The David Gillespie Blog

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

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

In the graphic, I’ve set out the typical smoke points for the good oils and fats you might be cooking with.  Remember these are rough numbers as each brand will get a slightly different result. But using this table you should be able to figure out the best oil to use for various types of cooking.  To get access to this graphic, 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.

I’m frequently asked whether a given oil or fat is good or bad.  Based on the criteria I use in Toxic Oil, I have created this handy little ready reckoner for fast label reading. To get access to this graphic, 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.

According to a new report from the WHO (World Health Organisation), more than forty three thousand Australians died from cancer in 2012. And despite huge advances in treatment, it is now the single biggest cause of death in Australia. Prevention is clearly the key to changing that future. Unfortunately those charged with advising us are blind to the real cause of this lethal epidemic.

It’s an unfortunate reality but we all know someone affected by cancer. And most of the people we know neither smoke, nor drink excessively nor live obviously ‘unhealthy lifestyles.’ And yet they have all been cut down often in the prime of their lives.

It feels increasingly like we are being stalked by a silent and random killer. It feels like cancer is no longer something that some of us must worry about if we make it to old age. It feels like things are getting worse and they are getting worse quickly.

The latest report on Cancer from the WHO provides some hard data to support that feeling of unease. It reveals that in the nine years the report covers, cancer diagnosis in Australia increased by an alarming 14 per cent. In 2003, 274 Australians per day were diagnosed. In 2012, it was 312 people. Per Day! Worse than that, the authors of the report expect that number to almost double in the next twenty years.

Sadly having identified the problem, the advice on what to do about it is the same vapid nonsense that we have received for the last three decades. We should stop smoking, stop drinking and “maintain a healthy weight.”

In 2012, Lung cancer accounted for 8.9 per cent of Australian cancers and it is irrefutably the case that smoking is the cause for the vast majority of lung cancer cases. The good news is that the number of Australians smoking and consequently the incidence of lung cancer has been in steady decline since the early 80s. So while smoking clearly causes cancer it is not responsible for the rise in cancer rates in the last decade.

Equally, the studies show some level of correlation between alcohol consumption and rates of some cancers (notably mouth, throat and liver) but for most cancers the association is weak. Many studies are quick to point out that any harder evidence is difficult to obtain because most people drink alcohol (making it very difficult to find a non-drinking population for comparison).

Australians are no exception, being among the world’s biggest drinkers, but our level of consumption has not changed much at all in the last twenty years. We drank about 10 litres per person per year in 1994 and in 2008 we were drinking 9. Once again it’s statistically difficult to pin the rise in cancers on the booze.

When it comes to weight, the science is even fuzzier. The correlations between obesity and cancer are certainly there but viable explanations as to why are very thin on the ground. Even rarer are trials (try none) which control for all the other possible explanations (most notably that obesity is just a symptom of overconsumption of something else that feeds cancer, such as fructose).

But there is one aspect of human nutrition and cancer that has been studied using a double-blind, randomized, controlled lengthy human trial. No correlations. No guessing about explanations. Just one dietary change which lead to just one powerful conclusion.

The trial was conducted in the late 1960s. It involved randomly allocating men to diets that contained animal fat (let’s call them the butter eaters) or diets where that fat was replaced with vegetable oils (the margarine eaters). After eight years, the butter eaters had half the rate of death from cancer when compared to the margarine eaters. And that’s even though the butter eaters had a much higher proportion of heavy smokers. It’s that simple, use vegetable oils for fat and humans die much more frequently from cancer.

In Australia today it is impossible to buy processed food which uses animal fat. There is one simple reason for this. It’s cheaper. All our packaged food is infused with cheap vegetable oils rather than expensive animal fats and our consumption of those cancer causing oils has inexorably risen as a result. Knowing this, the rise in cancer diagnosis is not a surprise. Rather it is the inevitable result of the profiteering ways of the processed food industry. And it will continue to rise for as long as we continue to consume these oils.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. The processed food industry are not intending to kill us. But when it comes to a choice between their profit today and whether you die of cancer in eight years, guess which wins. The science on this is old. But that does not make it any less sound. Vegetable oils cause death from cancer and the sooner our health authorities acknowledge that and stop telling us mend our ways (and often, to consume more vegetable oil), the safer we will all be. They need to stop blaming the victim.

“‘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.

David believes that our bodies are not adapted to eat a diet which contains polyunsaturated fats in huge quantities. Our extraordinarily complex biochemistry works on an assumption that we will have a very small quantity of these fats in our diet and that every other fat we consume will come from animals or other sources of saturated fat or monounsaturated fat. This was the case until 200 years ago, but the industrial replacement of all fats with cheaper man-made vegetable oils has meant that it is almost impossible to buy food that does not contain polyunsaturated fats in the form of seed oils. They are in cooking oils, margarines, sauces, spreads, crackers, biscuits, pastry, fast food and most processed food.

In Toxic Oil he reveals the evidence to support his argument that an excess of seed oils can not only cause cancer and heart disease but also damage our eyes and immune systems. This practical guide also helps you navigate the supermarket, with recommendations for brands that are low in sugar and seed oils, and provides recipes for food that would normally be made with seed oils. This accessible, entertaining and sometimes shocking book is an essential first step towards living a longer, healthier life.