A reply to Dynomight's "Thoughts on seed oil"

It's a distraction (at most)

Somebody called “Dynomight” has written a post on seed oils. I was made aware by several people, including a mention in Slime Mold Time Mold’s latest monthly link post.

First, let me say that I don’t mean anything in this post to come across as mean. I’m just kind of a dick sometimes, and if this post comes across dickish, that’s why.

Author, pictured reading Thoughts on seed oil

Smartest Guy in the Room Syndrome

You might recall my post Seed Oils explain the 8 Mysteries of Obesity. This post is of a similar nature as Slime Mold Time Mold’s critique of seed oil theory, A bad seed. My impression is that somebody sat down and read a bunch of seed oil stuff, but that there isn’t a deeper level of understanding.

Somebody who isn’t knee deep into a complex topic like Modern PUFA Theory (MPT) will of course miss things. And not everybody is deep into MPT. Not everybody needs to, some people need to do plumbing and make chairs and stuff. We can’t all be professional seed oil disrespecters.

The issue with articles like this: they basically always default to the status quo of mainstream nutrition. There’s a bunch of both-sides’ing going on, and then there’s an Appeal to The Status Quo. The subtitle of Dynomight’s post is “Don’t get distracted.”

Seed oils are apparently a distraction. Distraction from what?

My real worry about seed oil theory is that it’s a distraction. If you want to be healthier, we know ways you can change your diet that will help: Increase your overall diet “quality”. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Avoid processed food. Especially avoid processed meats. Eat food with low caloric density. Avoid added sugar. Avoid alcohol. Avoid processed food.

I know this is hard. You could even argue it’s unrealistic. That wouldn’t make it wrong.

See? We already KNOW what causes obesity! Eat a “quality” diet (define quality). Eat fruits and vegetables. Avoid processed food & especially meats. Eat low caloric density. Blah blah blah.

In short, seed oils are a distraction from the retarded¹ status quo that has been failing for 50 years.

The “appeal to it’s hard” is especially annoying. We KNOW how to lose weight, it’s just that EVERYBODY IS A FUCKING LAZY SLOB AND DOESN’T WANT TO EAT FRUITS & VEGETABLES.

Let’s be honest, that’s what the takeaway is: fuck fat people.

Of course we know that vegetables & low caloric density are horseshit when it comes to reversing obesity.

See what I mean about being a dick?

This article is a distraction from learning more

What intrigued me most about Slime Mold Time Mold’s excellent series A Chemical Hunger was mostly the sense of curiosity. They were asking tough questions.

They had some ideas. Hey, maybe it’s lithium? Or magical potato juice? Or living in the mountains?

But mostly, they just pointed out the uncomfortable truth:

We’ve spent 50+ years studying nutrition and we’re
SIGNIFICANTLY worse off than when we started.

Any article that insists we know how to reverse obesity, and if fat people could just EAT THEIR GODDAMN VEGETABLES ONCE IN A WHILE, and then reasons back from there - let’s just say I’m less than impressed.

Modern nutrition is not a court of law. Seed oils are not innocent until proven guilty.

We’re not in 12 Angry Men, sitting calmly around a table and discussing the fine details of a young man being railroaded for a crime he probably didn’t commit.

We’re in the middle of Scream: somebody’s made 12% of Americans diabetic, 43% obese, 72% overweight. And the trend is continuing: we wake up every year to more of the same. Scientists estimate 100% of Americans will look like those people from Wall-E by next Thursday.

We can totally debate who did it and who was innocent and stuff once we’ve stopped the killing.

Until then, everyone in the movie is a suspect unless they get stabbed. (And even that might just be a plot twist.)

What does that mean in diet terms? Cut out as many obesogenic suspects as possible until we see a drastic reversal of obesity.

And seed oils are clearly the #1 suspect.

Maybe it’s not Seed Oils

I am very open to the idea that it’s not seed oils. At the very least, we already know that it’s not JUST seed oils, there are some factors that are at the very least downstream from seed oils: excess protein (for some people). BCAA/glycine balance. Swamping your macros (mixing carbs & fat). Insulin. Maybe fructose (for some people).

Maybe some of these factors are at play even in absence of seed oils. Maybe it was lithium this whole time. Maybe it’s another character who hasn’t been introduced yet. This isn’t a movie - we’re not guaranteed that the killer is one of the highschool kids.

But let’s at least look. I’m very interested in alternative explanations for the obesity epidemic, like Vitamin A Theory, Lithium, Magic Potato Theory, ..

