Something you never had

Today on Dad Strength

• A Brief History of Seed Oils

• Something you never had

• Man Trouble

• A book, a quote, a dad joke

A brief history of seed oils

As someone with a front seat to health and fitness trends, the concern about seed oils is something that I’ve watched blossom over the past 15-20 years. Since this issue is now pointing toward the level of policy discussion (I don’t know how seriously) via RFK, it’s worth looking at how we got here.

When we talk about seed oils, we are really using a shorthand for mass-scale food systems, corporate lobbyists, misinformation, and disinformation. That’s a lot of separate – albeit entangled – issues. Until we separate these things out, however, we can’t really have a proper discussion.

Let’s start back in the latter half of the 20th century, when saturated fats were still thought to be the primary nutritional driver for heart disease and that if a big corporation said that “Trust us. Everything is cool,” a lot of people half-believed them. There’s no accounting for the second thing but the first one: that fat in your diet became fat in your arteries wasn’t completely off its rocker. However, it was also far from being the whole picture. Regardless, it’s pretty easy to see how people thought that dietary fat drove atherosclerosis and why dietary intake of saturated fats should be decreased. A host of industrially-produced alternatives, like margarine, jumped in to fill the dietary void. The second-order effect of these was what we now know to be a much worse alternative: trans-fats ( legislated back out of both the Canadian and American food supply as of 2018).

It’s worth taking a moment here to differentiate cold-pressed, untreated seed oils from industrial-level processing strategies using hydrogenation and solvents. Let’s come back to processing later so that we can judge seed oils on their own merits. This is important because the language isn’t “ban processing,” it’s “ban seed oils.” Yet, as a raw food source, they are simply edible, unsaturated fats. There is no secret payload of toxins. All existing evidence points to seed oils being safer – gram for gram – than an equivalent amount of saturated fat, no matter the source. What about inflammation? Balanced use of either fat source in a healthy individual won’t cause inflammation and seed oils (again, not overheated or unduly processed) may even reduce it. If there is evidence to the contrary, you will have to let me know where it’s hiding.

Nutrition, as a formal science is less than 200 years old and the 80s, it pains me to tell you, were 40 years ago. So, we have to be at peace with the fact that earnest researchers still got things wrong. Dietary fat = arterial fat, as I mentioned, was one of those things that sounded right but proved to be wrong in the sense of entirely missing the risks of increased body fat and metabolic dysfunction as the primary driver. Normalizing for food quality, it turns out that it matters less whether the source is carbs or fat. However, carbs are, of course, the easiest food to over-consume – and often made hyper-palatable when combined with fats. While some research was pointing toward a link between sugar and heart disease, the problem was that fat = fat concept had its wheels greased by special interests. In 2016, evidence was revealed of the Sugar Research Foundation’s funding and oversight of research. A key paper minimized sugar’s role in obesity and diabetes while emphasizing the risks of dietary fat. “They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at U.C.S.F. with a 10/10 name, who helped author the 2016 paper exposing the lie.

We expected this kind of disinformation from big tobacco but not from otherwise credible academic sources. This was a major failure on the part of public health that increased public distrust in research. Among other things, it created a legion of high-carb, low-nutritional density foods ala SnackWell’s that were essentially junk food masquerading as health food – emblematic of the larger media environment of the time.

Let’s pause here for a moment because I want to point out one of the major areas of contention. The problems here didn’t originate with scientists or their research; it was dark money from a special interest group who was especially not interested in prioritizing public welfare over shareholder value. Legislation was later rolled out to prevent this kind of problem. So, lesson learned. Half-learned, anyway. Except that now there’s discussion in the US of rolling back standards or oversight. This would be done in the name of punishing evil scientists or shrinking the government. It may feel like a win but it will just make the worst kind of history more likely to repeat itself. Lobbying and dark money is the problem. It was the problem. It will continue to be the problem. For example, the 2019 USDA proposal to relax school nutrition standards by allowing higher sodium levels and fewer whole grains in school meals was a step backwards. I don’t know who this was done for but I promise that it wasn’t the kids.

In recovery from the huge misstep of the 80s, a lot of people tried reversing the standard wisdom on carbohydrates and fat. Many did so with great initial success. Ketogenic diets are a prime example here. The idea – again an intuitive one – that carbs were the enemy all along spread quickly. In reality, this may have been less accurate than saying that too many calories overall (and particularly from low-quality foods) were the problem. There are advantages to a ketogenic diet, to be sure, but most of them relate to reduced intake.

A great deal of popular nutrition is all about being right for the wrong reasons. In this case, dramatically reducing calories and improving food quality creates the metabolic magic. It works for a lot of people – even when the mechanisms are not fully understood. In fact, the anti-establishment vibes probably increase dietary adherence. We all like to feel like we have tapped into secret knowledge and it’s appealing to think like you’ve discovered something that those other poor rubes can’t comprehend. Like I said, right for the wrong reasons.

