How Margarine breaks your bones

By | Big Fat Lies, Vegetable Oils | 5 Comments

Scientists have known for more than a decade that the omega-6 fats contained in vegetable oils (like those used to manufacture margarine) degrade human bone density.  Now new research has thrown light on how that happens and why anyone concerned about osteoporosis needs to immediately stop consuming them.

One in twenty Australians have osteoporosis (Greek for ‘porous bones’) and 1 in 4 have low bone density (the precursor to osteoporosis). The number of people affected is accelerating wildly. In the last 10 years the number of GP visits related to osteoporosis has doubled in Australia.

Our bones are not static lumps of rock.  They are living tissue which constantly accumulate and dispose of minerals.  Osteoporosis occurs when bones lose minerals, such as calcium, more quickly than the body can replace them.  This causes a loss of bone thickness (bone density or mass).

As bones become thinner and less dense, even a minor bump or fall can cause a serious fracture. Unfortunately most people don’t know they have the disease until after they suffer a break.  Eight out of ten cases are recorded in people over the age of 55 but the age of onset is becoming progressively younger.

Osteoporosis medicines work by making the cells that break down bone (osteoclasts) less active.  This tips the balance towards accumulation of minerals by the cells that form bone (osteoblasts).

A long series of animal studies have clearly established that polyunsaturated fats are important drivers of the bone recycling process.  We know that omega-3 polyunsaturates which dominate some fish oils, flax seeds and kelp help us build up bone density.  While the omega-6 fats which dominate seed oils (like sunflower, soybean, canola, safflower and rice-bran) destroy bone density.

In 2005 researchers at the University of California confirmed that the same rules were at work in a large human population.  In that study 1,532 people were observed for 4 years.  The results were spectacularly consistent.  The more omega-6 a person consumed (or the higher their omega-6 to omega-3 ratio), the lower their bone density was.  It really was that black and white.

The results were independent of medication use, their BMI or the amount of exercise they did or didn’t do.  This means that all the things which we are told affect our chances of getting osteoporosis were rendered irrelevant by just one thing, the amount of omega-6 fat in the diet.

Unfortunately (for our health) nobody in the Health Community wants to hear that they should stop telling people to eat seed oils, so there has been precious little publicity about that line of studies.  That is, until bone density started mattering to people who breed animals for a living.

As we feed more and more of our farmed fish, diets which are high in omega-6 fats, they are becoming more and more fragile.  It seems that just like humans (and rats).  Their bones go to pot if we ramp up the omega-6.

This latest proof of the bone destroying power of omega-6 comes courtesy of an aquaculture study out of the Norwegian National Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Research. In that study, the scientists observed a rise in the level of activity of the enzyme that breaks down bone, in line with the rise in omega-6 concentrations.

We don’t know exactly how omega-6 works its destructive magic but the scientists suspect that it relates to the production of PGE2, the prostaglandin responsible for bone metabolism.  We make PGE2 from omega-6 fats, but the presence of omega-3 fats stops it being produced.  This is because omega-3 and omega-6 compete for the same enzymes.  If we make just the right amount, everything is tickety-boo but if we make too much, say, because we have too much omega-6 and not enough omega-3, then we start breaking down our bones.

Every processed food on the supermarket shelves is loaded with omega-6 fats (in the form of seed oils).  Every fried food has been boiled in omega-6 fats (seed oils again). Our National Heart Foundation actively encourages us to eat margarines brimming with omega-6 fats (yep, seed oils).  And the charity responsible for advice about Osteoporosis doesn’t even mention the known link between omega-6 fats and the disease.

In this environment it is not strange that the number of people affected has doubled in just a decade, it’s a bloody miracle it hasn’t tripled.  But stay tuned, at the rate we are increasing the consumption of omega-6 fats, there is much more pain to come.

Image courtesy of Boaz Yiftach at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Real Food Tick of Approval

By | Sugar, Vegetable Oils | 14 Comments

Most modern deaths are caused by diseases which barely affected anybody 200 years ago.  And the science says that between them, sugar and seed oils are responsible for almost all of those deaths.

The twin innovations of commercial sugar production (which made food addictive) and seed oil manufacture (which made food cheap to construct) has completely transformed our food supply in that timeframe.

Almost every packaged food now contains significant quantities of sugar or seed oil or (more usually) both.  But far worse than that, it almost impossible to tell from that packaging (other than the fact that there is packaging, that is) whether a given food is safe or not.

