The Longevity Solution

by Jason Fung

  Now cottonseed processors had lots of cottonseed oil on hand, but no demand. One solution was to add it illicitly to animal fats and lards. There was no evidence that this was in any way safe for human consumption. (We don’t eat our cotton T-shirts, after all.) Cottonseed oil, which is light in flavor and slightly yellow, also was blended with olive oil to reduce costs. Italy, aghast at this crime against their culinary traditions, banned adulterated American olive oil in 1883. The Procter & Gamble company used cottonseed oil to manufacture candles and soap, but the company soon discovered that they could use a chemical process to partially hydrogenate cottonseed oil into a solid fat that resembled lard. This process produced what we now call trans fats. The hydrogenation made this product extremely versatile in the kitchen and gave it a longer shelf life, although nobody knew that they were putting something into their mouths that was formerly considered toxic waste.

  This new solid vegetable oil made pastries, such as pie crusts, flakier. Because the hydrogenation gave the oil a longer shelf life, it could sit on a grocery store shelf for months without going rancid. It was smooth and creamy and as useful as animal fats in cooking for a fraction of the cost. Was it healthy? Nobody knew, and nobody cared. This new-fangled semisolid fat resembled food, so the manufacturer marketed it as food. The company called this revolutionary new Franken-product Crisco, which stood for crystallized cottonseed oil.

  Crisco was skillfully marketed as a less expensive alternative to lard. In 1911, Procter & Gamble launched a brilliant campaign to put Crisco into every American household. They produced a recipe book (and all the recipes used Crisco, of course) and gave it away. This type of marketing campaign was unheard of at the time. Advertisements of that era also proclaimed that Crisco was easier to digest, cheaper, and healthier than lard because it was produced from plants. The ads neglected to mention that cottonseeds were essentially garbage. Over the next three decades, Crisco and other cottonseed oils dominated the kitchens of America, displacing lard.

  By the 1950s, cottonseed oil was becoming expensive, so Procter & Gamble again turned to a cheaper alternative, soybean oil. The soybean had taken an improbable route to the American kitchen. Originally from Asia, where they had been domesticated in China as far back as 7000 BC, soybeans were introduced to North America in 1765. Soybeans are approximately 18 percent oil and 38 percent protein, which makes them ideal as food for livestock or industrial purposes (such as paint and engine lubricants).

  Americans ate almost no tofu before World War II, so few soybeans made it into the American diet. Things began to change during the Great Depression when large areas of the United States were affected by severe drought. Farmers discovered that soybeans could help regenerate the soil through their ability to fix the nitrogen levels of the soil. It turns out that the great American Plains were ideal for growing soybeans, so they quickly became the second most lucrative crop, just behind corn.

  Meanwhile, in 1924, the American Heart Association (AHA) was formed. At its inception, the AHA was not the powerful behemoth it is today; it was just a collection of heart specialists who occasionally met to discuss professional matters. In 1948, this sleepy group of cardiologists was transformed by a $1.7 million donation from Procter & Gamble (maker of hydrogenated trans fat–laden Crisco), and the war to replace animal fats with vegetable oils was on.

  By the 1960s and 1970s, in a charge led by Ancel Keys, experts proclaimed the new dietary villain to be saturated fats, the type found most frequently in animal foods like meat and dairy. The AHA wrote the world’s first official dietary recommendations in 1961 recommending that people “reduce [the] intake of total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol [and] increase [the] intake of polyunsaturated fat.” In other words, people were encouraged to avoid animal fat and eat “heart-healthy” vegetable oils, which were high in polyunsaturated fats, like Crisco. This advice carried forward and was integrated into the influential 1977 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

