"Others, equally adamant, claim that treadmill miles are actually harder, perhaps because they’re stabbing themselves in the face with a fork to relieve the boredom."
Interesting. I hate the dreadmill, but it does work.
Reflections on barefoot-style running, healthy diets, and moving in the right direction.
"Others, equally adamant, claim that treadmill miles are actually harder, perhaps because they’re stabbing themselves in the face with a fork to relieve the boredom."
Interesting. I hate the dreadmill, but it does work.
"Taubes answers about the way I expected him to. Thoughtfully, but wheat and linoleic acid have not been focuses of his research."
SB, starting at time 43:46: "There has been some recent interest, outside of sugar, in things like processed vegetable oils. And there's a lot of people pointing to that as a competing hypothesis for some of our health issues. What is your, sort of, thoughts on the fact that, you know, we didn't have processed vegetable oils in the diet since the late 1800s, essentially, in any significant quantity since maybe Proctor & Gamble lobbied the American Heart Association to include Crisco in the diet in the 1920s. What are your thoughts on that particular substance as far as, ah, being a potential driver for some of these health issues?
GT: "I can give you a firm 'I don't know'."
GT: "Um, and I was thinking about this [in] my latest book. And I know, you know, my friends, some of my friends believe that — people that I respect, and their intelligence I respect, uh, believe that processed vegetable oils are playing a major role. They could be.
"My feeling is, you can see the effects of sugar and refined grains in populations that didn't have processed vegetable oils. You know, uh, South Pacific Islanders uh, Native Americans pre 1940s...
"There was a large observation prior to the 1960s that obesity and diabetes and heart disease and hypertension could be attributed to processed grains and sugars. Its effect... If you think of it like a, uh, criminal case... [skip elaboration here] ...Some of them predate the spread of processed vegetable oils to those populations, but they don't predate the appearance of sugar and white flour, particularly sugar. Then I think sugar is always at the scene of the crime and vegetable oils aren't."
"...Soy oil worries me. But soy oil is processed soy and soy fats and we had the Japanese consuming soy well before they had elevating rates of obesity and diabetes. So there's ways I see that that hypothesis can be refuted in a way that the sugar hypothesis can't."
So my general feeling is that if we could find a population that didn't eat sugar, but did eat Crisco, we could see what the effects of Crisco are. And disassociate them from sugar. And we can find populations that ate sugar but didn't eat Crisco and we see obesity and diabetes in those populations.
"So the fundamental problem to me, and this is the argument I make in my book, is you add sugar to any diet, you're going to have problems — you know, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome. Vegetable oils on top of that might make it worse....
"The other thing that worries me about the vegetable oil hypothesis, and I've said this to my friends, is..."
"...If the vegetable oils were bad for them, I would expect to see some sign of it, in those studies. Um, and I don't. And that doesn't mean that the hypothesis is wrong, but it would seem that somehow... It could be that these people would be much healthier still, if they were eating butter, lard instead of rapeseed oil. And so all we see there is that they're a little bit healthier, and not a lot healthier. And that's the kind of problem with those trials. Who knows...."
"I don't know what to make of that hypothesis. I feel bad that I don't pay it enough attention."
"The U.S. recognized the progress of the cottonseed industry and began to include cottonseed oil mills in the annual U.S. census in 1860."
"The early refined cottonseed oil was light in flavor and slightly yellow, which was perfect for the dilution of expensive olive oil. The adulteration was undetectable, but eventually led to tariffs on the outgoing U.S. cottonseed oil and all exports to Italy were discontinued."
"...dairy interests in twenty-six states met in New York City, in 1886, to urge Congress to intervene in behalf of their fight on oleomargarine."
"To these interests it seemed that American oleomargarine was suddenly and rapidly capturing their butter market, having already displaced "one-fifth of the purest product of the dairy""
"The eleven cotton states cast 66 of the 101 votes against the measure in the House and 18 of the 24 negative votes in the Senate."
"By the late 1880s, the domestic demand for cottonseed oil increased when the price of lard became high. Initially, meat packers secretly were adding cottonseed oil to lard. This process was discovered when a slaughter and meatpacking company, Armour and Co., realized that they had been receiving deliveries of more lard than the existing hog population could have produced. The adulterations of lard lead to a Congressional investigation, which resulted in the mandatory use of the term “lard compound.”
"Compound lard was estimated, in 1888, to constitute about half of the total of 600,- 000,000 pounds of lard produced in the country and about forty per cent of the 320,000,000 pounds exported; and this compound consisted of mixtures of pure lard, beef stearine, and cottonseed oil, with the oil estimated at forty per cent."
"Among the sample of American lards mentioned in the tables there appears to be only one which is genuine... Generally the manufacturers in the United States make no pretence of exporting pure lard. The chief adulterant found is cotton seed oil..."
"Studies of the Sioux of the South Dakota Crow Creek Reservation in the 1920s, Arizona Apaches in the late 1950s, North Carolina Cherokees in the early 1960s, and Oklahoma tribes in the 1970s all reported levels of obesity comparable to that in the United States today, but in populations living in extreme poverty."
"The staple of the Sioux diet on the reservation was “grease bread,” fried in fat and made from white flour..."
"All of these tribes have attempted to maintain their native pattern whenever possible, but increasingly have depended on items purchased at stores and trading posts. The demand for sugar, coffee, tea, flour, and lard is noted for all of these groups in modern times."
"A study was made of an Indian reservation in New York State for comparison and for making an estimate of typical modern American Indian life with regard to dental caries and nutrition. For this study a band of 450 in the Tuscarora Reservation northeast of Niagara Falls was visited... In both reservations they were using commercial vegetable fats, jams and marmalades, sweetened goods, syrups and confections very liberally."
"...the imported foods of white flour, sugar, sugar products, syrup, polished rice, and the like..."
Australian Imports from America, 1903-1907. [2.4] |
"...Japan’s dietary habits have seen dramatic changes in the postwar decades. Meat consumption increased roughly nine-fold between 1955 and 2005 and consumption of [seed] oil rose about five-fold over those five decades, he pointed out."
"We all need to limit consumption of foods cooked in over-heated and over-used oils, keep omega 6/ omega 3 ratios in balance...
"Reducing saturated fats and increasing polyunsaturated fats will increase the level of omega 6 fatty acids, creating an unhealthy imbalance in omega 6/omega 3 ratios."
"In addition, the influence of the type of fat consumed on health has been debated for years and vegetable oil is recommended over animal fats for the reduction of cardiovascular disease and oxidative stress, which has resulted in an increased intake of omega-6 fatty acids, especially linoleic acid (LA)...
"We conclude that [high n-6] lard-based high-fat diets accentuate the increase in weight gain and the development of obesity and insulin resistance more than hydrogenated vegetable-shortening diets."
"Question: If you are in a position of power over innocent folks who are trying to eat healthy food, which fat would you ban?
"Answer: The wrong one!"
Per-capita sugar consumption [5.1] |
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Seed oil consumption [5.2] |
"This is the most extensive systematic assessment of effects of omega‐6 fats on cardiovascular health, mortality, lipids and adiposity to date, using previously unpublished data. We found no evidence that increasing omega‐6 fats reduces cardiovascular outcomes other than MI, where 53 people may need to increase omega‐6 fat intake to prevent 1 person from experiencing MI. Although benefits of omega‐6 fats remain to be proven, increasing omega‐6 fats may be of benefit in people at high risk of MI. Increased omega‐6 fats reduce serum total cholesterol but not other blood fat fractions or adiposity."
MI with differing n-6 diets [6.2] |