Question: Do you have any views on olive oil vs safflower oil vs. canola oil?
Answer: The reality is that all oils are junk no matter how you look at it. For one thing, oils are the most calorie dense food on the planet at over 4000 calories per pound and are effortlessly converted and easily stored as fat on your body. There are no proteins or carbohydrates in oil as well as no vitamins or minerals (olive oil has trace amounts of vitamin E but overall there is nothing but calories). Most importantly there is nothing in oil that you can't get from fruits, veggies, whole grains, and legumes. People talk about phytosterols in Olive oil but you can get them much more easily in lettuce while avoiding all of the negatives in oil.
What about essential fatty acids? The only fat we need is omega 3 and 6 fats which are polyunsaturated fats. Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat and has significantly less omega 3 than canola oil. Safflower oil is a polyunsaturated fat but has significantly more omega 6 (pro-inflammatory) fat and much less omega 3 (anti-inflammatory) fat. Our goal is to get just the opposite, more Omega 3 than Omega 6. To get enough of the essential Omega 3 fat (according to the National Academy of Sciences) people need just 1.6 grams (1.1 grams for women) per day. That is 8 oz. of olive oil at 1900 calories. Or you could eat 1 tbsp of ground flax seed per day...and get all the fiber, and other nutrients in the whole food package!
The problem is that oil's caloric density is so stimulating to our dopamine receptor/pleasure centers that we have a hard time giving it up...so of course people try to find any good news about this unhealthy substance and advertise it. People throw out words like “lower cholesterol” and “Mediterranean diet” and think that these will support its use. The truth is that the Mediterranean diet was healthy because of all the fruits and vegetables and whole grains used despite the little bit of olive oil NOT because of it. What’s worse is that when this information reached Americans, we ignored the fruits and vegetables and honed in on olive oil as the next miracle cure. This being the case, our answer was to soak our already fat laden diet in additional fat!
As for cholesterol, olive oil is certainly NOT a miracle cure. In fact, if you give olive oil to someone on an oil free diet, their cholesterol levels will increase! That being said, it is also true that the cholesterol numbers of someone on the toxic American diet (loaded with fat and cholesterol) might lower a LITTLE bit if equal parts of saturated fat are replaced with equal parts of monounsaturated fat. But we don’t replace our saturated fat, we just add olive oil to it!
People talk about high quality oils but that is nonsense. Studies show that all oil whether it is monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, or saturated promotes atherosclerotic progression (plaque forming in our blood vessels) despite minor differences in lipid profiles...so your blood vessels still get clogged no matter what oil you use. Diabetes still continues no matter what type of oil you use and people remain obese no matter what type of oil is used. But when oil (and animal products) is removed then the diabetes (and other such illnesses) goes away, people lose weight, and blood vessels heal...among other amazing changes.
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