What I don’t find particularly convincing is “We already know, everybody is just really too lazy to do the Hard Work of Eating Fruits & Vegetarbles”-theory.

Issues with Modern PUFA Theory

The Dynomight post brings up several common critiques of MPT:

1. It’s complex

2. It’s difficult to disprove

3. There are many variations/aspects to it

4. Not all proponents agree

5. Public health authorities say saturated fat is bad 🤣 (I’m not kidding)

To quote Dynomight:

That wouldn’t make it wrong.

Let’s address these one by one. Except that last one, that’s just retarded².

Modern PUFA Theory is Complex

You know, not like the mainstream Energy Balance Model:

This is from a paper by Kevin Hall, the final boss & root cause of the diabesity epidemic: The energy balance model of obesity: beyond calories in, calories out.

Remember to take your statins, Kevin. For science.

The main feature of the EBM is, of course, a level of complexity so deep that it is impossible to describe or falsify.

The obvious purpose: hide the fact that modern nutrition science has no effing clue as to what causes obesity, or how to reverse it.

To take a step back: we know that the cause & solution of the obesity epidemic would be somewhat complex. Heck, we’ve been working on it for 50+ years. If it was really trivial, like “eat fruits & vegetables,” somebody would’ve figured it out by now. We wouldn’t need autistic jerks on the internet running diet trials.

Modern PUFA Theory is Difficult to Disprove

Complex hypotheses are difficult to disprove.

The main reasons why MPT is difficult to disprove are as follows:

1. Linoleic acid gets incorporated into cells, with turn over from days to years

2. Linoleic acid gets stored in adipose tissue, with a half-life of 680 days

3. Linoleic acid doesn’t necessarily have a linear obesogenic effect; there seems to be a threshold between 2-8%

4. Linoleic acid is omnipresent in the Western Diet

5. Seed oils are used in animal feeds, and make their way into most animal fats like chicken (#1 source of LA in America) & lard

The combination of these facts means that you can’t simply run an RCT for 30 days, give one group a muffin with soybean oil, and the other a muffin with another fat, and compare the results.

Everybody in the west is constantly bathed in seed oils, and has been their entire lives. So you’d need to de-PUFA them first. This would take years.

In addition, you can’t just avoid literal “seed oils” since the monogastric animals who were fed seed oils now also contain a high level of linoleic acid. So to “avoid seed oils” you really also need to avoid almost all fatty pork (e.g. bacon), fatty chicken. Heck, nuts are very high in linoleic acid naturally.

You see this comparison in “studies disproving seed oils” a lot: they use lard as the saturated fat, contrasting it with a seed oil. But commercial U.S. lard has been shown to be 20-30% linoleic acid, like a medium-bad seed oil. A single strip of thick-cut bacon is probably enough to put you over the safe daily limit.

Should you really want to demonstrate something about saturated fats, you would have to use beef tallow, preferably from suet, butter, or cocoa fat.

To really, really disprove MPT, you would have to do the following:

1. Put a group of people on a <2% linoleic acid diet

2. Keep them there for a 4-8 year washout period, until their adipose LA drops to <2%

3. Now run the experiment

4. You probably have to run it for at least several months

Is that difficult? Sure is. But:

That wouldn’t make it wrong.

We know the correct explanation will be more complex than “eat vegetables”, or we would’ve solved it in 1950. Or whenever vegetables were invented.

There are many Variations of PUFA Theory & not all Proponents Agree

This is true, but it is also true for all theories.

No serious nutrition scientist believes in naive CICO.
- A serious nutrition scientist

CICO is a law of thermodynamics. Are you saying physics isn’t real?!
- Every CICOpath bro on Twitter

As somebody who battles CICOpaths on Twitter daily, I get attacked from both sides. CICO is clearly a strawman, an idea so stupid & so simple that it’s unbelievable I’d ascribe it to anybody.

On the other hand, CICO is literally a law of physics, and even dreaming of criticizing it shows that I’m an idiot who doesn’t believe in science.

I’d say that the seed oil camp isn’t quite as split.

From where I stand, I see the following factions:

1. LA oxidation products are bad

2. Oxidizing LA in the mitochondria is bad

3. An out-of-whack balance of omega-6 (LA) to omega-3 (fish oil) PUFAs is bad

4. All double bonds (and therefore PUFAs, incl. omega-3) are bad

There is some overlap with of these. For example, I personally believe all of them are true to a degree, or on the margin, or in the right context.