  The AHA threw its now considerable influence into making sure that Americans ate less animal fat and less saturated fat. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), for example, declared the switch from beef tallow and other saturated fats to trans-fat-laden partially hydrogenated oils “a great boon to Americans’ arteries.”2 Don’t eat butter, they said. Instead, replace it with the partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (read: trans fats) known as margarine. According to the CSPI, that edible tub of plastic was much healthier than the butter that humans had been consuming for at least 3,000 years, they said. Even as late as 1990, as the mountain of evidence was piling up that trans fats were supremely dangerous, the CSPI refused to acknowledge the dangers of trans fats. The group’s famous bottom line was, “Trans, shmans. You should eat less fat.”3 Hydrogenation has many benefits for food manufacturers, including low cost and increased shelf life, but improved human health is not one of them. Ironically, these trans fat–laden margarines that the CSPI was promoting in place of animal fats4 are more harmful than the fats they replace.5

  In 1994, the CSPI struck fear into moviegoers’ hearts with a brilliant scare campaign. At that time, movie popcorn was popped in coconut oil, which was largely saturated fat. The CSPI declared that a medium-size bag of movie popcorn had more “fat than a breakfast of bacon and eggs, a Big Mac and fries and a steak dinner combined.”6 Movie popcorn sales plunged, and theaters raced to replace their coconut oil with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Yes, trans fats. Additionally, the war to rid the American public of animal fat spilled over to beef tallow, which was the secret ingredient of McDonald’s french fries. The fear of “artery-clogging” saturated fat resulted in the switch to—you guessed it—partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

  But the story was not yet done. By the 1990s, the trans fats that the AHA and the CSPI told us were supposed to be so healthy for us were implicated as major risk factors for heart disease. New studies indicated that trans fats almost doubled the risk of heart disease for every 2 percent increase in trans fat calories.7 By some estimates, trans fats from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils were responsible for 100,000 deaths in the United States.8 Yes, 100,000 deaths. The very “heart-healthy” foods the AHA recommended were giving us heart attacks. Oh, the irony. By 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) removed partially hydrogenated oils from the list of Generally Recognized as Safe human foods. Yes, the AHA had been telling us to eat poison for decades.

  The very “heart-healthy” foods the AHA recommended were giving us heart attacks.

  Industrial seed oils, such as cottonseed, are high in the omega-6 fat linoleic acid. Linoleic acid is called the parent omega-6 fat because other omega-6 fats, such as gamma linolenic acid (GLA) and arachidonic acid, are formed from it. During Paleolithic times (2.6 million years ago until 10,000 years ago), linoleic acid came from whole foods, such as eggs, nuts, and seeds; humans would not have gotten any omega-6 from industrial seed oils. However, Crisco introduced an isolated and adulterated type of linoleic acid into our diet—one that was cheap, convenient, and highly damaging to our arteries. Since 1911, linoleic acid consumption has dramatically increased, and the source is one that humans had never consumed before. These omega-6 seed oils are now ubiquitous in nearly all manufactured foods, shelves of plastic bottles of seed oils line grocery store aisles. Unfortunately, these chemically unstable oils are highly susceptible to oxidation by heat, light, and air, and the oils get exposure to all three during their processing. Thus, although linoleic acid that comes from whole foods might be beneficial, the adulterated linoleic acid found in industrial seed oils is not. For a deeper dive on this topic, check out Dr. DiNicolantonio’s book Superfuel: Ketogenic Keys to Unlock the Secrets of Good Fats, Bad Fats, and Great Health.

  So how do we know which are healthy fats and which are unhealthy fats? Unsurprisingly, natural fats, whether they come from animal (meat, dairy) or plant sources (olive, avocado, nut) are generally healthy. Highly processed, industrial seed oils and artificially hydrog
enated trans fats are unhealthy. Let’s face it; we ate vegetable oils because they were cheap, not because they were healthy. Let’s dig in to more details.

  Basic Facts on Fats

  Dietary fats are generally divided into two types: saturated and unsaturated (which includes monounsaturated and polyunsaturated). A saturated fat is so named because its carbon “backbone” is saturated, or full with, hydrogen atoms, and it can’t accept any more. A monounsaturated fat, such as the oleic acid in olive oil, has space to accept one extra hydrogen (mono means one), and polyunsaturated fats can accept many hydrogens (poly means many).