I propose a simple way to tell the difference.  Introducing, the Real Food Tick of Approval.  The rules are very simple:

  1. All whole food qualifies for the Tick
  2. Any packaged food which contains more than 1.5 grams of fructose per 100 g does not qualify
  3. Any drink which contains fructose (at all) does not qualify
  4. Any packaged food or drink which contains more than 1.5 grams of Omega-6 fat per 100 g does not qualify
  5. All other food qualifies for the Tick

To see how this works in practice, check out my free, foods database.  In it I have applied these rules.

The database is not perfect, it is using an automated formula (which tries to use fibre content to guess which are whole foods) to do the coding.  This means it doesn’t properly take account of Rule #1 (at this stage), so there will be obvious errors – but you get the gist.

Most things coloured green would get the Real Food Tick.  And the application of a little nouse would eliminate the obvious exceptions (for example Apricots in Intense Sweetened Liquid)

Most of those coloured yellow or red would not qualify. But there are whole foods which are particularly high in fructose (for example a Pink Lady apple) or Omega-6 (for example Peanuts).

Neither of these whole foods are coloured green but Rule #1 says they should qualify.  With those I would suggest, they still deserve the Tick (because they are whole foods), but it should be a yellow tick rather than a green one, merely to indicate that more than one serving of these foods should not be consumed.

I’d love to hear your thoughts (in the comments below) on the proposed Real Food Tick.

Graphic based on an Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If the Heart Foundation and Dietitians Association didn’t exist, would the food industry need to invent them?

By | Big Fat Lies, Conflicts of Interest, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | 7 Comments

The Dietitians Association of Australia and the Australian Heart Foundation spend quite a bit of their time attacking what they call “Fad Diets”.  Unfortunately, their flat out disregard for the evidence is making their statements sound more and more like press releases issued by the processed food industry.

I don’t pretend to know what is motivating either of them, but I do know that both have financial backing from the industries which stand to lose the most if there is widespread adoption of many of the diets they declare to be fads (for example reducing sugar, seed oils, or more recently paleo).

The Dietitians Association’s sponsors include Nestle (the second largest manufacturer of breakfast cereals in Australia and no slouch when it comes to moving other forms of sugar either), Unilever (largest margarine manufacturer in Australia) and the Grains & Legumes Nutrition Council (a lobby group funded by all the major breakfast cereal manufacturers)

The Australian Heart Foundation is not overtly sponsored by anyone.  But the processed food industry has found a way to rent the Heart Foundation’s healthy halo.

It’s called the Tick Program. Processed foods can gain endorsement from the Heart Foundation by doing what they were going to do anyway. They wanted to use seed oils instead of animal fats because they are loads cheaper. Tick – foods that use seed oils are given preference. They wanted to use tons of sugar because food with sugar sells better than food without. Tick – sugar is not a criteria. They want to sell breakfast cereals because they are vehicles for sugar (and the margins are stupendous). Tick – whole grains are encouraged for their fibre.

The program is a nice little earner for the Heart Foundation, pulling in $2.8m in 2013 alone. The only problem is that, through the Tick Program, the Heart Foundation now finds itself in the position of having endorsed hundreds of products that the science says are very dangerous to our health.

The World Health Organisation, the Canadian Heart Foundation and the American Heart Association all regard sugar as a dangerous additive to food because there is convincing evidence that it is “associated with heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, high blood cholesterol, cancer and tooth decay.”  But the Australian Heart Foundation is earning millions from its endorsement of products like ‘Mayonnaise’ that has more sugar than Coke, a children’s snack which is 73% sugar and spreads made of the very oils which science says almost doubles the risk of heart disease death.

That is what we lawyers call a conflict of interest. When doctors experience a conflict of interest (say by accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies), the regulators tighten the rules and (no matter how much it hurts the doctors) attempt to put the brakes on the gravy train.

The same thing happens in just about any profession we depend upon for expert knowledge. We have to be able to trust paid specialists. And no matter how morally astute they believe they are, we cannot allow them be led into temptation by conflicts of interest. If we do, we can never be sure if they are giving us advice based on the best evidence or on their own financial interest.

And if by chance you think that the existence of, say, a tick program makes no difference to the advice being dispensed, you need look no further than the Canadian Heart Foundation.  In June, they killed off their tick program.  Before June, they were happily handing out ticks to Slush Puppies and children’s snacks where sugar was the primary ingredient.  After June they were attacking the sugar sellers like they were on commission for the sale of Sweet Poison.

