Seed oil

Altho I have always been interested in nutrition and diet the last 12 months or so I have been trying to really understand food and its relationship with us - as a fuel. I am wary of fads given the billions of dollars that the food industry has (make tobacco companies look like amateurs - I mean sugar must rate up there as the greatest con of all time) and the thing I have found very interesting is the science of seed oils - and basically how shockingly bad they are they are (safflower, soy, sesame, rice bran etc the list goes on) and how the great majority have no idea. Has anyone else been doing similar studies?

no , have not studied this, but how bad can one teesp of soya oil per week be?

Not bad at all - I suppose the question is, as with a lot of things, is how do we know that is all we are consuming? I was stunned to see I couldn't find any readily available mayo made with olive oil for example.

Yes, many nutritionists now are recommending to stay away from all seed oils as they are potentially very bad for you. I now stick to a good quality olive oil, butter and virgin coconut oil.

Have just been reading a great book "just Eat Food" by David Gillespie.Enlightening.

That is the main reason I never buy it, however I will occasionally make my own but virgin olive oil is too strong in my opinion in mayo but you could sub say half with coconut oil or use 'lite' olive oil although I think that is dubious?

Yip you are right EV olive oil way to strong and splits way too easily - everything I have seen and experienced tells me a good lite olive oil is just fine; again like most things check out the label; Bortelli is a good one, in my opinion, and makes a damn fine mayo.

I haven't done any studies per se but I have been following the debate now for a number of years. Oil that has been extracted using heat has many drawbacks, not the least being that rancidity is disguised by solvents and deodorants. Also there is too much of an omega 3, omega 6 imbalance.

I use macadmia nut oil, or avocado oil (EV and cold pressed) for cooking as they have a very high burning point. If you have been reading information you will know why that is important.

In the meantime, remember that Mediterranean people have been cooking with good quality olive oil for several thousand years with no apparent ill effects. They also eat a lot of olive oil and are seemingly healthier than westerners who confine themselves to one tspn, or whatever, a week.

In the Med countries they have also cooked with lard for centuries. Gillespie also wrote a book called Toxic Oil if anyone wants to delve deeper.

From what I have read lately,you should only use coconut oil,olive or avocado oil and butter.

I use a mixture of EV olive oil and avocado oil when I make mayo, sometimes I add some macadamia oil if I have it. The combination of oils makes an excellent mayo.

Plus lard, duck fat, tallow, dripping and avocado oil. In fact any oil from an edible source that can be cold pressed or squeezed - peanut, macadamia nut and other nut oils as well. It just depends what you are using them for. Peanut oil has been used for yonks in Asian cuisine.

Yes. From what I have read this is exactly correct. The other interesting thing I have discovered is the 'Low GI' scam. Well, its not a scam, however its rather misleading, which explains why a Mars Bar has a lower GI than a carrot. Fructose is a wicked wee thing.

Low GI. My pet hate. Mix fat and sugar together and you get low GI! It all has to do with digestion time and fat slows digestion. The calculation tests were carried out on young, fit healthy males (university students) and then applied across the board. But what happens to males may not be what happens with women. To overcome anomalies they introduced GL (glycaemic load). Probably a little bit better but extremely complicated to work out.

There are a number of recommendations from our health watchdogs that do not really stand up to scrutiny. Chemically and heat extracted industrial oils, margarine, low fat, 3 eggs a week (now defunct but still believed by many), sugar in moderation (what is moderation with sugar when it makes you crave it?), low fat milk, low fat yoghurt that has had sugar added, try and stick to white meat (chicken) and severely limit red meat, bread, pasta or white rice are more desirable than high quality protein and fat, nothing wrong with canned vegetables, and so on and so forth. All those so called 'healthy' recommendations have steered a course from a population that was once normal weight to, maybe chubby as people got older, to a population that is more seriously overweight and/or morbidly obese than ever in the history of mankind.

Diabetes, coeliac disease, auto immune complaints, severe allergies and skin problems are endemic in the population as a whole, where once the biggest health concerns were contagious diseases and injury.

As a balance, smoking cigarettes and drinking to excess (usually males) were factors that affected the health of previous generations and, from what I see with celebrities and sports stars, binge drinking is still a scourge. That a cricket team, or a golfer (just two examples I can think of) need to start drinking in the late afternoon and continue on till the next morning and then boast about it to the whole world is still a major concern.

I understand the concern however my own view is a couple of cricketers and golfers (not the most popular sports here) will do less damage than an Industry telling us fructose is okay and seed oils healthy - lets face it the Food Industry and those behind it have been killing generations of people in the name of 'health'.And laughing all the way to the Bank. Makes me sick (no pun intended).