It is all energy?

Robert-Chicago said:

Yes... Unrefined (Good) would mean natural, not processed/tampered. While, refined (Bad) would mean processed, trans. Trans is Latin for "across." So, think of a natural food crossing over (becoming) a processed (refined) food.

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Nope.. there is simply no such thing as unrefined seed oil. You can cold press an olive or avocado, but you have to put a sunflower or soya bean through an unbelievable range of industrial processes, solvents and treatments before a human can safely eat it as an oil. It's absolutely never been a natural thing.

Chris24Main said:

Good call - but no, trans fats are refined fats from veg and seeds which have been even more processed to become solid.

The stuff we have been sold for a generation (I have eaten most of my life) - vegetable oil, cooking oil, seed oil - is all a consequense of needing to sell the leftover lubricant gunk from the cotton industry. It was literally an industrial lubricant, then it started a new life as an alternative soap, then stepped up to be a cheaper food for pigs, then Proctor and Gamble finally figured out how to remove enough of the poisonous stuff to make it safe for human consumption. The rest is history.

Now - this isn't an anti-poly unsaturated rant; we need a certain amount of poly unsaturated fat, and always have, just not very much. The problem is that vegetable and seed oils just weren't intended by nature to stay stable, so even if they are 100% pure at the point you buy a bottle (which they are not, simply cannot be) they start to break down into toxic particles - literally shattering into spiky little molecules that are not good at all - thousands of different types; whenever you heat or expose them to air or light. Even more concerning, is that this continues in the body, particularly if they come into contact with glucose.

That sound a little conspiratorial - but it's factually true, the chemical process is called oxidative rancidisation. It's kind of stunning, but the global market for vegetable oils runs to the hundreds of billions, as a piece of marketing, it's one of single biggest food success stories.

Yet - despite the advice to add it to your diet, and that the majority of the energy in the standard diet comes from them - there was never any scientific evidence that doing so was good for us.

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thank you for clarifying - this is really insightful stuff. sorry one last question, but am I right in saying you would not include olive oil as a poly unsaturated type of oil to avoid?? (i'm really hoping you are going to say no )

While generally true, it is possible to buy Cold Pressed Rape Seed Oil.
I have not tried it, but it is available in the UK
e.g.

KennyA said:

Chris will have his take on this, and here's mine: it depends by what you mean as "olive oil". If you mean the stuff that's squeezed out of fresh olives by pressure, filtered, and bottled, then I use lots of it. Often described as "extra virgin".

If you mean the stuff that results when olive pulp and stones are ground up, boiled, refined, have stabilisers and flavour enhancers added, sometimes with additional seed oils used to bulk it out, then canned (usually) and sold - I don't buy that. It's usually much cheaper and might have some sort of weasel word title - such as "olive oil product".

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thanks, duly noted and yes absolutely I will be sticking to the extra virgin olive oil, going forward (I am part Greek Cypriot heritage - its embarrassing I don't know this stuff already! )

It's worth noting that the world demand and consumption of extra virgin olive oil significantly overshadows the world capacity for production, so something doesn't add up, but that's mainly about advertising standards in the US (it's pretty shocking what you can get away with) - in the UK, pretty much anything advertised as extra virgin will be fine - and I love a good olive oil.

Another way of thinking is that people have been making oil from olives for centuries. Companies (because people cannot do this without an enormous industrial set of processes that's more like refining crude oil into petrol) have been making oil from seeds for a few decades.

@toastaddict - oils from "fruits" (olive and avocado) are mainly mono-unsaturated. All foods have a mix of different fat types, and the saturation level is only one way of distinguishing. For example, beef fat is nearly 50% mono-unsaturated. So, next time your nutritionist tells you to increase your mono-unsaturated healthy fat, say "got it, more beef!" - and see what reaction you get.

[sidenote, I've put "fruits" because confusingly, olives and avocados and coconuts, and all nuts and peas and legumes are all technically seeds]

it's extremely confusing, and understanding what saturation means is difficult, because it's marketed to mean saturated=cloggy where there isn't anything useful to do with fats. The biology has always been totally different - you are about a quarter fat - and your brain is mainly fat, so clearly it has some use. (it's actually amazing, but I'm not going there) - so - it's used for structure - so think like a ladder - saturated fat is like an extendable ladder - long and robust. Mono unsaturated is like a step ladder, with one foldy bit in the middle somewhere. Poly unsaturated fat is like a rope ladder - all wobbly, but very occasionally that's what you need.

Cold pressing of rapeseed... (Canola in the States)

So, this is where it gets even more confusing. Yes, it's less reliant on heat and solvents. But take a look at the presses and tell me they aren't industrial. However, squeezing a thing, how dangerous can that be? Well, part of the answer lies in what seeds are.

Plants want seeds to survive. They can't run away or fight back, so they have evolved defenses based on chemistry. Eat half a dozen apple seeds if you think that's unlikely (no - don't; they are extremely poisonous and can kill).

