In reading this article about the economic consequences of eliminating seed oils from the diets of Americans, one thing stuck out for me; the average consumption of seed oils per capita in our country is 58 pounds. Doing a little bit of math, this means that the average American uses 72 grams of seed oils per day with a total caloric value of nearly 650 calories.
Now thankfully, Americans waste a lot of their food, but if the average waste of 30-40% holds, this still means that the average American is getting the first 400-450 calories of their diet from seed oils. This does not include fats in meats, fish, poultry, dairy, or other foods, and it is in addition to the ~17 teaspoons (about 250-300 calories) of added sugar in our diet. If we assume an actual caloric need of 1800-2000 calories per day, what this means is that approximately the first 650-700 calories of our diet is added sugars and fats, and any other dietary fats are in excess of the USDA recommendation of about 20% of overall calories.
We might infer that, yes, there is some truth to RFK Jr.'s claim that seed oils are killing us, but the first reason is not that there's anything intrinsically unhealthy about them. It is, rather, that we are eating so darned much of them and supercharging obesity and heart disease.
3 comments:
I get the idea that the oils that are extracted with hexane etc are probably not great for us (I've been on that train for years) but the demonization of historically used oils (sunflower) that are pressed out in a normal fashion seems a bit random. I will say that I can feel the difference between "good" oils and "cheap" oils now, if I am so foolish as to eat the bad stuff.
Hexane makes me nervous, but the fact remains that the death toll from poor diet and lack of exercise is close to 700,000 people annually.....which probably makes hexane induced cancers show up a few orders of magnitude lower, I'd guess. You can also measure retained hexane levels in these oils, and my guess is that's not our biggest worry.
Pinky promise that I'm getting lots of exercise and eat a revoltingly appropriate diet. :) Would you care for some raw sauerkraut? :D
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