vegetable oil intake has been associated with metabolic syndrome, obesity, and type 2 diabetes risk, so neither is particularly healthy.
In the long list of things we’ve gotten wrong and need to improve in order to get ourselves out of this chronic disease epidemic, I think reducing vegetable oil consumption is No1.
If you’ve got no idea how to eat without oil and fill your diet with whole foods, then please, let me help you. All my recipes and meal plans are 100% oil free and practically free of processed foods in which oils sneakily hide. The Mrs Jacked on Plants protocol is just about as clean and well balanced style of eating you will find.
Click on this link or the banner below to get a custom meal plan and take back control of your metabolism, fat burning capabilities, and more importantly, take back control of your most precious asset – your health.
To your best health. Love Bec x