  Fig. 11.1: The different types of fats

  All natural sources of fat contain a mixture of all types of fat—saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated. However, the proportions vary. Animal sources, such as dairy or meat contain mainly saturated fats, whereas seed oils contain largely polyunsaturated fats of the omega-6 variety. Natural polyunsaturated fats, such as those in flaxseed and fatty fish, contain omega-3 fatty acids, including alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) (which is highly concentrated in flax) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) (which are highly concentrated in seafood).

  Although we tend to think of animal fats as saturated, bacon fat contains more oleic acid (a monounsaturated fat high in olive oil) than saturated fat. Chicken fat is approximately 50 percent monounsaturated compared to 30 percent saturated fat. Healthy olive oil contains almost 14 percent saturated fats. The highest concentrations of saturated fats are not in animal products but plant products; coconut oil is more than 90 percent saturated fat.

  Fats to Avoid: Trans Fats and Industrial Seed Oils

  What’s shocking is that the very fats you’ve heard for decades are heart healthy (such as the trans fats and seed oils in Crisco) are the fats you want to avoid. In this section, we explain the harms of these fats, the studies, and the history of how you have been fed a big fat lie for more than a century.

  INDUSTRIAL TRANS FATS

  The recommendation to avoid trans fats is no longer controversial. The name derives from the alignment of the double bond found in many vegetable oils. The natural configuration of these fats is altered by artificial hydrogenation (adding hydrogen to unsaturated fats) that results in an unnatural configuration known as trans. Interestingly, natural trans fats found in ruminants such as sheep and goats do not appear to increase the risk of heart disease.9

  Most nations of the world have either banned from use or are in the process of eliminating trans fats from their diet. In 2003, Denmark passed legislation that no more than 2 percent of fats and oils in any food product can contain trans fats.10 As of June 18, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on all trans fats from American restaurants and grocery store food items took effect. Canadians found their foods free of this Franken-fat by September 15, 2018. The World Health Organization issued a plan in 2018 to eliminate trans fats worldwide by 2023. Tom Frieden, a former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said, “Trans fat is an unnecessary toxic chemical that kills, and there’s no reason people around the world should continue to be exposed.”11

  VEGETABLE OILS

  Vegetable oils, rich in omega-6, reduce cholesterol, so it was assumed that this reduction automatically translated into less heart disease. The human body can synthesize most of the different types of fats necessary for good health with two major exceptions—the essential fatty acids linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid) and alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid)—that we must obtain from the diet. Deficiency of either essential fatty acid results in disease. However, the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 (see the table) is just as important because these two compete with each other for incorporation into human tissues and for the same rate-limiting enzymes.

  The Omega-6-to-3 Ratio* of Common Oils

  Dietary Source

  Omega-6-to-3 Ratio

  Grapeseed

  696

  Sesame

  138

  Safflower

  78

  Sunflower

  68

  Cottonseed

  54

  Corn

  46

  Peanut

  32

  Olive

  13

  Avocado

  13

  Soybean

  7

  Hemp seed

  3

  Chia seed

  0.33

  Flaxseed

  0.27

  Canola

  0.2

  * Table from Superfuel by Dr. James DiNicolantonio and Dr. Joseph Mercola. Copyright © 2018 by Dr. James DiNicolantonio and Dr. Joseph Mercola. Reprinted with permission of Hay House, Inc., Carlsbad, CA. The omega-6-to-3 ratio refers to LA/ALA.

  It is estimated that an ancestral diet provided roughly equal amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Plant omega-3 (ALA) is in foods like nuts, seeds, and beans, whereas marine omega-3 (EPA/DHA) is in seafood. Vegetable oils are almost purely omega-6. The dominance of industrial seed oils in the American diet has led to estimates that we consume ten to twenty-five times as much omega-6 as omega-3.

