Does it seem likely that soybean oil in particular is special? I think I could pretty straightforwardly eliminate it from my diet—I never cook with it and am not specifically attached to snacks that contain it—but I’d have a harder time if I also couldn’t use canola, sesame, avocado, coconut… Let alone other soy products like tofu.
FWIW I mostly eliminated (>90% reduction) corn, soy, canola, and most other highly processed oils from my diet in January 2020. I kept or increased olive, avocado, coconut, some sesame and nut oils, and butter (from mostly-grass-fed cows). No idea about long term health impacts, but since about 6 months from that shift I’ve found that if I did eat those oils in significant quantities at a meal (especially things like battered fried food), I consistently notice substantial negative effects on mood, energy level, and nasal congestion, typically for the rest of the day. This does not happen if I eat the same foods made with other oils, nor if I eat actual corn, or other soy products like tofu.
Also: this change led to a bit of initial weight loss (from ~235 down to ~220), but that’s mostly where I’ve stayed for the past 2.5 yrs. BMI says I need to lose another 40 pounds, but I disagree and haven’t been that weight since I was 16. I would like to get down to ~195.
As for the other soy products, I have heard some concerns about the lectins, which are poisonous. Vegetables in general have toxins, which are usually there to protect them from insects. Humans, like most animals that eat plants, have adaptations to deal with this, so vegetables in general are not thought to be unhealthy, and probably not all of their effects are harmful, so I’m not sure what to make of this.
Most legumes, nuts, whole grains, and nightshades (e.g. tomatoes) contain a concerning amount of lectins, but cooking and fermentation can mostly break them down, and soaking and rinsing can also get rid of them. Most lectins break down with heat, but those found in peanuts and soybeans seem to be an exception, and might explain why allergies to these two foods are so common. Maybe some types of lectins are harmful and others are not, at natural doses.
I’m also suspicious of canola, but avocado and coconut oil have very different properties from soybean oil.
Canola is from recently developed cultivars of rapeseed, is high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fat, which also oxidizes (becomes rancid) more easily, and since canola is usually extracted with solvents and heat, it usually contains some amount of very unhealthy trans fats. This gets worse if you cook with it. If your only goal was to avoid saturated fats, then it sounds good on paper, but it’s probably bad for you.
Sesame is a seed oil like canola. It’s even higher in omega-6. Sesame oil tastes fine when cold-pressed, so trans fats would be less of a concern in that case. It’s probably still bad for you overall.
Coconut oil is mostly saturated fat. It’s resistant to oxidation, shouldn’t contain trans fats, and is safe to fry with. Are saturated fats bad for you though? Some say so, but I’m not sure if I believe them.
Avocado oil is mostly monounsaturated fat, which isn’t the supposedly unhealthy saturated fat, and is more resistant to oxidation and heat than polyunsaturated fat, though not as resistant as saturated fat. It should be safe too cook with as long as you’re not using high heat. Its composition is actually really similar to olive oil. If you’re going to add oil at all, avocado oil is probably one of the healthiest choices. Olive is good too for the same reasons, but it might have additional beneficial compounds when it’s fresh.
Jeff Nobbs (one of OP’s sources) says polyunsaturated fatty acids are the real culprit and provides a helpful chart. Tl;dr coconut oil is great, olive and avocado oil are pretty good, avoid canola/peanut/rice bran/corn/sunflower. (Sesame isn’t on the chart but IME it’s used in pretty small quantities anyway).
Soybean oil grew the most in the USA, and some studies in mice make it look quite bad. I’m not positive, but my takeaway is that it is very low downside and quite easy to cut it out of my diet. On the one hand it is new, and our ancestors were fine without it, whether it is bad or not. And two, it’s highly concentrated in processed junk that everyone agrees to avoid anyways. As for general soy products, not my area of expertise but I’m not going out of my way to avoid them if they’re not highly processed
it’s highly concentrated in processed junk that everyone agrees to avoid anyways.
