Some of the oils concerned in Leveque’s publication include soybean, corn, canola (rapeseed) and sunflower (more details about Nuance of sunflower oil here), safflower, cottonseed, grape seed and rice bran. “Synthetic seed oils were considered industrial waste and only used in soap making until 1911, but in the past two decades we’ve seen them added to everything from oat milk, protein bars, crackers, dips, dressing, and prepackaged foods….plus every casual and fast food restaurants Use it to cook/fry everything,” she shares in her post.
These oils are made by heating the seeds to high temperatures, which oxidizes the seeds’ polyunsaturated fats (PUFA), which LeVeque says can create byproducts harmful to humans. “These seeds are then treated with a petroleum-based solvent such as hexane,” she says. “This is to maximize the amount of oil that can be extracted from those seeds.”
These oils are also chemically deodorized because, according to LeVeque, they smell like a mixture of fish and dirty feet, causing the production of trans fats (which are notoriously harmful to human health). Colour, these seed oils can have a negative impact on our overall health.
“between [the] Years 1959 and 2008 increase [in] Polyunsaturated fats, especially linoleic acid, are gone [up] 2 1/2 times as much from 9.1% to 21.5%,” LeVeque warns. “We want a 1:1 ratio and we’re very far from that now. When I was writing my first book in 2016, the ratio was 12:1 omega-6 to omega-3 and today’s estimate has more than doubled.”
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