So when the Dietitians Association and the Heart Foundation fly into a frenzy to decry a diet which asks people to avoid processed food, any thinking person would ask, why?  Is there science behind this or have these two venerable organisations simply become mouthpieces for the processed food industry that provides them with such significant financial support?  Such is the corrosive power of conflicts of interest.

There are now very persuasive reasons to worry about their advice that we should consume seed oils (vegetable oils). And there is just as compelling evidence that ignoring sugar is taking a daily toll on the health of all Australians.

We need the Heart Foundation to follow the lead of the Canadian Heart Foundation and immediately trash its Tick program. And we need our dietitians to throw off the yoke of corporate sponsorship and provide evidence based dietary advice untainted by the smell of food industry money.

We don’t need the guardians of our health attacking a scientifically (and logically) defensible aversion to processed food. We need them guarding our health without fear or favour (especially without favour).

How to ensure you’re not firing blanks (a cautionary tale for men and anyone who cares about the quality of their sperm)

By | Big Fat Lies, Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Sperm counts are dropping rapidly in all Western countries.  In one, the situation is so dire that finding a man who is capable of reproducing is likely to be impossible by 2030.  For the rest of us, that reality is not that much further into the future. New science suggests the cause is clear and the solution is even clearer.  Don’t let men (or boys) eat vegetable oil.

A sperm count is an old fashioned, but still highly reliable way of measuring a man’s, well, potency.  Anything over 100 million sperm cells per ml is considered a premium vintage and anything under 15 million means the man is very unlikely to reproduce.  The only trouble is that men with high octane semen are getting harder and harder to find.

In 1992 researchers from the University of Copenhagen published a study of sperm quality trends over the preceding half century.  After reviewing 61 trials, the scientists came to the shocking conclusion that the average sperm count had halved in just 50 years (from 113 million in 1940 to 66 million in 1990).   Yep, men really were more manly in the olden days.

An even more comprehensive analysis of almost 27,000 French men published in 2005 confirmed the trend is continuing.  In that study average sperm counts dropped from 74 million in 1989 to 50 million in 2005.  If the decline continues at the same rate, there will be no French men capable of making babies by 2072.  And no matter how you feel  about the French, that is a catastrophe of unprecedented scale.

Similar numbers and rates of decline are now being reported in all Western countries (although alarmingly at 3% per annum, Australia is at the high end).   But in one country, the sperm count disaster makes the French look pretty damn virile.

Sperm banks in Israel are reporting that the alarming drop in sperm quality amongst Jewish inhabitants. Sperm banks that would have rejected about a third of applicants in the 1990s (because of low sperm count) are now turning away 80 to 90%.  With a measured rate of sperm count decline approximately twice that of any other Western country, experts are predicting that by 2030, average Jewish Israeli sperm counts will drop to a level where reproduction is likely to be impossible.

There are many theories about why this is happening as there are scientists researching the problem.  Perhaps it is the increased levels of oestrogen in the diet, perhaps it is exposure to pesticides or perhaps it is the use of BPA plastics.  But only one has produced convincing evidence of causation – dietary omega-6 fat consumption.

Omega-6 fat is the dominant fat in the ‘vegetable oils’ used in every processed food.  These oils are not made from vegetables at all.  Rather they come from seeds (like Canola, Soybean, Sunflower, Safflower, Rice Bran and Grape).  Western consumption of Omega-6 fats has at least tripled in the last century and perhaps more importantly, the ratio of Omega-6 fats to Omega-3 fats has soared from about 3:1 to 25:1.

We’ve known for some time that in experimental animals, high omega-6 fat consumption lowers sperm count and significantly impairs the quality of those that remain.  But a 2009 study in humans has taken that research one step further.

In that study, 82 infertile men were compared with 78 (proven) fertile men.  Detailed profiles of the fatty acid makeup of each man’s blood plasma were prepared.  The results were unequivocal.  Infertile men had a significantly higher ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3  (15 to 1 versus 6 to 1 in fertile men).  And critically, the higher the omega-6, the lower the sperm count.

It is likely that the reason for the sperm cell destruction relates to rampant oxidation caused by the overconsumption of omega-6 fats.  Unfortunately that kind of oxidation damage leads to the wholesale DNA destruction that can result in cancer.  Perhaps then it won’t shock you to discover that the incidence of testicular cancer (the most common cancer in men under 50) has more than doubled in the last 40 years.