Bloodwork on ketogenic and other low-carb, high-fat diets tends to improve as long as people are losing weight. That’s because because excess body fat seems to be biggest risk factor. Once weight has stabilized, blood lipid panels may do the same. They may even worsen for some folks who maintain their high-fat diets. Results vary.

In the years leading up to 2016, a growing subculture of self-experimentation WAS growing along with a sense that the more natural something was, the better. Paleo was perhaps the most visible and story-like version of this, creating progressively more rigid rules around what not to eat based on the idea that peak human nutritional health occurred around the Palaeolithic era [author’s note: it did not]. Around this time, it was suggested that the speed of development of legumes and other formerly inedible plants had outstripped the evolution of the human digestive system, pointing to celiac and other allergies and intolerances as evidence of this fact. Seed oils tend to get lumped into this category as well. It’s interesting and valid for many people. However, it can’t be used as a blanket statement because there is so much human variation. You may tolerate all of these (or none of these) foods beautifully.

The naturalistic fallacy, the idea that something is good or right because it is natural (or bad or wrong because it is less natural) is strong in food circles. An easy example is the myriad of animals and poisonous foods that will kill you in a day, as opposed to a sedentary lifestyle and diet of Cheetos, which takes decades. This seems like a good time to come back to how seed oils are processed.

Cheap processing of seed oils (high heat, refinement, and additives) do pose some level of risk. As does cooking them on high heat or eating huge amounts (having your omega-6 way out of whack with your omega-3 intake can be an issue). However, the dose makes the poison. Using a dab of canola oil when you’re making Brussels sprouts is profoundly different than eating a diet high in ultra-processed foods. It’s not the seed oils, it’s what they’re along for the ride in.

From a food systems perspective, it’s also worth mentioning that seed oils are deeply integrated into the food supply for humans and animals. The value of this is very debatable but an infrastructure of this scale takes a lot of progressive untangling. Doing a Thanos-style snap on seed oils would make animal fats, butter, and other plant-based oils wildly expensive and far less accessible, driving up food prices dramatically. It’s not that this isn’t worth contemplating, it’s just that quickly eliminating them is not a serious idea.

When it comes to existential threats, I can’t say that seed oils absolutely do not make the cut because of how related they are to a lot of things that are aren’t working. However, they are a symbol more than a culprit. That makes the focus on eliminating them a distraction from more substantial issues. We would all be best served by focusing on supporting unbiased scientific research on public health, improving science education (serious people can always run these experiments themselves), and by further safeguarding public health decisions from corporate interests. It would also be most productive to avoid trying to micromanage a systemic problem by focusing on one ingredient at a time.

The roots of concern around seed oils are well-intentioned but – this time – they are wrong for the right reasons.

Something you never had

As dads, we often think about giving our kids what we never had. The drive to fill those gaps is noble. However, it’s worth pausing to consider whether we’re so tuned into what we were missing that we fail to notice the things that our kids may, someday, say the same things about.

Man Trouble

A systematic review of research on fatherhood and mental health just dropped. Many men struggle with a combination of the inevitable overwhelm that many new caregivers face (sleep deprivation does not bring the best out of any of us), as well as self-doubt (“Am I doing enough?”; “Am I good enough?”). These are surmountable BUT… a number of factors can further increase the strain on mental health. Some are inevitable, like a sudden increase in responsibilities or a change in romantic dynamics. However, there’s one that stands out to me. It's isolation.

Many fathers feel like outsiders in the early months and are find that there is little space to attend to their emotional needs. This is compounded by a perceived pressure to not communicate weakness or emotional fatigue. Isolation is a killer.

The first step is recognizing that fatherhood isn’t a solo mission. If you’re trying to be Jason Bourne, you’re doomed to struggle. Fatherhood is a team effort that includes your partner, your child, and a broader support system. There are many situations where men do not have space to simply relax and open up. Where they can simply be.

For many men, this is a new experience. They may not take it on this work their own sake but they will do it for the sake of their own child.

It is where community can be incredibly healing – and one of the main reasons that I started Dad Strength. If you know any new dads, please feel free to introduce us. I’d love to welcome them in.

Full disclosure: this ad is kind of a weird one for Dad Strength. Maybe they figure that your partner is into Gwyneth Paltrow-type stuff. Or you are.

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A book

Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion by Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Also:

Porygon Was Innocent: An epileptic perspective on Pokémon’s “Electric Soldier Porygon”

A Quote

A Dad joke

My wife tried to beat me at Scrabble last night. But I wooden letter.

Take care of yourself, man!

Geoff Girvitz
Father, founder, physical culturist
dadstrength.com

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