About Vegetable Oils
From the RAVE-diet book: NO VEGETABLE OILS
Strictly speaking, vegetable oils are part of the Refined Foods group because they contain no fiber, they’re devoid of nutrients and they are 100% fat. They also constitute a whopping 11% of the calories Americans consume. Putting 2 tbsp. of oil in your salad has the fat equivalent of 2 scoops of ice cream. From a weight loss perspective, eliminating vegetable oils is a very easy – and healthy – way to cut calories.
There are other problems with vegetable oils, however. These oils contain high levels of saturated fat, which is essentially “cholesterol in disguise” because it stimulates your liver to make more cholesterol than your body needs and ends up clogging arteries. In fact, adding any oil to your food will raise your cholesterol level, even more than eating cholesterol itself.
Hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans-fats) are particularly efficient at clogging arteries and depriving your body of oxygen. These oils are found in all kinds of refined foods such as chips, cookies, crackers, cereals, breakfast bars and other baked goods. Every time you eat a bag of French pastries, croissants, or cookies it’s no different than biting into a piece of meat.
In packaged goods, look for the word “hydrogenated” in the ingredients list and put it back on the shelf. And any food that’s deep-fried, such as fast food French fries or donuts, will contain these artery-clogging oils. Most commercial brands of peanut butter will also use hydrogenated oils. Purchase the type where the oil is separated and you have to refrigerate it, and then pour off the excess oil on top before stirring it up. Or, better yet, grind your own nut butter at a health food store.
Hydrogenated oils are the “glue” that holds refined carbohydrates together in order to increase shelf life. In fact, the healthy amount of trans fats in your diet should be exactly zero. Ingredients used for longer shelf lives in food translate into longer illnesses and a shorter shelf life for you.
Fried animal foods, such as fried chicken, are probably the most dangerous foods in existence because they combine high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol, with hydrogenated oils. In other words, your blood vessels are getting a triple-whammy when you eat fried animal foods.
Even seemingly “innocent” foods like movie popcorn are dangerous as they are usually popped in coconut or palm oil, both of which are extremely high in saturated fat.
The current rage among some health authorities is olive oil. It’s ironic that our health authorities are advising an overweight nation to eat the most concentrated form of fat on the planet, which packs more calories, pound-for-pound, than butter. The basic reason (presumably) is that they are trying to move people away from margarine, although these same authorities (e.g., The American Heart Association and virtually all major health experts) were praising margarine just a few decades ago – and quoting studies purporting to show margarine, containing hydrogenated oils, was heart-healthy!
Although olive oil is healthier than butter or margarine, that’s not saying much. It’s probably the worse way to get heart-healthy fats because there’s almost no nutritional bang for the calorie buck. In fact olive and other oils are so nutritionally bankrupt that Joel Fuhrman, M.D., gives oils a score of 1 out of 100, just above refined sweets, which score a zero.
Olive oil is 100% fat, contains high concentrations of saturated fat while the fiber, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals of the olive itself have all been stripped away. In clinical studies on humans, olive oil has been shown to be as bad for the heart as eating roast beef.11
In addition, the Omega-3’s in vegetable oils are highly unstable and tend to decompose and unleash free radicals that cause damage to cells. Vegetable oils have also been implicated in several different studies with cancer and polyunsaturated fat turn out to be the strongest promoter of skin cancers of all the foodstuffs we eat.12
Vegetable oils also suppress the immune system and actually promote the spread of some cancers.13 Simply put, olive and other vegetable oils are bankrupt foods that have little nutritional value, a very high caloric cost and actually do damage to your body. If you’re after the good fat in olives, get it from the olives themselves, not the denatured oil.
Some highly questionable studies14 claim to show a “slower progression” of heart disease when people consume olive oil, but having a slower progression of heart disease hardly makes the case that olive oil is heart-healthy, assuming such a causal relationship exists in the first place. Other studies have shown it is not the olive oil at all, but the high fiber content in a traditional Mediterranean-type diet that accounts for lower rates of heart disease.15 A diet is not heart-healthy unless it arrests and reverses heart disease and only a whole, plant-based diet – which specifically excludes all oils – has been proven to do that. Adding oils to such a diet only impairs its effectiveness.
The model for the Mediterranean diet harks back to the ‘50’s and before when people, especially in the island of Crete, were virtually free of heart disease – despite their indulgence in olive oil. This was not because of the olive oil, but because they ate primarily vegetables and whole grains, a little fish and got lots of exercise. Today, their consumption of olive oil has remained the same (if not increased), but their consumption of whole plant foods has plummeted, as has their exercise. As a result, heart disease and obesity have skyrocketed. Olive oil has nothing to do with preventing heart disease and clinical studies have shown that it promotes arterial lesions.16 It’s just another magic bullet that is a big, fat fantasy promoted by the olive oil industry determined to get high levels of fat back into our diets.
The leading health authorities in reversing heart disease with diet, including Drs. Caldwell Esselstyn, Joel Fuhrman, John McDouglall and Dean Ornish, all agree that vegetables oils should be excluded from a heart-healthy diet. These are doctors who actually reverse heart disease, as opposed to those who just talk about it or promote the greasy stuff because of financial ties to the olive oil industry. In fact, there has not been a single case of heart disease arrest or reversal where any vegetable oil was a part of the diet. So, if olive oil is so “heart-healthy,” why would doctors who reverse heart disease specifically exclude it? Because they consider vegetable oils to be “heart dangerous” and so should you.
As we saw in The Laws of Cancer, even the good fat in oils has been shown to unleash dangerous free radicals and promote the spread of cancer cells, whereas the good fat in natural, whole foods is stable and does not display this behavior. Fat should be released into the blood stream slowly and you can only get that slow release by eating natural plant foods in their natural packages that still contain their fiber.
In a nutshell, here’s the argument against oils: all dietary fats – be they animal or plant fats of all kinds – at levels above 20% of total calories, cause heart disease. This has been demonstrated in many clinical tests.17 In order to prevent heart disease, you have to reduce your overall fat intake. A diet of 100% whole plant foods is as heart-healthy as you can get. Why introduce a highly concentrated form of fat, such as vegetable oil, that will surely bring your fat intake level into an unsafe zone?
Oils should be put in vehicles and machinery, not in your body. In fact, the original use of Canola oil was to lubricate machinery. Then someone came up with the bright idea that people might actually eat it. (These days, some are even converting their cars to run on vegetable oil, like my friend Tim Tye, the Raw Food Guy!) Flaxseed oil is commonly used as a thinner in paints and varnishes and when consumed in high quantities, can hamper the blood’s ability to clot.
Instead of using vegetable oils for cooking, cook at lower temperatures and use water to make your own broth – or use the substitutes below. You’ll be surprised at how well they work. And with a little practice, you’ll soon find you prefer the cleaner taste. It’s like the difference between eating peaches in heavy syrup and eating fresh peaches right off the tree. Once you stop using oils, you will be able to taste the difference and you’ll never go back. (See Cooking Without Oil)
Oil substitutes for sautéing: apple juice, vegetable stock, vinegars.
Oil substitutes in baked goods: applesauce, pureed bananas or stewed prunes (use non-stick pans)
For salads, choose a dressing without oil, such as Paula’s No-Oil dressings (you can find these at health food stores and increasingly at regular grocery stores) or a vinegar-based dressing (if you are not O+), such as a Balsamic or brown rice seasoned vinegar dressing.
Change to the RAVE Diet and you can get off aspirin and other blood thinning medicines. Check out www.RAVEdiet.com for the DVD.