Number 1 is hard to deny, but you could retreat to “ok, don’t eat deep-fried foods” and downplay how much of this is actually happening, or what part of the diabesity epidemic this is at the root of.

Number 2 is pretty unknown outside of Hyperlipid/Fire in a Bottle. If you explain it do laymen, their eyes will glaze over because you need to give them an hour of biochem background they’ve never heard of.

Number 3 is pretty mainstream. (And IMO the weakest one.)

Number 4 is maybe the biggest split among the seed oil camp, because it directly contradicts Number 3 (balance) and shits on everybody’s favorite health food: “oily fish rich in polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids.”

Seed Oils: The Mecha-Godzilla in the Room

Pictured: 4-HNE, an oxidation product of linoleic acid, wreaking havoc on you

People like to shit on “mechanistic speculation” but if you don’t have a mechanism, you don’t understand it. If you’re gonna convict somebody of murder, you better have an idea of how he did it. It’s certainly not enough to prove seed oils are guilty, but then it’s not the only thing we have.

Imagine I invented a new drug, and I call it UPFA. UPFA is quite potent:

1. It seems to decrease metabolic rate

2. It triggers the endocannabinoid system, giving people uncontrollable cravings

3. It will get incorporated into your cells and mitochondria, causing dysfunction in whatever the cell is doing

4. It oxidizes at room temperature and even more so human body temperature

5. It’s intended use is for cooking (aka heating)

6. It will get incorporated into your adipose tissue, therefore sticking around for years even after you stop using it

7. If we use it for deep frying, which we do, up to 25% of its total mass (!) oxidizes into toxic aldehydes and other carcinogens within days to weeks

8. It gets incorporated into LDL, which we think is suspiciously lurking around heart disease a lot. And we actually think that oxidized LDL is the culprit, and literally measure oxLDL as a CVD proxy.

9. It happily turns into trans-fat AT ROOM TEMPERATURE, which we DEFINITELY think are super dangerous and carcinogenic and are literally banned. In fact, over 90% of UPFA sold contains trans-fats at unsafe levels.

Should the FDA approve UPFA for 25% of our total calories?

There is no Upside to Seed Oils. Avoiding them is FREE!

I would understand a position like this:

Hey, seed oils are in all the processed food, and they’re used in deep frying, which we know to be terribly unhealthy. We also know they have terrible oxidation products, and they oxidize much more quickly than other fats.

In addition, nobody really uses seed oils for their great taste or culinary excellence. They’re just the cheapest fats we have.

Nobody’s ever said “Wow, I really love the flavor of that soybean oil, is that imported from the Soy region of Italy?”

They’re also known to easily turn into trans fats when heated, and 90%+ of seed oils sold contain significant amounts of trans fats.

And seed oils are also the most recent category of industrial, man-made foods added to our food supply: we’ve had refined wheat & sugar forever, but seed oils were only invented in 1865. They are, by definition, “ultra-processed” if you’re into that sort of thing.

The epidemiology & timeline largely lines up, but hey, correlation doesn’t prove causation.

There might be some studies where <2% linoleic acid doesn’t make mice obese, whereas 8% does, on an isocaloric diet. But that’s only in mice.

Anecdotally, many people who remove seed oils from their diets aggressively see unbelievable benefits. This includes losing 50-100lbs effortlessly, without ever feeling hungry. Regaining control over their hunger & appetite. Remission of serious idiopathic, but probably inflammation-related diseases like IBS, asthma, and even some auto-immune diseases.

Soybean oil injections is also literally how we routinely cause insulin resistance and liver failure in lab mice. This is not found in experiments; this is what we know happens reliably so we use this fact to set up experiments.

Some of the most effective internet diets happen to almost entirely cut out seed oils, and if you read the experience reports, the most successful cases often tend to cut out seed oils on top of whatever the intervention was.

But you know, it’s not an open & shut case. I’d be interested to see some more evidence, particularly on the human side, and in longer-term studies.

Until then, I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone eat seed oils. After all, literally the only reason is the cheap price point. Cutting out seed oils would also cut out nearly the entirety of “ultra-processed foods.” It would encourage people to cook at home, or patronize higher-quality restaurants, and avoid deep-fried foods.

We might find a better candidate for who did obesity, with a better fitting timeline, epidemiology, even more mechanistic explanations, even more studies in mice, and maybe even human RCTs, although in all fairness we would never be able to get RCTs of suspected carcinogens approved.

