Should You Avoid Seed Oils? | Alan Aragon & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | let's talk about seed oils the dreaded seed oil debate should we fear them or not fear them let's

00:00:10.720 | assume somebody is going to maintain calories like they're not adding seed oils as a source

00:00:16.080 | of additional calories above what they would normally be taking in but let's say they have

00:00:20.240 | the choice they can consume a seed oil like canola oil or soybean oil or they can consume olive oil

00:00:29.120 | in place of it and let's just compare like which one is better if either and is there anything

00:00:36.720 | inherently bad about seed oils and i want to make sure that we talk about the processing because

00:00:42.400 | people will say ah the seed oils aren't bad if they come from a quality source but most of the

00:00:46.640 | seed oils are through this high pressure high temperature refinement process and that's the

00:00:51.600 | problem so what's the deal with seed oils okay the big picture is that people over vilify seed oils

00:00:59.760 | one side over vilify seed oils just like the other side over vilifies let's say your standard you know

00:01:06.720 | land animal fats like beef tallow butter lard but when you compare those two like

00:01:15.520 | seed oils versus the butter beef tallow lard you compare the evidence base of those two things

00:01:22.400 | you can find more dirt as far as adverse health outcomes from the land animal fats compared to the

00:01:30.320 | seed oils and and that is the reality of the matter um it's really weird that seed oils are being vilified

00:01:39.920 | right now because that's not the scientific consensus uh people who have their nose in the literature

00:01:46.560 | are are just kind of scratching their heads at the whole seed oil scare thing and there are some people

00:01:50.880 | on the fringe who laser in on their philosophies and ideologies about seed oils but then all you need

00:01:57.920 | what you need to do is ask a short set of questions okay and you specified the seed oils in the question

00:02:05.360 | which is great i mean that you're you're ahead of like everybody else so what seed oil are we talking about

00:02:11.680 | what what kind of dosage are we talking about and um what health outcome are you concerned with

00:02:20.000 | and then what trial do you find most compelling that supports your fear of the seed oil and so

00:02:26.160 | everybody like nine out of ten people immediately will say ah okay you want to know what seed oil canola

00:02:32.720 | oil okay great let's look at the canola oil literature and one of the hardest things to do

00:02:38.800 | is find dirt on canola oil amidst all of the positive effects

00:02:44.880 | in almost every trial of canola oil there is even a meta-analysis comparing directly

00:02:53.200 | the effect of canola oil versus olive oil on blood lipid profile and

00:02:58.720 | maybe you know unsurprisingly to to some but surprisingly to most canola oil outperforms olive

00:03:07.680 | oil for improving blood lipids in the sense of um lowering ldl cholesterol that's surprising to me

00:03:14.080 | because i assumed that olive oil can do no wrong you know what i i was i was taken aback by that

00:03:22.320 | too i i would have been just fine with seeing there's no damn difference one of these anti-climactic

00:03:28.160 | results but when you take a look at canola oil's composition it has a kind of an extraordinarily high

00:03:37.200 | proportion of omega-3 fatty acids compared to olive oil and compared to the rest of the seed oils for

00:03:42.960 | that omega-3 i thought it was high in omega-6 it's it does contain omega-6 and that is the

00:03:48.800 | predominant um fatty acid in canola but it has a high omega-3 content as well it has a high proportion

00:03:58.400 | of omega-3 i don't know the exact proportion of omega-3 but what makes canola kind of special as far

00:04:03.840 | as the vegetable oils go is its high omega-3 content wow okay um that's going to surprise a number of

00:04:11.440 | people including me my sense is that any ill effects to come from seed oils are because of who seed oils

00:04:21.360 | hang out with yeah right this is sort of the old uh if you're old enough uh like me to remember i'm 49

00:04:27.920 | turning 50 in september so i'm not quite 53 but um we're of the same generation and and there was we

00:04:33.520 | grew up without the internet right well there was a discussion around cannabis for instance we've done

00:04:37.680 | several episodes about it we didn't paint it as good or bad although i do believe that young people

00:04:42.880 | especially young males smoking high thc cannabis can predispose to psychosis i mean there's a bunch

00:04:49.840 | of debate around this but back in the day it was if you use cannabis soon you'll be using crack cocaine

00:04:56.800 | that was kind of like the argument right over time people realize that cannabis has its own potential

00:05:01.600 | benefits and its own potential risks right depending on a number of things it seems that people who consume

00:05:08.560 | a lot of seed oils consume them in conjunction with a lot of starches and perhaps with added sugars as

00:05:15.440 | well and when you lump those together you end up with a pro-inflammatory often hypercaloric uh set of

00:05:22.320 | conditions and people aren't getting enough quality protein and then we know what that picture looks like

00:05:26.800 | it looks like the united states of america yeah right or most of the united states of america and so

00:05:32.480 | i do think that there's something about who olive oil and grass-fed butter hang out with

