Omega-6 vegetable oils as a driver of coronary heart disease

openheart.bmj.com

10 points·mgh2··4 comments

So I keep hearing that omega 6s are bad and lead to heart disease and this has increased since industrial seed oils came into being, but aren't butter and lard also bad because of saturated fats? I simply don't know what to cook with that is supposed to be healthy.

I suspect if I'm confused, many others must be in similar positions.

I am also confused.

Roughly speaking there have been for decades now recommendations to go for unsaturated fats and oils, attributing saturated fats for coronary heart disease.

The stop-eat-seed-oils crowd kind of says that maybe that advice was wrong and seed oils might have contributed to that problem in the first place. They kind of make a point saying that years of dietary recommendations (and proven uptake of vegetable oils in diets and products) were not effective at combatting coronary heart disease. Also claiming that vegetable oils, omega-6, are inflammatory.

What I find really interesting about the seed oil hypothesis is, is that really these oils were not available historically for use in foods. At the same time, our populations face health problems that were unknown to this extent 200-300 years ago. The problem is with everything about nutrition that its heard to separate all the effects that certain interventions in eating might cause.

Saturated fat was considered a problem when obesity was an almost negligible problem. Now that obesity is basically everywhere the idea of lowering your heart disease risk by 10% or whatever while simultaneously doubling it through gaining weight is kind of adventurous.

I don't believe the "butter is bad" myth. Eat a reasonable amount of butter. Don't go crazy in either direction. Also don't eat the synthetic fats (based on seed oils).

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