Late last week, I read a piece from Pointer Checks About vegetable oils. There are many influencers worldwide who claim they are dangerous and cause diseases such as Alzheimer's, cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
Discussion vegetable oils
In the piece let Coen Dros and professor emeritus Katan see no hard evidence for this.
In itself, I can agree with that. In any case, I already think it is a bad idea to flatten the discussion to unsaturated fat or saturated fat. After all, you are eating food sources.
- So you can unsaturated fat ingest by eating an avocado or a bag of chips fried in vegetable oil.
- Saturated fat you can get in by adding coconut fat to a vegetable smoothie or eating a burger with the fat and sweet sauce dripping from it.
- Also, one person eating it will have a healthy calorie balance and lifestyle and the other does not.
Science is as strong as the assumptions beneath it
So it is incredibly context-sensitive, and you can hardly make any hard statements about this scientifically, even when you read studies on Pubmed. After all, science is only as strong as the assumptions beneath it. And those assumptions are rarely talked about.
What often happens is then both influencers and scientists want to substantiate their assumptions. They then look for studies that fit their assumptions.
Influencer suits
This applies both to the group who want to bash vegetable oils and those who want to make saturated fat suspect. And what does Pointer do as usual? Of course... These once again want to catch the influencers. Like Coen Dros often does on his socials, because this is obviously very good for the algorithm (as are other charlatan hunters on Instagram).
Protecting Professor
But also tackle all the unproven claims that Professor Katan makes in this same article or what the Nutrition Centre site says about saturated fat. I'm sure Coen can do this, as I hold him in high regard on the scientific front.
For example, emeritus professor of nutrition Professor Katan makes the claim here that saturated fat the cholesterol increases and thus DUS the risk of heart attack. Surely this also makes your scientific whiskers stand up.
For decades, Katan has been preaching his in my opinion incorrect premise that any cholesterol increase is by definition causally linked to cardiovascular diseases.
A temporary small increase in LDL cholesterol by eating saturated fat does not have to mean at all that this cholesterol will then stick to an inflamed vessel wall anyway, oxidised and calcified. There are many influences on cardiovascular disease and all kinds of predictors besides cholesterol levels such as inflammation levels and much more.
Zooming in too much leads to wrong assumptions and conclusions
I myself am very neutral in this fat discussion these days. All types of fats have their function and it is fine to get a mix of all of them. The products these fats come from are part of a diet. The total diet is ultimately what counts, and zooming in too much often leads to wrong assumptions and conclusions in food science.
On that front, I myself have become wise by trial and error. And if you want a scientific discussion with me, I like to talk about the assumptions your paradigm is built on. Only then can we really move forward, as exciting as this can sometimes be. It is not easy when you have to let go of your assumptions, especially when you have had them for decades and built an entire scientific career around them. Yet this is your duty when you see yourself as a true scientist.
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