Because of a decided preference for non-animal fat sources, Israeli Jews have the highest consumption of Omega-6 fat in the world (about 12% of calories).  The science says this is why they are at the bleeding edge of the decline in male fertility.  It is also likely to be why the incidence of testicular cancer has almost doubled in just 10 years (compared to the 4 decades it took the rest of us).

Before you tell me you’re ok because you always cook in olive oil, you should know that the oil we add is a very small part of the fat we actually consume.  Vegetable oils made from seeds are much cheaper than animal or fruit fats (such as Olive, Avocado or Coconut Oils).  Because of this, they are now an integral part of margarine and baked goods and bread and salad dressings and pestos and meal bases and frozen food and, well, every other product (with a label) in our supermarkets.

It is also increasingly a significant component of grain fed meat (most of the meat in a supermarket) and even farmed fish (most of the fish in a supermarket). And it is just about the only fat used to fry take-away food in 21st century Australia.  In other words, it is almost impossible to avoid unless you grow and assemble your own food.

There are as many good reasons not to consume seed oils, but I reckon the future of the human race probably tops the list.  Food companies are doing nothing less than committing biochemical genocide by filling every food we eat with omega-6 fats. We are having our reproductive capacity disabled en masse and far from protesting against it, our health authorities are actively encouraging us to consume more.  Ask the Australian Heart Foundation whether it thinks you should consume more of these poisons and you will be told most definitely ‘yes’.

Fortunately there is one thing you can do if you care about your ability to reproduce (or avoid testicular cancer). Stop eating Vegetable Oils made from seeds or any food made from, or fried in, them.

Image courtesy of Carlos Porto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How to avoid Rheumatoid Arthritis (and stop your kids getting it too)

By | Vegetable Oils | 5 Comments

Every day 17 Australians have a joint replaced because of Rheumatoid Arthritis. And the number of us with the disease is accelerating quickly, particularly amongst children. The science on its cause (and the cure) couldn’t be clearer. There is just one thing you need to do, don’t eat vegetable oil.

There are over 100 types of arthritis but Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is the most severe and the second most common (after osteoarthritis). Unlike Osteoarthritis, RA is not caused by wear and tear on the joints (largely from being overweight, exercising too much or both). Rather it is an autoimmune disease, like Type I Diabetes and Asthma.

Australia doesn’t keep good data on any chronic disease but as at 2007, there were approximately 428,000 sufferers of RA but that rate is increasing rapidly. Hospitilisation for RA (largely for joint replacement) has been steadily increasing. The rate has doubled in the first decade of the 21st century. Alarmingly it appears that the rate in children is increasing even more rapidly, with the rate of hospilization more than tripling over the same timeframe.

One of the more important jobs our immune system performs is distinguishing stuff which is not dangerous (such as our own tissue) from stuff that is dangerous (like some types of virus and bacteria).

When something is deemed dangerous, our cells ramp up production of hormone-like substances that instruct our immune system to produce an inflammation response. Every time you see a cut to the skin become red and swollen, you’re seeing that inflammation response in action. The swelling and the heat are our body’s attempts to eject the invader from our body (or kill it).

An RA sufferer’s immune system is malfunctioning, causing it to attack the synovial membrane, the tissues lining our joints. The synovial membrane is normally very thin. Its job is to produce fluid which lubricates and nourishes the joint.

The immune system attack causes the synovial membrane to become swollen and inflamed. Over time this leads to bone damage in the joint and eventually irreversible joint damage.

That response is turned on by hormone like substances derived from Omega-6 fats and turned off by (anti-inflammatory) hormones derived from Omega-3 fats. It’s a finely tuned and finely balanced feedback loop that requires both types of fat in exactly the right amounts (about 1.5 gramsof each a day).

We’ve known for some time that the omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats are critical to the way our inflammation response works, particularly when it comes to RA. Omega-6 fats dial it up and omega-3 fats dial it back down again.

Now that’s all a bit of a problem for the Western Diet because we have been steadily increasing the amount of Omega-6 we consume, while at the same time, (at best) consuming around the same amount of Omega-3. During the course of the last two centuries the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in our diet has changed from around 2:1 to 25:1.

This has happened because food manufacturers have been persistently replacing sources of animal fat (which have no significant amounts of either omega-6 or omega-3) with much cheaper vegetable oils (which are very high in omega-6).

Analysis of the inflamed synovial membrane in RA patients reveals that it is very high in molecules derived from omega-6 fats. Knowing that omega-3 and omega-6 fats act in opposite directions on inflammation, researchers have conducted animal trials which show that artificially induced RA can be significantly delayed or eliminated if the rats are fed fish oil (high in Omega-3 fats) rather than vegetable oil (high in omega-6 fats).