00:05:38.640 | that has the opposite effect like people go oh this is a really high quality olive oil generally in my

00:05:45.760 | mind are the sort of people who are thinking about the quality of the salad ingredients they're thinking

00:05:50.640 | about the sourdough bread uh as opposed to maybe a more refined sugar containing bread and the people who

00:05:56.880 | talk about grass-fed butter are thinking about the quality of the meat sources and they're not eating other

00:06:02.000 | protein sources that are laid in with other you know preservatives so to me i think a lot of this

00:06:07.120 | quote-unquote seed oil debate will be resolved when we start pulling apart the individual components

00:06:12.640 | they're riding in the wrong vehicle right right and i and i think that um from a cost perspective you

00:06:19.200 | know this hadn't occurred to me until i started voicing a little bit of this online in which case

00:06:23.040 | you learn a lot uh quickly and what i learned was you know there were a number of people who said yeah

00:06:28.400 | i'm hearing all this great stuff about grass-fed butter and olive oil but there are people for whom

00:06:33.520 | the cost margins are just too high to consume all organic and or olive oil and and you know and you

00:06:42.400 | have to listen to that and say okay well you know for people needing to feed an entire family um you know

00:06:48.160 | perhaps some of these other fat sources uh are more affordable and therefore what are the real health

00:06:53.440 | risks with those so anyway i was a bit of editorializing there but um i have a feeling

00:06:58.720 | some of this is going to shake out in the in the in the fine parsing of these different diets i think

00:07:04.240 | people oversimplify it what people do with seed oils is what people do with dairy they say dairy

00:07:10.480 | as if it's some monolithic thing you know with dairy you've got the hard cheeses you've got butter you've

00:07:16.800 | got yogurt you've got milk of varying fat levels you know um you're kind of hard pressed to find

00:07:23.840 | negative stuff on yogurt you're you'd be kind of hard pressed actually to find negative stuff on hard

00:07:29.200 | cheeses um butter of of all of the you know the range of dairy foods butter is the one that you can

00:07:35.280 | find the dirt on um similar story with seed oils like try to find some negative stuff on

00:07:43.040 | flax seed chia seed sesame seed uh you can't i mean yeah if you dig hard enough you can try to find some

00:07:52.240 | negative stuff on canola it's very tough too um even things like soybean oil and corn oil you can

00:07:59.600 | look at the literature and it doesn't paint this sinister picture either and so i think people are

00:08:05.920 | missing the forest for the trees in general when they're focused on honestly the cooking oils you

00:08:12.640 | shouldn't be drowning or deep frying your stuff on a regular basis anyway so um yeah and and beyond that

00:08:21.600 | when you look at the effects of seed oil that are examined in the literature for various outcomes you

00:08:27.280 | know everything from the intermediate outcomes like biomarker effects all the way to the in quotes hard

00:08:34.400 | end points like mortality heart attack you know cardiac events and heart disease so the hard end points as

00:08:44.880 | well as the intermediate or soft end points they're all superior with the seed oils compared to butter

00:08:53.760 | um lard beef tallow on the whole so there is a severe misunderstanding and falsely founded

00:09:04.160 | scaremongering with respect to seed oils to the point where i just think it's incredibly silly

00:09:10.720 | people just have to get a hold of themselves and focus on the overall quality of the diet

00:09:16.960 | and not really get into these absolute you know death matches over what oils they use to cook their foods

00:09:25.600 | i am a huge extra virgin olive oil fan that is my go-to that's what i love i could honestly i could

00:09:32.960 | like do shots of the stuff i love it that much delicious yeah and um and i i love sesame oil

00:09:39.440 | you know but sesame is a seed oil but sesame oil has been consumed by very healthy populations

00:09:44.720 | throughout asia for the last 5 000 years um and so i i don't necessarily like canola oil you know like

00:09:53.440 | as far as the sort of the stickiness and the oddness about it but i i'll still acknowledge that the literature shows

00:10:00.000 | overwhelmingly positive stuff about it in the majority of trials um but i prefer olive oil and and i would

00:10:08.400 | almost feel more comfortable recommending that if if you like olive oil then that should be your go-to

00:10:15.600 | rather than oils that are i guess maybe frankensteined or engineered to a degree and you mentioned the the

00:10:22.800 | whole idea of the like how these oils are produced like one of the concerns is hexane use to extract

00:10:29.120 | the oils from the seed cakes and stuff like that so they the use of solvents to get these oils out of

00:10:34.800 | their native source uh i there's some interesting literature showing higher hexane levels in um olive

00:10:42.480 | oil than in i forget it was some some other seed oil whether it was canola or sunflower

00:10:49.760 | and so but nevertheless the hexane amounts were well below established safe thresholds and so i think

00:10:59.680 | i really do think that people are getting sort of lost in the weeds and kind of missing the forest

00:11:04.240 | for the trees focusing on the little grains of sand and missing the big boulders

Should You Avoid Seed Oils? | Alan Aragon & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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