Cholesterol Has Been Framed For Crimes Committed By Seed Oils

On a healthy, seed oil-free diet there is no “bad” cholesterol. But when your diet is full of seed oils, LDL becomes a problem.

The Heart Healthy Oil That’s Anything But

You may have noticed a pretty, red, heart-healthy label on certain vegetable oils. What you may not have noticed is an asterisk under the claim that says words to the effect of there’s only preliminary and limited evidence to support this statement. That snippet of legalese has quite a history behind it.

In the 1950s, margarine and cooking oil advertisers promoted their products as healthy due to the known cholesterol-lowering effect of polyunsaturates — the main fatty acid in seed oils. A string of prominent doctors objected to these tactics, since there was no evidence whatsoever to support the claim. Decades of wrangling finally resulted in a law prohibiting the promotion of margarine “or any other food, fat, or food oil” as a way of preventing disease unless it was grounded in science. A happy example of the Federal Trade Commission protecting the public that was over and done with back in 1974.

Which leads to my next point: we are here, nearly 50 years later, with no further evidence to support the heart-healthy claim than with what we had back then. Yet, the idea that lowering cholesterol prevents heart disease is still planted into our minds and remains the foundation upon which all of preventative cardiology rests. If your LDL cholesterol, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, is “too high,” your doctor will put the fear of death into you until you lower it.

To be clear, the polyunsaturates in seed oils do successfully lower total and LDL cholesterol. This is supported by a great deal of evidence, and nobody debates this. What’s more, as the dairy and other saturated-fat, rich animal fats in our food supply have been increasingly replaced by seed oils, our cholesterol levels as a country have dropped across the board. The average American’s total cholesterol is about 20 points lower today than in the mid-1960s, when we first started tracking. This drop is attributable to diet change, not drugs. So it’s absolutely true that swapping saturated fat for polyunsaturated fat lowers cholesterol levels. Now, here’s a question for you: so what?

The end goal of these dietary recommendations is not to lower cholesterol — it’s to help you live longer. Dying with lower cholesterol levels, what one of my patients termed “a Harvard death,” is not the goal.

Keep Your Eye On The Ball

Although seed oils do lower cholesterol, they do not keep you alive. At least we don’t have any evidence yet to support that idea — after 70 years of looking for it. We do, however, have evidence that foods fried in these oils contain “extremely high levels” of toxins known to cause cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Rather shockingly, a 2016 NIH study showed that for every 30 points these oils cut cholesterol, “there was a 22% higher risk of death.” It’s difficult to know, however, what exactly the people in the study died from, as 146 of the original 295 autopsy files were lost.

What’s clouding the issue is the fact that we are dying less often from heart attacks today than we were back in 1961, when heart attack deaths peaked. But it would be incorrect to assume that the drop in heart attacks means these cholesterol-lowering oils are heart healthy — or, for that matter, that the decline had anything to do with our lower cholesterol. The biggest factor behind the 50% drop in heart attack death rates is the fact that we’re smoking less.— much less. In 1961, both heart attack deaths and smoking peaked at their all-time highest levels. The average American (including children, smokers, and nonsmokers) smoked 400 cigarettes that year. By 2010, the per capita rate of smoking had fallen to 100, and heart attacks reached their lowest point. Since then, smoking rates continue to fall, while heart attack deaths are leveling out and appear to be climbing again.

I’d like to share a striking, though narrowly appreciated, secret: Harvard — the primary advocate for seed oils — has yet to nail down exactly how the polyunsaturated fats in these oils lower cholesterol. They don’t seem to care. Reviewing the medical literature reveals that, over the past 60 years, only two articles, found in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism and The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, discuss the subject — both hypothetical.

Why should you care what Harvard’s nutrition leadership knows about seed oils?

Harvard is the biggest advocate of the cholesterol theory of heart disease, and thanks to the university, all of preventative cardiology rests on the idea that lowering cholesterol is beneficial. Harvard works with the American Heart Association (AHA) to shape the U.S. government dietary policy regarding fat. Our K-12 state-funded college

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases