STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Vegetable oils, more accurately called seed oils, are likely the most important metabolic toxin in your diet. They are the unifying mechanism behind westernized chronic diseases like heart disease, obesity, cancer and diabetes
- Heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity were virtually unknown in the 19th century but have skyrocketed today; the introduction of processed foods with sugar, refined flour, trans fats and, primarily, industrially processed seed oils, are the culprits
- Seed oils, also misleadingly known as “vegetable oils,” are industrially processed, proinflammatory and driving oxidation in your body that drives chronic disease and obesity
- While ancestral populations have had their health protected by not consuming seed oils, other populations, like Japan and ancient Egypt, have had declines in health that correspond to increasing consumption of these toxic oils
- If you were to make one change today to lower your risk of chronic diseases, eliminating virtually all seed oils from your diet would be the top choice