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Which oils to avoid?


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2023 Jan 21, 7:13pm   32,426 views  265 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (60)   💰tip   ignore  

I'm increasingly frustrated at the rapeseed oil (euphemistically called "Canola" oil by Canadian producers) and palm kernel oil that seems to be in almost all food. Pretty much everything at Trader Joe's seems to have one or the other. I was even at a Russian shop in Palo Alto today (Samovar, fun place) and found the poppyseed cake my grandmother used to make - except it was with margarine instead of butter, ugh.

Which of them are worth avoiding entirely?

Here are the fats and oils I think are bad:

- margarine (which is just canola and other crap oils hardened to make them stick in your arteries better)
- canola oil
- cottonseed oil (especially bad)
- palm kernel oil

I'm undecided about these:

- soybean oil
- sunflower seed oil
- avocado oil
- coconut oil
- peanut oil

I'm sure these are pretty good for you:

- olive oil
- butter
- lard (yes, I think lard is OK to eat)


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247   mell   2025 Jan 18, 8:56am  

HeadSet says


Patrick says


A few servings for example of Cheetos could easily take one into the danger zone.

Um, munching Cheetos already takes you out of the healthy eating zone, trans fats or not. Food like that should be taken in moderation anyway.


Agreed. Also I don't think the trans fat content below 0.5 does any significant damage compared to the crap food it already is. I'd avoid anything partially hydrogenated (fractioned is ok) on the labels, but otherwise I disagree with McCollough here. Trans fats have been banned for quite a while and the residual left is not an issue unless you munch 10 packs of cheetos per day in which case you will likely have problems anyways. And you cannot avoid them when cooking, bbqing etc unless you eat raw food exclusively. In small amounts they likely don't matter compared to the benefits you get form the prepared food.
249   komputodo   2025 Jan 21, 8:38pm  

Patrick says

Which oils to avoid?

diesel and coal
251   mell   2025 Feb 6, 8:31am  

Let's come back to Canola. We don't cook with it since it has a low smoke point at around 400. We have a bottle from TJs, labeled expelled pressed and solvent free. Say you bake a banana bread or similar with it at 350. What exactly is harmful about Canola.

Yes it has some omega 6 (linoleic) fatty acid (which is esssential for life but also can be inflammatory in excess), but by far not as much as some other oils (or walnuts which are very healthy), it also has omega 3 fatty acids to balance, I read not readily well absorbed though I couldn't find any evidence to back up this claim.

In summary I don't think there's anything wrong with it in moderation as long as you don't heat it past its (lowish) smoke point and avoid solvents.
252   Patrick   2025 Feb 6, 9:46am  

https://empoweredsustenance.com/canola-oil-excuses/

We could go on about the details, but my problem with it is that it's utterly unnatural. People did not evolve to eat rapeseed oil, and the only way it's made sort of non-toxic is through an extremely toxic refining process. It's also genetically modified up the wazoo.

It's essentially plastic as food. Very cheap for manufacturers, kind of like the margarine scam. I was thoroughly creeped out when I noticed it's in pretty much every food now, like Google spyware is on pretty much every website.

Canola oil is often at the bottom of the list of ingredients in simple products like bread because it is a preservative.

I was just reading somewhere that there is an inverse to the French Paradox, where the French live longer than predicted in spite of a diet very high in butter and lard. In Israel, the primary oil seems to be Canola, and they have a higher than predicted rate of heart disease.
253   mell   2025 Feb 6, 10:07am  

Thanks I'm aware of its history, and I'm not a fan of it. However I don't think there is any evidence whatsoever that moderate intake of canola oil, e.g. occasionally on baked or fried goods, is unhealthy.

If somebody can show any study proving the health scare claims, I'd like to see it. After all we have linked plenty of studies about the covid toxxine jab, so why can't we find any about Canola?

I totally believe it's in everywhere because it's among the cheapest, but doesn't make it the worst, just suboptimal.
254   mell   2025 Feb 6, 10:10am  

Also I wouldn't cook with it, maybe low heat sauteeing is fine, due to its low smoke point, but that is the same issue for other oils and why avocado and coconut oil or fats such as lard are superior to olive oil for high heat cooking
255   Patrick   2025 Feb 6, 10:42am  

mell says

If somebody can show any study proving the health scare claims, I'd like to see it.


Here's one:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17373-3


At this time point we found that chronic exposure to the canola-rich diet resulted in a significant increase in body weight and impairments in their working memory together with decrease levels of post-synaptic density protein-95, a marker of synaptic integrity, and an increase in the ratio of insoluble Aβ 42/40.
256   mell   2025 Feb 6, 11:56am  

Patrick says

mell says


If somebody can show any study proving the health scare claims, I'd like to see it.


Here's one:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17373-3



At this time point we found that chronic exposure to the canola-rich diet resulted in a significant increase in body weight and impairments in their working memory together with decrease levels of post-synaptic density protein-95, a marker of synaptic integrity, and an increase in the ratio of insoluble Aβ 42/40.


Ok thanks this is a mouse model and they were fed a canola rich diet. Hence cooking canola oil free is prob a good idea, not just because of the low smoke point. Israel does have one of the lower incidences of Alzheimers though for example, at the bottom of per 100k capita incidence, suggesting other factors being more important.
258   HeadSet   2025 Feb 11, 8:08am  

The_Deplorable says





Don't all serious cooks already have cast iron cookware? Every cook has their own method of seasoning a cast iron skillet and many a husband gas a knot on his head because he ignorantly deep cleaned a skillet his wife spent years perfecting the surface.
259   Patrick   2025 Feb 11, 10:03am  

We have a cast iron skillet but don't use it much because it does not distribute heat well. We use an anodized aluminum one which is much better that way.
262   OkDOGEisAmountingToSomething   2025 Feb 15, 6:23pm  

This good? Seems so. I use it for cooking.






263   Patrick   2025 Feb 15, 7:38pm  

I don't trust any seed oils at all, first because plants generally evolved to poison animals that crush their seeds. Fruit is the bait to get you to swallow the seed whole. If the seed doesn't make it through you, then the plant loses.

Secondly, the extraction process is usually very toxic itself.

https://www.zeroacre.com/blog/are-seed-oils-toxic


Canola (rapeseed) oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, rice bran oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, and sunflower oil are the eight worst seed oils you may want to avoid. Average consumption has increased 20 times in the past hundred years, which correlates to increased rates of obesity, cancer, and heart disease
264   HeadSet   2025 Feb 15, 8:49pm  

Patrick says

I don't trust any seed oils at all

I presume that olive oil comes from the olive itself and not the pit?
265   Patrick   2025 Feb 15, 9:14pm  

Correct. Olive oil is pressed from the flesh of the olive.

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