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I’ve got news for you. Those vegetable oils in your pantry are making you fat. Even the so-called heart-healthy vegetable fats like grapeseed oil should be avoided!
This also includes Earth Balance, the “natural oil blend” competitor to Smart Balance that sells like hotcakes at your local health food store.
These factory fats are expanding your backside with every spread of the knife on your morning toast whether you realize it or not.
Omega-6 Fat Dangers
The reason is that these vegetable oil bottles and spreads are loaded with omega-6 fats. This fat is also called linoleic acid (PUFAs) and is distinguished from the healthy omega-6 gamma linolenic acid which actually helps you lose weight.
Confused yet?
The rancid omega-6 fats primarily found in the Western diet come from soy, corn, cottonseed, and canola oil (which also contains rancid omega-3 fats) and are a category of polyunsaturated oils found in seeds and grains.
While eating seeds and grains is not a bad thing, concentrating the oils from them is.
The fact is that there isn’t a whole lot of oil in an ear of corn or a soybean, so to make an entire bottle of corn or soybean oil takes violent and heavily industrialized processing.
“Earth” Balance doesn’t sound so earthy after all, does it?
Omega-6 vegetable oils are not generally fats that you could easily produce in the comfort of your own kitchen like the simple and age old process of pressing olives into olive oil (a monounsaturated omega-9 fat) or churning cream into butter.
Here’s where the “fat” part comes in.
While a very small amount of omega-6 fats are necessary for health, when consumed to excess as happens with the Western diet, vegetable oils contribute to overproduction of neuromodulatory lipids called endocannabinoids that are responsible for signaling hunger to the brain.
Guess what these little guys do?
They give you the munchies!
You may notice that the word endocannabinoids is similar to cannabis (weed). Weed is famous for giving people the munchies too so you can consider omega-6 vegetable oils the marijuana of fatty acids.
Now you know why you can’t stop eating a jumbo bag of chips made with corn, soy, or sunflower oil.
Aha!
Is that why it’s so easy to eat an entire box of Archway Frosted Lemon Cookies in the blink of an eye!
What about that organic dressing loaded with omega-6 oils that tops your salad at lunchtime? Could it be the reason behind the urge to overeat on the main course or the snack attack at 3 pm?
Just try to gorge yourself the same way with a box of cookies made with butter, coconut oil or palm oil or wolf down a plateful of french fries that were cooked in beef fat (tallow).
No can do.
You see, whole natural fats like tallow satiate you and keep your blood sugar steady so you stay full and comfortable and eat much less. Omega-6 vegetable oils, on the other hand, cause you to keep on eating and eating and eating until you have perhaps even made a complete glutton of yourself in a major way.
What’s most troubling is that food manufacturers are doubling down on the vegetable oil scam. Instead of switching their products to better fats, they continue to use the most damaging ones, even marketing some of them such as CLA safflower oil as a weight loss aid!
It seems with America’s weight problem now at a crisis level, it’s time for a return to the traditional fats of our ancestors which didn’t contribute to overeating or weight issues.
Isn’t it high time to stop listening to the talking heads on TV and take matters into your own hands? Chuck that tub of Earth Balance in the trash and substitute butter for oils that require a factory to produce them.
Your stomach and your backside will thank you.
Get the Skinny on Vegetable Oils and other Fats
Check out my book Get Your Fats Straight to get the whole story about what fats to eat for optimal health and what fats to avoid in an easily understandable, comprehensive format.
References
Why Women Need Fat, William Lassek MD
Janet
Sarah,
We recently (finally) got a copy of Nourishing Traditions and gave up our EarthBalance! I’m sure my husband read this post and thought, ‘I told you so!’ in the back of his head at me. We used it for about a year when we decided to go off dairy completely. We’ve since come to our senses. 🙂
CJ at Food Stories
Thanks for sharing this super-informative article about the benefits of healthy fats.