So - some seeds are designed to be consumed in fruit, and pooped out quickly - some fruits are covered in substances that make us poop faster - that's what a laxative is and does. But understand, that laxative is about protecting the seed from your digestion, not because it may help with your constipation.

But - lots of seeds, and mainly grass-based seeds, don't need any animals to spread them in their poop - they can fly on the wind. These seeds lock up the genetically important bit - the kernel - nice and tight behind layers of defenses.

Just squeezing them then - it's not quite so simple... there is still a bunch of left-over defensive chemicals you need your liver to deal with, provided you don't have a reaction to it in your gut. Many defensive chemicals are actually kept in the plant in separate locations, because they only become toxic when mixed - like if you cut or chew, or feed into a cold press.

And - even if it's 100% free of defensive chemicals - it's still highly unstable (again, because it was only ever designed to be inside a plant, where it might get cold, and the oil needs to be able to lubricate inside a cold plant). The perfectly pure oil (fatty acid molecule) will break under temperature, or light or oxygen (ie by using it for cooking), or being hit by something like a glucose molecule. So, you're absolutely fine as long as you put the seed oil in a dark cupboard; and leave it there.

The rope ladder analogy falls down a little, because what happens is more like shattering. Where your "mono-unsaturated ladder" might break into two smaller ladders which are still functionally ladders - your "poly unsaturated ladder" - will shatter into lots of sharp, spiky molecules that drive inflammation and look nothing like what they started as. Indeed, if you've heard of macrophages - these will engulf these spiky particles and become what's known as "foam cells" - and then you're well on the way to forming a dreaded arterial plaque.

And you might say "well, I take care of it and only put it in my salads" - to which I would say that olive oil is much tastier. You may say then, "but look at all these studies that show omega-6 oils being heart healthy, what's that all about?"

And of course it gets more complicated still. All humans for all time have had some polyunsaturated fat in our diet - we do need some, and fascinatingly, our brains actually need some in order to function. Some specific PUFAs (and I'll skip the names) are folded in such a way that they actually function like semiconductor switches - literally like transistors - it's really incredible...

So - anyone who says we don't need any polyunsaturated fat is also lying - we do, just not very much - and here's the kicker: these super important poly unsaturated fatty acids are more available in animal products - if you only eat the plant versions, we have to convert them (at a fairly low rate) into the molecules that your brain needs to function.

flakey rascal said:

One thing i do know, eating healthy foods is harder and more expensive than the stuff i used to eat. Come home from work, open the freezer,into the air fryer and 15 minutes it is tea. Planning seems to the key

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Yes indeed. But, eating healthily quickly gets easier! I promise. The low-carb, healthy fat way at least, which is what I know about, ten years in..

But yes, more expensive because you are eating high quality food. But popping into a store and buying grass fed animal chops or wee roast, an avocado to go on top of a schnitzel (one of my favourites), veg of your choice to go with the meat - it doesn't take long to cook and is delicious.

Part of eating well and healthily for me means understanding that shopping,. cooking and cleaning up after is a major part of my life, and I never liked cooking, always enjoyed good food though, so there is the incentive. Once diagnosed I had to become a good cook to eat good healthy food. Sigh.

I'm breaking in new caregivers for a dear friend, who I have been caregiving, and running the kitchen, and I talked about the role of dishes in my life, and she took this to mean I did dishes once every three or four days. I haven't stopped chuckling over this since. Lots of cooking means lots of cleaning up. Would be no surprise to our forebears, but hard to talk about this in the modern world where ultra processed food has replaced this key role in our lives. (Understandably!)

flakey rascal said:

One thing i do know, eating healthy foods is harder and more expensive than the stuff i used to eat. Come home from work, open the freezer,into the air fryer and 15 minutes it is tea. Planning seems to the key

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Easy switch. Take out of the freezer in the morning steak or chop or chicken or fish or sausages. When home put in air fryer 15 minutes. Can add simple frozen veg eg cauliflower. Use butter or olive oil or cream cheese as a dressing/sauce when cooked.
Dinner done, same time

It was all the talk of air fryers in this Forum that got me enthused, and an air fryer for the household at Xmas care of caregivee and dear friend. (thanks for the tip you air fryers!)

It does indeed cut down on high quality oil purchased, and the power I am sure. (Food and electricity being very big costs these days.) It has transformed bacon cooking for me (along with a houseguest showing me how to place them in the fryer basket as a twist - great tip!)

(Doesn't cut down on dishes though, lol. The fryer basket and the lower basket which catches the bacon fat. Not an easy handwash or stack.)

I put a sheet of kitchen paper under the tray when cooking bacon/burgers etc Catches most of the fat so just a quick wipe, and much cheaper and less hassle then liners, imho

I use olive oil and butter. While the good olive oil is expensive, you don't need to use a lot at a time, and a little proper butter goes a long way.