TLDR - Linoleic acid is bad, has gone up by 140%, has a half life of 600 days, and gets stored in fat tissue, Dietary sources of LA (industrial oils) have a direct influence on body composition.
Linoleic acid (LA) is a bioactive fatty acid with diverse effects on human physiology and pathophysiology. LA is a major dietary fatty acid, and also one of the most abundant fatty acids in adipose tissue, where its concentration reflects dietary intake. Over the last half century in the United States, dietary LA intake has greatly increased as dietary fat sources have shifted toward polyunsaturated seed oils such as soybean oil. We have conducted a systematic literature review of studies reporting the concentration of LA in subcutaneous adipose tissue of US cohorts. Our results indicate that adipose tissue LA has increased by 136% over the last half century and that this increase is highly correlated with an increase in dietary LA intake over the same period of time.
Full Paper https://doi.org/10.3945/an.115.009944
What alternative would I use as an ethical vegetarian?
I’m not really sure, but what did vegetarians use before the 1900s?
If your version of vegetarianism allows for ghee, that is a good option.
Olive Oil, Avocado Oil seem to be better and less oxidized then the other option, one big problem is supply chain integrity - most olive oils sold are adulterated with the industrial oils because they are cheaper, and customers can’t tell the difference.
Great question, I just found this from 1812: (archive.org is awesome!)
https://archive.org/details/b21530877/page/n11/mode/1up?view=theater
I’ve never tried ghee, might give it a shot… But so much food is made with these industrial oils, I’m not sure I’d be doing much without fully resorting to home cooking.
E: besides trashing meat eaters it’s also reading on alcohol drinkers 😂 but so far every recipe seems to use butter, at least in the soup section.
“By a lady” is my favorite author.
I’d be doing much without fully resorting to home cooking.
Every little bit helps, remember exposure is cumulative. Even if you cut out industrial oils from one meal that is still a oxidative health improvement.
I’m approaching this problem from the other end of the food spectrum, and yeah, I don’t trust anything cooked eating out. Safe food like hard boiled eggs, poached eggs, cheese plates work, but I do mostly cook at home just to keep control (and it saves money).
I have generally only used olive oil, but noticed several times over the years how widely the price varies between bottles… I’ll bet it’s correlated with whether it’s 100% vs being cut.
Anyway! Food for thought. Carry on!
it’s 100% vs being cut.
Sadly no, price is not a indicator of adulteration. The studies I’ve seen have it like 96% of olive oil in the us being fake. It’s really about chain of custody of the supply chain. Only costco kirkland brand olive oil seems consistently pass the authenticity tests, they do have really good chain of custody logistics.
I don’t have the data handy, but greece grows something like 80million tons of olive oil, imports 250million tons of industrial oils from other countries, and exports 200million tons of olive oil (the numbers are totally wrong, i’m going from memory). So if the “authentic” greek olive oil makes it to the bottler in yet another country, more opportunities to improve the bottom line.
Food is one of the “trust, but verify” things in modern life.
Fun reading: https://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk14776/files/media/documents/report2010finalthree.pdf
The introduction is worth quoting
Linoleic acid (LA) (18:2n–6) is an 18-carbon n–6 PUFA with diverse effects on human physiology. LA is linked to skin barrier (1), immune (2), cardiovascular (3, 4), and neurobiological (5) functions, and, as a precursor of arachidonic acid and its metabolites, to reproductive (6), thermoregulatory, and digestive functions (7). In addition, LA is a natural ligand for PPARs (8). PPARs are intimately involved in the regulation of metabolic functions, including lipid and glucose metabolism, and they have been implicated in obesity and cardiometabolic disease risk (9). PPARα agonism may contribute to the ability of dietary LA to reduce circulating concentrations of total and LDL cholesterol (10). Finally, LA can influence biological processes via its nonenzymatic oxidation products. Oxidation of lipids in LDL is a risk marker for coronary heart disease (11). Because of its abundance in LDL and susceptibility to oxidation, LA is the most commonly oxidized species in LDL (12). The LA content of LDL reflects dietary intake (13).
Many seed oils are rich in LA, and consumption in the United States has increased substantially over the last half century (14). Much of this increase has come from soybean oil, which contains between 50% and 60% of total FAs as LA (14). Adipose tissue concentration of LA is particularly responsive to dietary LA, as demonstrated by diet modification trials (10). As such, it is used as a biomarker of dietary intake (15). We hypothesized that increases in dietary LA in the US food system have led to increased adipose tissue concentrations of LA. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a systematic literature review of studies that have reported the LA concentration of subcutaneous adipose tissue. Our findings suggest that adipose tissue LA has more than doubled in the United States over the last half century and correlates strongly with LA in the US food supply, potentially influencing numerous aspects of human physiology and pathophysiology.
Given the very long half life 680d of LA, it takes years to reduce the concentrations in adipose tissue. Dietary LA is directly associated with fatty LA deposits. The primary source of LA in the modern diet are industrial oils (seed oils, vegetable oils).
A thank you to @xep@fedia.io for the Dark Calories book recommendation, I’ve made it to chapter 2 and am digging through the references as they pop up.
680 day half life, 10 half lives to practically eliminate LA from your body after you quit those oils. 6800 days – just over 18.6 years. I’m 2.6 years into this way of eating, probably 10 into restricting most oils other than olive, so somewhere between 8 and 16 years from now I should be good.
Last time I had an industrial oil was last time I had tinned fish, while I was doing keto, years and years ago.
You are what you eat. It’s insidious. It makes sense that fat is stored energy so if we build it with bad things when we unpack it will still be bad.
Kinda like the LSD users who get random trips throughout their lives from stores LSD in their fat.
I suppose you could speed up the LA usage by doing fasting and refeeding with clean food.
Possibly. I wonder if the quoted half life considers fat burning diets. If you can burn it, perhaps it’s time for a protein restricted crash diet
I don’t think a crash diet is warranted as a intervention. Regardless of when you burn it (now vs later) its going to cause inflammation and reduced ATP production. I think its better to let it happen very slowly, naturally, so that your bodies inflammation budget is high and it isn’t a big deal. Forcing it all at once doesn’t seem like a great idea. Just keep eating clean and healthy!
TLDR for the TLDR - Industrial Oils are bad, don’t eat them.
This is relevant to carnivore because industrial oils are made from plant seeds, and carnivores avoid plant products. Even people following a strict ketogenic diet still get plenty of industrial oils in their food. Even whole food, single ingredient, diets still recommend industrial oils. It’s everywhere.
![[Paper] Increase in Adipose Tissue Linoleic Acid of US Adults in the Last Half Century - 2015](https://hackertalks.com/pictrs/image/940968ce-93b0-4a59-8637-af8fe1962927.jpeg){kind=link}