This is like smoking; you don’t HAVE to smoke. If you’re unclear about the evidence, you can just sit this one out and eat all these other, older, more delicious fats instead with literally no downside except a few cents price increase per serving.

But that’s not the position. Apparently we need a written confession from seed oils that they deliberately planned the obesity epidemic, a detailed plan of action, and notarized receipts.

Until then, I guess we should just sit down and eat vegetables.

Some comments on the post directly

Most of this has just been a more generic critique (=sparkling water-fueled rant) of the attitude or general category of thought.

But let me also comment on some of the specific things said. This is probably one of the more “constructive” parts of this missive.

Definitely maybe

Dynomight writes on mechanisms:

Our last argument is that we know how seed oils hurt you. People seem to suggest five possible mechanisms:

1. Maybe linoleic acid (common in seed oils) is metabolized into arachidonic acid, and thereby causes inflammation.

2. Maybe linoleic acid becomes oxidized LDL and thereby causes inflammation.

3. Maybe it’s the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats you eat that matters.

4. Maybe vegetable oil doesn’t make you feel full like animal fats do, meaning vegetable oils lead to overeating.

5. Maybe vegetable oils have an increased propensity to become trans fats.

Maybe?

Pretty much all of these are just facts, not “maybes.” You could argue that the way the sentences are formulated lets you slip in a shadow of doubt.

E.g. “OJ Simpson was a football player & a movie star & killed his wife.”

Yes, that compound statement is maybe not proven in a court of law, but there’s no doubt about the first 2 fragments.

Similarly, we KNOW LA metabolizes into AA. All the steps of linoleic acid metabolism are well-documented.

We know PUFAs oxidize more readily, at lower temperatures, more rapidly, than MUFAs or SFAs. That’s just chemistry.

We know that the omega-3:omega-6 ratio in cell phospholipids has a pretty huge impact on the cell’s functioning, that’s quite a mainstream view.

We know PUFAs more readily oxidize into trans fats than any other fats, and that seed oils (and animal fats from monogastric animals fed seed oils) are much higher in PUFAs than most traditional fats used for cooking.

The only quibble is about the definition of inflammation, and for 4. if you believe in Hyperlipid’s ROS theory.

A monster lives in your garage

All of these things are possible. Maybe an invisible dragon really does live in your garage. But the more such features a theory has, the less I trust it.

The thing is that the existence of a monster in your garage is not up for debate. It’s given 12% of Americans people who enter the garage diabetes, made 43% obese, and 72% overweight.

We’re just trying to find out if it’s an invisible dragon, or an invisible landshark, or an invisible madman with a machete.

There’s no question that something fishy is going on in that garage. If your hypothesis is “maybe you don’t have a diabesity epidemic in your garage,” have I got news for you..

Timelines

True, seed oil consumption has skyrocketed along with obesity. But hold on. If seed oil consumption is causing obesity, then people should have started getting fat after seed oils started increasing. Did they?

How early would obesity have to have started increasing to falsify the idea that it’s caused by seed/vegetable oil? 1970? 1940? Earlier?

Yes, earlier. In the west, 1768. That’s when seed oils were invented in their modern, industrial incarnation. I’m not sure why all seed oil defenders get this so wrong.

American dairy producers urged Congress to intervene against adulteration of butter with seed oils in 1880. Seed-oil based margarine had apparently taken over 1/5th of the entire butter market already.

Half of all American-made lard was estimated to contain seed oils by 1888. That’s on top of the linoleic acid from pig feed that would already be present in the lard. We’re talking added seed oils.

In 1890, the Canadian government investigated this adulterated, unseemly & soft American lard.

Now people have managed to get diabetes or become obese before 1768, but it was exceedingly rare. But, technically, we knew that the ancient egyptians produced & consumed seed oils, although it was probably just the rich pharaos, which is why they got heart diseased mummies.

The timeline is best explained by Tucker Goodrich in this most excellent blog post.

Inter-country obesity

If you compare countries by obesity rates and seed oil consumption, it’s not the most obvious correlation.

This is where MPT is, unfortunately, a little bit complex. But we knew that it would have to be complex to explain reality, and there’s no less complex hypothesis out there that fits the data.

Independent of what you think causes obesity, it’s obvious that genetics plays SOME role. I’d say it predetermines how liable you are to get obese from certain environmental/dietary factors.

For example it’s no surprise that East Asians put on less fat on average. They even use a different BMI scale.

