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Comment by spraak

7 years ago

Avoid oils in general. They're mostly devoid of nutrition (i.e. no fiber, lacking vitamins and minerals compared to the food source) and only contain fat https://youtu.be/LbtwwZP4Yfs

36 comments

spraak

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Escolte  7 years ago

As someone from Spain, a place that's soon gonna have the highest life expectancy in the world, yeah we're not removing olive oil from about 50% of the "core" dishes that we regularly eat.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/16/spain-to-beat-...

https://www.oliveoilmarket.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/3.p...

  • spraak  7 years ago

    I don't have the book at hand right now to cite exact pages, but Dr. Greger's "How Not to Die" has a much better explanation and cited sources on why one would want to avoid oils in favor of the whole plant source. Looking at longevity, it's relative and multifaceted - maybe oils aren't as damaging as not exercising, but it doesn't make them healthy.

    • coldtea  7 years ago

      I'd trust the people consuming them (and living to 100+) over some Dr that looks way older than his 46 years...

      (Yeah, it's multifaceted, but it's not true that olive oil is "devoid of nutricional value" as someone wrote above (it has antioxidants, omega-6, oleic acid, and so on).

      3 replies →

    • HelenePhisher  7 years ago

      Funny thing is that Dr. Valter Longo suggests the exact opposite - a take-in of 80 grams of olive oil a day: https://valterlongo.com/cardiovascular-diseases/

      I read both books - "How not to die" (Greger) and "the Longevity Diet" - and I thought about their opinions as well. ATM I tend to stick to good oils from plants as well as nuts. Greger is not very convincing - mostly because he suggests nuts as well, and a good produced oil (like extra virgine olive oil) does not loose much nutritional value. I don't care about reduced antioxidants in oil if I combine it with greens that have loads of them.

      2 replies →

  • atomical  7 years ago

    If Spain has the best diet why did it take this long to rise up in the rankings?

    • Escolte  7 years ago

      Diet is not everything in the equation and we already have the highest life expectancy in Europe, so we're already "high enough". Also things like eliminating pollution from especially cities have become hot topics recently and that's also helped and etc..

      My claim specifically, was that I find it rather surprising that olive oil is unhealthy, when the soon to be country with the highest life expectancy in the world, consumes per person 10 kg of it every year.

      5 replies →

jdietrich  7 years ago

It doesn't make a blind bit of difference. As long as you're a) not obese, b) not eating too much sugar and b) eating reasonable quantities of vegetables, everything else is a rounding error. Read just about any study on nutrition and you'll see negligible effect sizes at the very cusp of statistical significance.

All of the confusion about what we're supposed to eat derives from this simple fact. We've got all sorts of data suggesting that this diet or this food might be good for you, but the effect sizes are too small to care about.

If you obsessively tweak your diet based on every little scrap of data, you might possibly earn yourself three or four months of healthy life expectancy compared to a diet that your great-grandmother would recognise as being sensible. It's just not worth the effort.

AnthonBerg  7 years ago

There is no reason to avoid fat.

Here is one instance of an easily accessible peer-reviewed-science-based list of the current knowledge on dietary fat: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/news/t/fat

It does not show that oils or fat are something to blanket avoid.

  • spraak  7 years ago

    I didn't say to avoid fat, I said to avoid extracted fats (oils). Whole food fats e.g. the olive instead of olive oil is fine

    • maxlybbert  7 years ago

      About a year ago, I started looking into current nutritional advice. One thing that stood out was that the average American used to get 40% of their calories from fat and 1/6 of Americans were obese. The government recommended reducing fat to less than 30% of overall calories, and, amazingly, Americans actually followed the recommendation. We now get about 30% of our calories from fat, and 1/3 of us are obese.

      That doesn’t say much about what kind of fat we’re eating (e.g., if it’s oil), but the advice to reduce calories from fat was based on them being empty calories. It appears that they also help people feel full longer.

      Personally, when I eat a salad for lunch, it doesn’t bother me that literally 85% of the calories come from fat (15 calories for the lettuce, 90 calories for the salad dressing). Even if I have low-fat salad dressing (30 calories), I’m getting 66% of my calories from fat.

      Then again , maybe I’m reading the data wrong: it’s possible to reduce the percentage of calories coming from fat by eating the same amount of fat, and more food overall. Maybe Americans just did that.

    • tom_mellior  7 years ago

      Olives make a good snack, olive oil doesn't. Olive oil is great for frying things in, whole (or even sliced) olives aren't.

      It's silly to pretend that you can pick one and live your life without the other. Or that there is never a need for some sort of cooking fat.

      1 reply →

    • AnthonBerg  7 years ago

      As dietary advice is being presented here as explicit statements (incidentally without evidence) I want to make this claim: The advice to avoid extracted fats (oils) is not sound.

      As categories, oils and fat are fine. They both contain elements which are good for health. There are subcategories which seem to be bad for health (e.g. trans fats, and oils with those in, or rancid oil).

      1 reply →

ensiferum  7 years ago

Wrong. Quality fats are not only essential but also good for you for example: olive oils, Avocado oils.

Avoid (cheap) vegetable oils such as sunflower and rapeseed oils and the derived products with hydrogenated oils, such as margarines.

  • latch  7 years ago

    He's saying to prefer the whole food (the "source") over the raw oil. Doesn't seem that wrong.

    Also, this health guide lists sunflower and "cheap" canola as examples of good unsaturated fats.

    • _up  7 years ago

      I wonder now if this Guide is also sponsored by the Agriculture and Health Industry. Processed food and sugar are the real things people should avoid.

      1 reply →

leethargo  7 years ago

Thanks for the link.

This seems mostly in line with what I read in "The Mostly Plant Diet" [1]:

> Fats: Especially avoid trans fats and vegetable (seed) oils, but also other cooking oils, even olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, walnut oil, sesame oil, etc. Enjoy whole olives, whole coconut, whole avocados, whole walnuts, and whole sesame seeds instead. They are naturally packaged with many nutrients and fiber, which is stripped out when processed to make oil.

[1] http://www.humansarenotbroken.com/mostly-plant-diet/

spraak  7 years ago

Replying to my own comment since it's too late to edit:

I don't mean avoid fats, I mean avoid extracted fats. Oils lack fiber and much of the nutrition that the whole food has. I.e. eat olives over olive oil, avocados over avocado oil, etc. I understand it sounds crazy, and yes it's not easy, but for my family's health it's been worth it. We've all found great benefit in different ways.

Also Dr Greger's "How Not to Die" book is a better source than the YouTube video I linked.

neuroma  7 years ago

spraak's point on preferring whole source foods seems sound.

Having watched this video though, it presents a fringe view on dietary lipids, and is full of dubious logic. The presenter gains academic credos by flashing up various small studies very briefly, but never examines their interpretability, nor considers the counterpoint.

Perhaps there is a larger issues here of vegans over-eating poor quality lipids, which he is trying to address.

  • spraak  7 years ago

    I don't have the book at hand right now to cite exact pages, but Dr. Greger's "How Not to Die" has a much better explanation and cited sources

abainbridge  7 years ago

There's some evidence that olive oil is directly good for the heart: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/101/1/44/4564320