That research has led to large numbers of controlled human trials which have successfully reduced RA inflammation (and associated pain) by supplementing with omega-3 fats (usually from fish oil).

Given those results it would be almost impossible to get ethical approval for a trial which tried to make RA worse by feeding people omega-6, but one trial figured out a different way to skin the cat. In that trial researchers tried something else. As well increase the amount of omega-3 they fed the patients, they divided them into groups on a standard Western diet and one which was which was very low in Omega-6 fats.  The result of the trial were impressively in favour of the RA patients on the low Omega-6 diet (and even better if they also took fish oil).

The science is old and uncontroversial. In a Western diet, the massive increase in Omega-6 fats make us much more likely to suffer from RA and will make the RA worse once we have it. The problem is that in Australia today it is almost impossible to buy packaged food that isn’t infused with these RA inducing fats.

If you suffer from RA then the very best strategy is to eat whole food only, use butter instead of margarine and cook with olive oil rather than vegetable oil. If you must buy packaged food avoid anything which includes ‘Vegetable Oils’ in its ingredient list. If you are eating deep fried food make sure it has not been fried in vegetable oil. Simple.

Photo by James Heilman, MD (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Why Fish is no longer a good source of Omega-3

By | Vegetable Oils | 7 Comments

Over the last three decades we’ve been continuously told that to avoid heart disease, obesity, Type II Diabetes and even cancer, we need to shun animal meat and eat fish.  Fish is supposed to be terrific because, not only does it not contain all those nasty saturated fats (which, by the way, is not true), it has loads of Omega-3 fats, the so called ‘good fats’.  Unfortunately this is now dangerously bad advice.

Over 80% of the meat sold in Australian supermarkets is from feed lots.  These beasts spend their lives eating bird seed rather than the grasses on which they evolved.  The result is animal fat which is very high in Omega-6 fats and which contains almost no Omega-3.   These two fats are called essential fats.  They are ‘essential’ because we can’t make them ourselves.  We need 1.5g of each a day from our food.  And we could get that just by eating a couple of cheese sandwiches.

The perverted heart health advice of the last half century has driven a mass replacement of animal fats with man-made ‘vegetable oils’ (like Sunflower, Canola and Soybean).  Omega-6’s are the primary fat in vegetable oils and because those oils are now part of every single processed food on the supermarket shelves, we are well and truly (over) supplied with them.  Omega-3’s are however considerably harder to come by.

When our Omega-6 and Omega-3 supplies get out of balance, very bad things start happening. Things like macular degeneration, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s disease and cancer.  The ratio is best if it’s 1 to 1 and will work ok even at 2 (Omega-6) to 1 (Omega-3) but are currently as high as 25 to 1. We’re told the cure to this imbalance of essential fats is to eat fish.

We have heeded the call.  Since 1975, we have doubled our per capita consumption of fish.  The only way fish suppliers have been able to keep up with that kind of explosive demand is to invent a whole new industry, fish farming.  And just like the cattle in feed lots, our farmed fish are increasingly being fed seeds, with devastating effects on their Omega-3 levels.

Fish, being vertebrates just like us, are no more capable of making Omega-3’s than we are.  Just like us, they need to get them from their diet.  If they are carnivores (like Salmon and Barramundi) that means eating herbivorous fish that’ve been chowing down on seaweeds and algae high in Omega-3.

If the fish was wild caught, it will have the expected supply of Omega-3 on board.  Nature’s like that, it just works (as long as we leave it alone).  If however the fish is farmed, then all bets are off.

The only economical way to ensure that farmed carnivorous fish get their Omega-3’s is to feed them wild caught fish oil (think of it as Omega-3 capsules for fish). It takes about 5kg of wild caught (but otherwise unsaleable) fish to produce 1kg of farmed eating fish.

In 1950 this wasn’t a problem.  There were barely any fish farms and there was an abundance of wild caught fish.  But in the last 60 years the aquaculture industry has been experiencing explosive growth, driven in no small part by us all being told we need to eat more fish.  Now, about half of all fish consumed (by humans) globally (and Australia is no exception) is farmed rather than wild caught.

In 2006, 87% of all wild caught, fish oil was fed to farmed fish and it is likely that we maxed out the available supply in around 2010 (public figures on this stuff are very murky).