One hypothesis I heard recently is that most natural whole foods are either high in both fiber and carbohydrates (vegetables), or in both fat and protein (animals), but the combination of fat+carbs without the fiber and protein is common in processed foods, which results in much less satiety per Calorie. The whole foods, on the other hand, are much harder to overeat. This explains why both low-carb and low-fat diets work: they both cut out the fat+carbs junk foods.
Butter your steak, not your potatoes?
So it may be the recent addition of cheap seed oils to our staple carbohydrates that explains most of our problem. That’s just a hypothesis though. I really don’t understand what’s happening.
I don’t think anyone does! Now nature isn’t always right, but I tend to think you need a good reason to deviate from it. Something about the primarily processed foods is killing us en masse. I tend to think it’s acting mainly along some satiety axis, as otherwise your body should adjust towards a healthy homeostasis, but in many it isn’t. People are being given a signal to eat in excess of what’s healthy—quite literally killing them, and they seem unable to do anything about it in the long run of their own accord. Does that point to damage in the hypothalamus, a change in hormones, or are some highly processed foods simply sneaking through the gates? I don’t know.
As for your theory, I find it interesting—people really seem to agree that processed foods are bad, and some are only processed to the extent that a few components are consumed separately. If two components are inextricably tied for all of human history, the body would only need to measure one to get a good idea of where it stands. Certainly something to think about. What would have to be true for that theory to be true? Well, it should be really hard to overconsume protein to gain weight, but quite possible to become overweight primarily with fat. Easy to get fat on white bread, hard to get fat on vegetables high in fiber. Easy on cheese, hard on eggs. But why does our brain love this energy injection when we are positing that it can’t measure it? Perhaps it can’t measure it well, all you need is for it to be a little off to the tune of about 3600 calories a year. But why wouldn’t it be able to just measure the amount of fat and downgrade appetite? Well, we’ve already established that we’re talking about only a pound a year in the average American, that could be kept up as a continuous process—you could do that in two days relatively easily. That simple mental experiment definitely sets off some bells though
Does it seem likely that soybean oil in particular is special? I think I could pretty straightforwardly eliminate it from my diet—I never cook with it and am not specifically attached to snacks that contain it—but I’d have a harder time if I also couldn’t use canola, sesame, avocado, coconut… Let alone other soy products like tofu.
FWIW I mostly eliminated (>90% reduction) corn, soy, canola, and most other highly processed oils from my diet in January 2020. I kept or increased olive, avocado, coconut, some sesame and nut oils, and butter (from mostly-grass-fed cows). No idea about long term health impacts, but since about 6 months from that shift I’ve found that if I did eat those oils in significant quantities at a meal (especially things like battered fried food), I consistently notice substantial negative effects on mood, energy level, and nasal congestion, typically for the rest of the day. This does not happen if I eat the same foods made with other oils, nor if I eat actual corn, or other soy products like tofu.
Also: this change led to a bit of initial weight loss (from ~235 down to ~220), but that’s mostly where I’ve stayed for the past 2.5 yrs. BMI says I need to lose another 40 pounds, but I disagree and haven’t been that weight since I was 16. I would like to get down to ~195.
As for the other soy products, I have heard some concerns about the lectins, which are poisonous. Vegetables in general have toxins, which are usually there to protect them from insects. Humans, like most animals that eat plants, have adaptations to deal with this, so vegetables in general are not thought to be unhealthy, and probably not all of their effects are harmful, so I’m not sure what to make of this.
Most legumes, nuts, whole grains, and nightshades (e.g. tomatoes) contain a concerning amount of lectins, but cooking and fermentation can mostly break them down, and soaking and rinsing can also get rid of them. Most lectins break down with heat, but those found in peanuts and soybeans seem to be an exception, and might explain why allergies to these two foods are so common. Maybe some types of lectins are harmful and others are not, at natural doses.
I’m also suspicious of canola, but avocado and coconut oil have very different properties from soybean oil.
