I don’t believe anyone should have to DIY their own health, but too often the conventional health models are ready to give up before we are! I love helping people discover the foods and holistic lifestyle practices that fit their unique needs and goals so they can STOP MANAGING SYMPTOMS and START CREATING HEALTH!
Vegetable oils... they're not what you think they are!
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It's a NEW DAY, Friend! Vegetable... It's a word synonymous with healthy, right? I'm a big proponent of eating lots of vegetables! They're high in fiber, minerals, vitamins, and hydrating water! They're crunchy, and tasty, and dippable! There's one case, though, when the word vegetable does NOT signify something healthy... "Vegetable" oils. This may come as a surprise to you, but vegetable oils aren't made from vegetables at all. Not in any way, shape, or form. They've never even been near a vegetable! Soybean and peanut oil? From legumes. Canola, safflower, and sunflower oil? From seeds. Surely, corn oil? No, corn isn't a vegetable. Its a grain. Do you feel tricked? It's understandable if you do. The cooking oil industry slapped the word vegetable on their bottle of yellow liquid and just let you imagine that it was healthy. Now, this particular issue is one to take up with the oil manufacturers, not the food items themselves. With exceptions for those with allergies or sensitivities to these foods, there's no problem with consuming sunflower seeds, peanuts, soybeans, and corn properly prepared and in their whole-food form - the way God made them. But when these seeds and legumes and grains go through the process necessary to extract their oils, what's behind those labels does become a problem. It's not the food that's the problem... it's what we've done TO the food!Last week I wrote about the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats on the molecular level. The major takeaway from that is that unsaturated fats are more fragile and easily damaged because they have a different structure than saturated fats. If you missed that email, or want to jog your memory, check it out here: The big fat scoop about fats. What damages these fragile fats? I'm so glad you asked!
What happens when these oils get damaged? Free radicals are formed. These cause chain reactions to continue in the oil itself as it sits in the bottle creating more and more free radicals the longer it sits. These free radicals then cause oxidative stress all throughout the body when consumed. They're like maniacal molecules that go around stealing electrons from more stable molecules, leaving a trail of disaster in their wake. I want to take you step-by-step through the industrial manufacturing process that results a bottle of 'vegetable' oil. The screen shots I am sharing here are taken directly from this 5 minute video about canola oil, which I encourage you to watch right now before reading on. Step 1: The Screw Press After most of the debris is removed from the seeds, they are fed into a screw press where the high pressure forces about 75% of the oil out of the seeds. During this portion, the oil is exposed to damaging light, oxygen, metal, and likely heat from the machinery and pressurization. What's left of the seeds are flat chunks called 'canola cake.' Needless to say, this is not the kind of cake you hope to see at your birthday - but birthday cake is often made with canola oil, so... Step 2: Washing the 'Canola Cake' The canola cake proceeds to a washing machine to extract as much of the remaining 25% of oil as possible. In this machine it is 'washed' for over an hour with a chemical solvent called hexane. During this step, the oil is exposed to damaging oxygen, light, contact with metal, and chemicals. I learned from this website that then this oil/solvent mixture is heated to evaporate the solvent, so heat is involved, too. The unrefined oil is stored in large tanks until it goes into the refining stage. I have no idea how long it may be stored for, so there may be a time factor here as well. Step 3: Washing the Oil From the storage tanks, the oil begins the refining process with a 20-minute wash with sodium hydroxide to help remove impurities. Sodium hydroxide, also known as caustic soda or lye is used in de-greasing formulas for both household and industrial cleaning as well as soap making. In this stage, the oil is exposed to metal and chemicals at the very least. Step 4: Removing the Waxes In this step, the oil is cooled to help separate out the naturally-occurring waxes that make the oil cloudy. Exposure to metal and oxygen happens during this stage of the process. This wax is used to make vegetable shortening 😳. Yeah, think about that one for a minute. Steps 5 & 6: Bleaching and Deodorizing No, we're not talking about your load of white laundry here! Before being bottled, the oil gets bleached to lighten the color, and steam-cleaned to get rid of the 'canola odor.' Here we go with chemicals, heat, and oxygen at the very least. Step 7: Wait for the Consumer After the oil is bottled, there's no way to know how long the bottles have sat in a warehouse and under what conditions before landing in your local grocery store. There, the clear bottles are exposed to fluorescent lighting potentially 24/7. More exposure to light, probably time, and maybe heat, depending on how the bottles were stored. You could argue for exposure to chemicals as well, from the plastic bottles. And all happens this BEFORE it ends up in YOUR home where it will also be exposed to
before it enters YOUR body! There's a big difference between what's in these bottles and what's in the whole food where these oils are found, though the processing these foods go through before we eat them can still precipitate some of this same kind of damage to the oils even within the whole food. Open a bag of nuts that have been sitting in the cupboard for a year and you'll be able to taste and smell what I mean! Theoretically, any oil-containing food could go through this same process and it would be damaging to nearly the same extent given the repeat exposures to the numerous factors that cause fats to become rancid (spoiled). However, it is primarily the oils with the highest percentages of mono- and poly-unsaturated fats that are processed this way. These are already fragile to begin with and don't stand a chance in retaining any possible health-promoting qualities after the extensive processing. Instead, they become instigators of oxidative stress throughout the body due to free radicals. These oils and many of the foods made with them are banned from my house! I'm looking at you 🤨, mayonnaise and salad dressings! If you're wondering what oils I DO use and recommend to my family and my clients, I'll be sharing about that next week, along with my favorite salad dressing recipe! See you then! With Hope for your Health and Healing, Valerie Did you get this email from a friend? Lucky you :) Sign up here to get my emails in your inbox! The content of this email is intended for inspirational and informational purposes only, is not a substitute for medical advice, and is not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease. Consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your routine. |
Valerie Federwitz, NTM, Board Certified in Holistic Nutrition®
I don’t believe anyone should have to DIY their own health, but too often the conventional health models are ready to give up before we are! I love helping people discover the foods and holistic lifestyle practices that fit their unique needs and goals so they can STOP MANAGING SYMPTOMS and START CREATING HEALTH!
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