But don’t worry, the fish feeders have a solution, just mix in vegetable oil instead.  Increasingly, fish feed is being constructed with the very same seed oils (vegetable oils) that now infest the remainder of our food supply.  The very same Omega-6 rich oils that (at least) double the rate of cancer and cause rheumatoid arthritis and macular degeneration (to name just a few delights) is becoming an integral part of what we mistakenly assume to be our primary source of Omega-3.

The industry has seen the problem coming for some time and since 1990, the number of studies on the effects of using seed oils in fish feed has grown exponentially.  Many of the studies have shown that substitution of seed oils makes the fish more prone to infectious disease and stress as well as stunting their growth and increasing the production of the types of cholesterol responsible for heart disease (oxidised VLDL). In other words the same stuff happens to them as does to us, but aquaculture researchers are far less coy about calling a spade a spade.

But worse even that that, when fish fillets from seed oil-fed and fish oil-fed fish are compared, in general the amount of Omega-3 has halved (and is sometimes considerably less) and the Omega-6 fats have increased 5-fold.  The seed oils destroy the very reason we are told to eat fish in the first place.

While you might think you’re upping your Omega-3 ratio by chomping on fish and chips every Friday night, the chances are you’re really just eating even more Omega-6.  So if you think you’re eating fish because it contains healthy fats, think again, Big Food has gotten to that too.  Most farmed fish is now no better for you than seed oil it’s usually fried in.  Unless you caught it yourself, you’d be better off avoiding it.

Grass fed animals have exactly the right fats in exactly the right ratios.  It is only because health authorities decided to demonise that food source that we obsessively seek out supposedly more healthy fish.  Putting aside the ethics of using finite and declining wild caught fish stocks (with food-grade potential) for animal feed, the criminally negligent advice which drives us to seek out fish as health food must change and it must change now.   Because, while it will eventually wipe out the fish, it will wipe us out first.

Image courtesy of scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A little extra bit: A Consumer New Zealand investigation shows farmed salmon, which is sold as fresh and smoked products in supermarkets, has significantly less Omega-3 than that claimed on the label.

What Vegetable Oil is that?

By | Vegetable Oils | No Comments

Food Manufacturers are not required to identify the exact fats that they are using in a product, but they are required to tell us the Total Fat in grams per 100 g and the Saturated Fat in grams per 100 g. Using those two numbers and the chart below the trained seed oil detective can have a good guess as to the fat being used based on the amount of saturated fat in the product.
Sat Fat Ratio 700

To obtain access to this graphic and a worked example of how to use it in the supermarket, become a member.  You’ll also get access to loads of other premium content, such as recipes, detailed guides to sugar content and handy calculators to help you show for low seed oil foods.

 

Every drop of vegetable oil takes us further along the path to Parkinson’s Disease

By | Vegetable Oils | 62 Comments

Michael J Fox has it, the late Muhammad Ali had it, Billy Connolly has it and more than 100,000 Australians have it.  About 30 new cases of Parkinson’s disease are being diagnosed every day in this country.  If you want to avoid adding your name to that list there is one thing you should do.  Don’t eat seed oils.

James Parkinson, surgeon, geologist and palaeontologist first described what we now call Parkinson’s disease in his paper on shaking palsy in 1817.  He was born on April 11, 1755, which is why April 11 is World Parkinson’s Day. Dr Parkinson described a condition which caused involuntary tremors when a limb is at rest, rigidity, slowness of movement and a propensity to bend forwards and slow gait when walking.  There was no known cause or cure.

We now know that Parkinson’s is caused by the death of cells in our pars compacta –the part of our brain which controls motor function (the Substantia nigra pars compacta if you want to get all technical).  That part of the brain is a central switching room for movement, attention, learning and reward-seeking (which makes sure we keep eating and having sex).

The pars compacta exerts its control using dopamine. When everything is working well, our bodies are inhibited from moving by the part of our brain which contains the pars compacta (the basal ganglia for Latin freaks).  When we decide to move something (our eyes or limbs etc), the pars compacta squirts out dopamine to take the brakes off.

If the neurons responsible for producing the dopamine are damaged, Parkinson’s disease is the result.  Our brain is pretty durable, because we lose around 50% of our dopamine manufacturing neurons before there are any symptoms.  But once they are gone, these neurons are gone forever.  As the numbers decrease, a Parkinson’s sufferer has to exert greater and greater effort to produce movement.

The only effective treatment is medication which can increase dopamine production  by squeezing a little more out of the remaining neurons (we can’t just give dopamine as it isn’t able to cross the blood-brain barrier).  Obviously if the destruction of the neurons continues (as it does in most) that is only a temporary solution.  Before medication was introduced in the 1970s a Parkinson’s patient was expected to live 9.5 years after diagnosis.  The drug assisted life expectancy is now 15 years.