Canola is from recently developed cultivars of rapeseed, is high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fat, which also oxidizes (becomes rancid) more easily, and since canola is usually extracted with solvents and heat, it usually contains some amount of very unhealthy trans fats. This gets worse if you cook with it. If your only goal was to avoid saturated fats, then it sounds good on paper, but it’s probably bad for you.
Sesame is a seed oil like canola. It’s even higher in omega-6. Sesame oil tastes fine when cold-pressed, so trans fats would be less of a concern in that case. It’s probably still bad for you overall.
Coconut oil is mostly saturated fat. It’s resistant to oxidation, shouldn’t contain trans fats, and is safe to fry with. Are saturated fats bad for you though? Some say so, but I’m not sure if I believe them.
Avocado oil is mostly monounsaturated fat, which isn’t the supposedly unhealthy saturated fat, and is more resistant to oxidation and heat than polyunsaturated fat, though not as resistant as saturated fat. It should be safe too cook with as long as you’re not using high heat. Its composition is actually really similar to olive oil. If you’re going to add oil at all, avocado oil is probably one of the healthiest choices. Olive is good too for the same reasons, but it might have additional beneficial compounds when it’s fresh.
Jeff Nobbs (one of OP’s sources) says polyunsaturated fatty acids are the real culprit and provides a helpful chart. Tl;dr coconut oil is great, olive and avocado oil are pretty good, avoid canola/peanut/rice bran/corn/sunflower. (Sesame isn’t on the chart but IME it’s used in pretty small quantities anyway).
It’s hard to get much oil from whole versions of the source foods. My quick calculation say you can add ‘5 tbs soybean oil requires six blocks of tofu’.
Soybean oil grew the most in the USA, and some studies in mice make it look quite bad. I’m not positive, but my takeaway is that it is very low downside and quite easy to cut it out of my diet. On the one hand it is new, and our ancestors were fine without it, whether it is bad or not. And two, it’s highly concentrated in processed junk that everyone agrees to avoid anyways. As for general soy products, not my area of expertise but I’m not going out of my way to avoid them if they’re not highly processed
One hypothesis I heard recently is that most natural whole foods are either high in both fiber and carbohydrates (vegetables), or in both fat and protein (animals), but the combination of fat+carbs without the fiber and protein is common in processed foods, which results in much less satiety per Calorie. The whole foods, on the other hand, are much harder to overeat. This explains why both low-carb and low-fat diets work: they both cut out the fat+carbs junk foods.
Butter your steak, not your potatoes?
So it may be the recent addition of cheap seed oils to our staple carbohydrates that explains most of our problem. That’s just a hypothesis though. I really don’t understand what’s happening.
I don’t think anyone does! Now nature isn’t always right, but I tend to think you need a good reason to deviate from it. Something about the primarily processed foods is killing us en masse. I tend to think it’s acting mainly along some satiety axis, as otherwise your body should adjust towards a healthy homeostasis, but in many it isn’t. People are being given a signal to eat in excess of what’s healthy—quite literally killing them, and they seem unable to do anything about it in the long run of their own accord. Does that point to damage in the hypothalamus, a change in hormones, or are some highly processed foods simply sneaking through the gates? I don’t know. As for your theory, I find it interesting—people really seem to agree that processed foods are bad, and some are only processed to the extent that a few components are consumed separately. If two components are inextricably tied for all of human history, the body would only need to measure one to get a good idea of where it stands. Certainly something to think about. What would have to be true for that theory to be true? Well, it should be really hard to overconsume protein to gain weight, but quite possible to become overweight primarily with fat. Easy to get fat on white bread, hard to get fat on vegetables high in fiber. Easy on cheese, hard on eggs. But why does our brain love this energy injection when we are positing that it can’t measure it? Perhaps it can’t measure it well, all you need is for it to be a little off to the tune of about 3600 calories a year. But why wouldn’t it be able to just measure the amount of fat and downgrade appetite? Well, we’ve already established that we’re talking about only a pound a year in the average American, that could be kept up as a continuous process—you could do that in two days relatively easily. That simple mental experiment definitely sets off some bells though