Shaniqua
Does anyone know if you heat raw coconut oil for long enough if it will loose it’s taste? I like it but my husband hates it and protests everything cooked in coconut oil, so I’ve not been using it. Next time I’ll get the expeller pressed but to use this one up, would heat work to take the taste away? Thanks.
Casey
My kids have a milk protein allergy and can’t tolerate butter, so we cook with coconut oil for them. I don’t know what to spread on toast, though… besides Earth Balance, which I know isn’t any good. Suggestions?
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist
Try coconut butter. It’s wonderful!
Megan
Would Ghee be a possible other option for someone who can’t eat butter due to a milk protein allergy? I know it takes out the lactose, but what about the proteins (or ANY other possible allergens)
Shaniqua
I made a homemade toothpaste with raw coconut oil, baking soda, xylitol and sea salt. It tastes so good sometimes I just want to eat it, and I do, but I limit myself because of the xylitol and baking soda. Maybe you could just do a little coconut sugar and sea salt and they would like that on bread. I rarely eat bread, but they might like that. Also in Spain people pour olive oil on toast for breakfast, sometimes plain, other times with chopped tomato & raw (cured) ham. I quickly switched from butter & jam to this breakfast before I knew anything about WAPF because it tasted better and was more filling. “Tostada con jamon serrano, aceite y tomate” for breakfast when I lived there. You can buy this raw ham as Procuitto here in the US. Best if you can get it from a butcher where the owners are Italian.
Stanley Fishman
Traditional alternatives to modern vegetable oils – Lard that has not been hydrogenated, beef tallow, lamb tallow, coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, even bison tallow. They behave better in cooking, and will not give you an overdose of Omega six oils.
Stanley Fishman
And I forgot to mention one of the best, butter.
Laura Rose
Thanks for this article Sarah. I’ve kept the “if I can’t pronounce it, can’t make it myself” as a method for deciding to purchase food products but oils I was not so aware of. I guess i stick with olive oil and coconut oil from your inference. thanks.
Shaniqua
Rice bran oil confuses me a bit since it is high in saturated fat, but would be bad because you can’t make it in your kitchen? What about raw cocobutter, shea butter, walnut oil & avocado oils? You could technically make those too, they are high in saturated fat as well. What’s wrong with peanut oil? My grandmother used to use that to deep fry chicken, and seems about as easy (or hard) as coconut oil would be to make at home.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist
Rice bran oil is an industrially processed oil high in omega 6. It was not used in traditional diets and is best avoided.
Lara
Hi Sarah
Can I ask how your husband eats that much cream. Does he drink It? I would love my kids to eat more raw cream and butter but not sure what else to give it with . Raw butter on toast and vegis and cream in ice cream. Would love to hear any suggestions
Grace
Plenty of cream in a fruit smoothie should go down easy for the kids. If you use very cold cream and frozen fruit in the blender you will get a soft serve ice cream. Depending on the power of you blender you may need to add some milk or fermented dairy to make a product that isn’t so thick it burns out the motor of your blender.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist
Homemade ice cream and bowls of cream with fruit.
Arizona
You repeatedly mention the how these processed vegetable oils are part of the “western” diet? As opposed to what? I assume you are trying to draw a contrast with “eastern” diets? If so, I am afraid you are quite mistaken in this assumption. Asian people generally use tremendous amounts of processed vegetable oil in there cooking. A small Chinese family can easily use up over a gallon of vegetable oil in a month. Same is true of most South East Asian culinary traditions. Japan might be the one exception to the rule, but even the Japanese diet includes plenty of fried noodles and deep fried dishes.
Arizona
there = their… sorry.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist
Yes they use a lot of processed oil now but this is a new phenomenon and Asians are starting to get fat just like Westerners as a result.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist
Lard was used traditionally in China for cooking along with sesame oil that was freshly ground by street vendors.
Gabriella
Amen! Traditional fats may cost more, but we use less in the long run. Plus they are infinitely healthier.