Because the disease is the result of cumulative destruction, it is most prevalent in people over 50 but 20 per cent of cases are diagnosed between 20 and 50.  Michael J Fox was diagnosed when he was just 30.

There are very few places in the world where accurate long term statistics have been kept on the incidence of Parkinson’s disease, but they have done just that in Olmstead County, Minnesota (pop: 100,000).  There, researchers have concluded annual new cases almost doubled between 1944 and 1984 (using consistent diagnostic rules).  And like Type II Diabetes, other studies tell us that Parkinson’s occurs much less frequently in populations not exposed to a Western Diet (processed food).

The official position on the cause of Parkinson’s disease is that nobody has the slightest clue what causes the dopamine producing neurons to die.  The only official risk factor is age.  But I think some dots need joining and when that is done the culprit becomes very clear.

We know that a diet high in seed oils causes the levels of Omega-6 fats in our cell membranes to rise rapidly.  Those fats react quickly with oxygen and push the body into a state of cascading cell damage called oxidative stress.   We also know that a major product of the oxidation of omega-6 fats is something with the charming name of 4-Hydroxynonenal (I’ll just use its street name of 4-HNE).  And we know that 4-HNE, whilst generally dangerous, is especially toxic to the neurons responsible for producing dopamine in our brain.

There, dots joined (it wasn’t that hard was it?).  Eating seed oils (or anything which contains large amounts of omega-6 fats) induces the production of a molecule which we know kills the neurons we depend upon for dopamine production.  Kill enough of them and you have Parkinson’s disease.

Thanks to the efforts of the processed food industry (aided and abetted by the Heart Foundation), our diet is now completely saturated with omega-6 fats.  Everything in a package uses it.  Every deep frier uses it.  Every baker uses it.  And every little bite of it is taking out the neurons you depend on to keep you from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease.

Nothing I can say will restore the neurons you’ve already killed but I can stop you killing any more.

Don’t eat seed oils.

Image: A man with Parkinson’s disease displaying a flexed walking posture pictured in 1892. Photo appeared in Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpètrière, vol. 5. By Albert Londe (1858-1917) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Is 16 cents a loaf worth filling our bread with cancer causing oil?

By | Vegetable Oils | 19 Comments

Most of our kids like a bread roll to munch on at school.  The trouble is, it’s slightly easier to find discarded money in the average supermarket than it is to find bread or bread rolls made without ‘Vegetable Oils’.  It’s perfectly possible to make bread using Olive Oil or even (gasp – don’t even think it) animal fat.  But nobody does.

When you decide you no longer wish to consume ‘Vegetable Oils’, bread presents a bit of a problem.  Almost all breads sold in Australian supermarkets are made with canola oil, sunflower oil or soybean oil (or sometimes all three).  And that even includes the ones in the Fresh Bakery bit of most of them.

So the cheap options are out straight away.  But even before you reconcile yourself to going top shelf at the bakery you won’t find an abundance of options.  Sure, you can get the fancy European bread range at Baker’s Delight (which doesn’t use any kind of fat).  But if you’re buying for 6 kids, that gets really expensive, really fast.  If you want ordinary old white bread there, at Brumby’s or at most bakeries, you’ll find ‘Vegetable Oils’ are the fat du jour.

As a result we had reconciled ourselves to buying outrageously expensive bread (we make our loaf bread at home) for the foreseeable future, until one day we had a bright idea.  Why not just ask the local bakery if they could do a batch of bread rolls and use olive oil instead.  To our complete and utter amazement, the Brumby’s we asked agreed to do it as long as we gave them a day’s notice and ordered at least 30.  Figuring 30 was about a week’s worth and they probably freeze well, we immediately ordered a batch.

They were manna from heaven.  Normal hamburger rolls that tasted exactly the way they should but without toxic oils. They froze perfectly and, if anything were better after being thawed than before.  Our problems were solved – until we went to pick up our next batch.  Brumby’s had decided in the interim that it was too much hassle to do a separate batch and point blank refused to do it again.  Bugger.

Plan B was to approach Baker’s Delight and they were delightful indeed.  Not only are they happy to do it, they’ll do it in whatever quantity we want as long as we give a day’s notice.  Now we pick up our 30 hamburger rolls every Sunday and not a single canola flower was harmed in their manufacture.  They cost exactly the same as the bog standard toxic variety but ours come with olive oil instead.