On the other hand, they’re just as likely, maybe more, to get diabetic. I explored this in my post Diabetes vs. Obesity.

In short, the Chinese are significantly leaner than Americans, but they are just as diabetic.

This is probably just a different phenotype. Some people even think that obesity is a protective mechanism against things like diabetes. I’m not sure that’s true, but if we broaden our view from just obesity to “metabolic issues” like obesity OR diabetes, we already get a much better picture.

But still, let’s take a look at the data. The Dynomight post contains this graphic:

Ok, not exactly strung up on the 45° line, but it vaguely looks like an up-and-to-the-right trend to me. Unfortunately, no regression is shown.

Luckily, the source is provided. (I reused my old obesity data from the Obesity vs. Diabetes post, so my obesity levels might be slightly different.)

Ok, it does go up for sure, if only slightly. Weird how those super obese countries at the bottom right seem to have near-zero omega-6 consumption. Kind of hard to believe, if I’m honest. Not sure if that data was collected correctly.

Let’s exclude them just for fun. Begone, Micronesia and Polynesia!

Goes up even more. Maybe this isn’t “beyond the shadow of a doubt” obvious, but it sure looks like a positive relationship? It certainly doesn’t seem like a point against.

And, just because the individual continents were actually interesting for Diabetes vs. Obesity, let’s do those real quick.

Africa, check:

Asia, check:

Europe, kinda meh but not negative either:

North America, slightly negative.

Huh, Bahamas eats nearly no omega-6? Hard to believe, they are like 3 miles off the coast of Florida. Just the seed oil fumes would do it. Just for funsies, let’s exclude them:

Oceania w/ suspicious outliers Micronesia/Polynesia:

And without. Yea buddy!

South America, yup:

So while it’s not a perfect 45° line every time, it sure as heck doesn’t seem like a major point against.

Have I excluded arbitrary and random things I didn’t like on no basis whatsoever? Sure, a few times. But just to show that these things jump around like crazy, based on a few small adjustments to the data. I’m sure you could group the data to show anything you wanted here.

Overall I don’t think this is a particular strong piece of epidemiology either way. The data’s just way too unreliable. We know that the American USDA is wrong, after decades, about the linoleic acid content of lard. Most manufacturer macros/numbers and estimates are based on the USDA data, including probably this data. For example, I’ve heard numbers like 25% of U.S. calories from seed oils, not 7%.

For example, let’s use Dynomight’s own graph from earlier:

People (from 2000-2010) seem to have about 80lbs of vegetable-based oils “available” to them.

(80lbs * 454g/lb * 9kcal/g) / 365 days

895.56 kcal/day

Ok, maybe “available” doesn’t mean consumed. But let’s also remember these people had, on average, 24% linoleic acid in their body fat. So it’s not like they poured all that “available” seed oil down the drain.

How many of the other 190 or so countries in the world, you think, have better data?

What would convince me to jump ship?

If you showed me a better hypothesis than Modern PUFA theory, I’d be happy to buy into it. But that’s a pretty high bar. The hypothesis would have to explain:

1. A steady, growing trend in obesity, diabetes, and heart disease starting around 1850-1880, continuing today, with still massive increases in the last decade

2. How some people can’t seem to ever get satiated, get morbidly obese, and then, with minor dietary hacks (potato diet, ex150 cream diet), effortlessly lose 50-100lbs without ever going hungry

3. Mechanisms more severe than carcinogenic & endocannabinoid-stimulating oxidative byproducts at room/body temperature

4. At least as good epidemiology or better than MPT

5. That this new factor X is present in nearly all ultra-processed foods

6. How this new factor X magically transforms the healthy, wholesome potato into the most evil of ultra-processed junk foods, fries & potato chips, with just 1 simple trick (hint: WHAT WAS IT FRIED IN?)

There’s a saying that describes mainstream nutrition well:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something
when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

On the other hand, I’d describe my position like this:

It is difficult to get a man to disregard something when he has
effortlessly lost 75lbs doing it, without going hungry for a single day.

Especially when the proposed alternative is literally as retarded³ as “eat fruits & vegetables & low caloric density."

C’mon, man. Do better. At least use handwavey, unfalsifiable terms like “brain” and “satiety signaling” and “ghrelin-leptin resistance.”

Also, sorry, I don’t mean no disrespect, it’s just that I’m a dick and I get offended when people talk nonsense about nutrition/obesity.

1. Retarded means slow

2. Retarded means slow.

3. Retarded means slow.