  The AHA has long recommended replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) like vegetable oil to reduce the risk of heart disease and death. However, recent trials have concluded that this is exactly wrong. When the advice originated in the 1960s, there was no distinction made between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Although both are PUFAs, their health effects are widely divergent. We have considerable evidence that the omega-3 fatty acids, such as DHA and EPA in fish oil, improve cardiovascular health. In contrast, overconsumption of the highly inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids in seed oils significantly worsen cardiovascular health.

  The Sydney Diet Heart Study (SDHS) was a randomized controlled trial in which researchers replaced saturated fats with safflower oil, a concentrated source of omega-6.13 This substitution was exactly the sort of thing the AHA had been advocating for years. Replace your butter with vegetable oil–based margarine. Those unfortunate enough to have followed this conventional advice in the SDHS suffered a 62 percent higher risk of death. The studies were showing that the “heart-healthy” seed oils were actually lethal.

  The dangers of eating excessive omega-6 have long hidden behind some of the beneficial effects of omega-3. When the two fatty acids were analyzed separately, the dangers became obvious. In trials that included both omega-3 and omega-6, there was approximately a 20 percent reduction in death compared to saturated fat plus trans fat. However, trials that emphasized only omega-6, thereby raising the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio dangerously high, found a 33 percent increase in deaths, which was soon corroborated by other analyses (see Figure 11.2).14

  Fig. 11.2

  The harm from consuming industrial omega-6 seed oils might be due to an increase in oxidized linoleic acid metabolites (OXLAMs), which increase the susceptibility of LDL to oxidize, stimulate cancer, and lower HDL (high-density lipoproteins).15 We recommend that you completely avoid consuming industrial seed oils. However, the moderate intake of linoleic acid from natural sources such as nuts, seeds, eggs, or chicken is safe because the linoleic acid from whole foods are protected from oxidation.

  Unfortunately, the news would get much, much worse. The most rigorous study of changing our dietary fat from natural fats to industrial seed oils was done in the 1960s and 1970s. However, the results were suppressed and not fully available until 201616 after the original researcher had died, and other researchers retrieved the data from his son’s basement to complete the analysis. In the study, the researchers replaced the natural saturated fats in the food with vegetable oils. The researchers compared findings for the test group to a separate group that was eating the usual diet. This switch, of course, falls directly in line with the dietary advice the AHA has given for the past forty years without providing any proof that the substitution was beneficial. This study, which is known as the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, began with great promise as the vegetable o
il group had lower blood cholesterols as expected. There was also a significant difference in mortality, but, in this case, the news was not good. Switching to vegetable oils increased the risk of death by a staggering 22 percent, and it was worse for patients older than 65. Making the switch isn’t just bad; it’s catastrophic.

  The precise advice that governments around the world had been handing out to replace natural saturated fats with industrial seed oils high in omega-6 was exactly the opposite of what it should have been. We could hardly have done worse if we tried. Replacing natural foods like butter, cream, and meat that humans had been eating for millennia with industrially processed oil from garbage (cottonseed) is harmful. Vegetable oils were made to be cheap, not healthy.

  Saturated Fats: PURE Study

  It is somewhat counter-intuitive that saturated fats should have ever been considered more harmful than other fats. Unsaturated fats have multiple double bonds that enable them to accept other molecules, such as hydrogen. The result is that unsaturated fats are more chemically reactive than saturated fats that don’t have these double bonds. When PUFAs like vegetable oil are left alone for too long, they become oxidized and rancid.

  Saturated fats, like butter, are far less likely to suffer this problem, as they are more chemically stable. Hydrogenation can artificially change a PUFA into a saturated fat to create the Franken-fat nightmare of trans fats. We don’t want our cells becoming rancid from the fats oxidizing inside our body, so if saturated fats are more stable, wouldn’t consuming more saturated fat be good? The answer is yes.