Now you might think I’m getting my undies in a twist over nothing.  The average bread contains something less than 1g of omega-6 fat per 100g if it’s made with canola oil.   But omega-6 fat consumption is an insidious thing and the effect is cumulative.  It’s in everything and frankly there are some times when you can’t avoid it.  So my theory is that if you can avoid it, even in the smallest way, they you should definitely take that option.

If you agree, then all you need to do is ask, you might be surprised at the answer.

All this does of course cause me to wonder why Bakers don’t just use Olive Oil all the time.  Not even the most rabid supporter of vegetable oil, the National Heart Foundation has any problem with us consuming the old olive juice, so it can’t be for health reasons (not that I’ve ever seen a bakery make a health claim about the oil it uses anyway).  So that just leaves cost.

According to my local catering supply shop, I can get a 20 Litre tin of Canola oil for $45.95, but that much dosh will only buy be 4 Litres of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming that’s what they’ll be using).

I can see that an ingredient costing 5 times as much might give pause for thought, but only if it were being used in significant quantities.  A loaf of bread weighing 700 grams will contain about 15 grams (16 mls) of fat.  If that fat is canola oil it will cost 4c.  If it’s Olive Oil, it will cost 20c.  Yes it’s more, but in the almost $4 price of a loaf of bread at the local bakery, it really is irrelevant.  And if it is likely to break the bank, then, what the heck, add 16c to the price of the loaf for me.

Are we really being sold bread full of vegetable oil for the sake of 16c a loaf in oil?  And the trade off for that is bread that (in combination with the rest of the processed food we eat) significantly increases our risk of cancer, macular degeneration, rheumatoid arthritis and life-threatening allergies.  Come on bakeries of Australia, surely that’s not worth the 16c.  Put the Olive Oil back in our bread.

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Buy David’s Books

By | Books, Cookbook, Education, Recipes, Sugar, Sweet Poison, Vegetable Oils | 6 Comments

All of David’s books are available from this site. And each book purchased is personally signed by David. If you buy multiple copies of books you will receive multi-buy discounts and keep an eye out for sugar themed or oil themed bundles which also offer great discounts.

All of the books are also available electronically (obviously those aren’t signed).

In addiction to the books there is a great range of electronic resources (such as guides to the sugar content of common foods) available in the Resource Store.

The Books

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Free Schools

David Gillespie has six kids. When it came time to select high schools, he thought it worth doing some investigation to assess the level of advantage his kids would enjoy if he spent the required $1.3 million to send them all to private schools.

Shockingly, the answer was: none whatsoever.

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The Sweet Poison Quit Plan Cookbook

Ex-lawyer and ex-sugarholic, David Gillespie, revolutionised the lives and eating habits of thousands of Australians with his bestsellers on the dangers of sugar, Sweet Poison and The Sweet Poison Quit Plan. To help get us unhooked from sugar, David with the help of wife Lizzie, gave us recipes for sweet foods made with dextrose-pure glucose, a healthy alternative to table sugar. Here, David has worked with a chef to develop more delicious fructose-free recipes.

All proceeds from the sale of this book are donated to charity

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Toxic Oil

“‘Vegetable’ oil makes you exceedingly vulnerable to cancer. Every extra mouthful of vegetable oil you consume takes you one step closer to a deadly (and irreversible) outcome.”With these words David Gillespie begins his follow-up to the bestseller Big Fat Lies: How the diet industry is making you sick, fat & poor. In Big Fat Lies he analysed the latest scientific evidence to show us that vegetable oils, specifically seed oils, are dangerous to our health, despite that fact that they are recommended by government health agencies.

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Big Fat Lies

In Big Fat Lies David explodes the myths about diet, exercise and vitamin supplements, examining the latest scientific evidence and exposing the role the multibillion-dollar food, health and diet industries have played in promoting the health messages we follow or feel guilty about not following.

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The Sweet Poison Quit Plan

Packed with reader anecdotes and lists to help you organise your sugar-free life, this book presents one of the most accessible and achievable strategies around for losing weight and avoiding some of the more pernicious lifestyle diseases that are increasingly associated with excessive sugar consumption. Gillespie is an informed and entertaining writer who makes his subject fascinating, and inspires with his passion and logic.

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Sweet Poison

The #1 Bestseller, Sweet Poison exposes one of the great health scourges of our time and offers a wealth of practical and accessible information on how to avoid fructose, increase your enjoyment of food and lose weight.

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