Seed oil Toxicity: Trend or Truth?

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1. I think you might have a typo in this sentence in the third section. It contradicts itself as written.
   “Although its true that linoleic acid can be metabolized into an inflammatory eicosanoid that can promote things like blood clotting and tissue swelling, linoleic acid cannot.”

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   1. Edited to clarify. Thanks!

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2. Dr. Cate,

   Sounds as though you fundamentally disagree with the “Avoid excess Omega 6 vs. 3” essence of Dr. Chris Knobbe’s book, “The Ancestral Diet Revolution”.

   Is this correct?

   If so, that would also imply you also disagree with the book of Dr. Phillip Ovadia, M.D. Ovadia is one of my own doc’s, while Knobbe is a personal friend, not one of my own per se docs.

   I’m a 70 year old healthcoach. I’ve been a Certified Financial Planner for almost 40 years, and I’ve also turned into a health coach to clients, friends, and family since I got T2D in 2015. It freaked me out sufficiently that I jumped online, found and studied the heck out of Drs. Jason Fung, (the now late) Sarah Hallberg, Peter Attia, Robert Lustig, etc., and fixed the diabetes and got off of metformin within six months.

   Now, although I’m still working and running my financial planning practice in downtown Fort Worth, and helping people with health coaching anytime I can, I’m also attempting to survive Stage 4 melanoma that was diagnosed with a semi-emergency left brain surgery on 11.30.21. That 2″ left brain tumor was removed, and my three left lung tumors are now reduced, in half, size-wise by a year of immunotherapy (Yervoy and Opdivo). And one of those three lung tumors is actually gone now. Unfortunately, the five radiation treatments following the initial brain surgery fried my left brain with five serious marble sized areas of RN (radiation necrosis). So, my second brain surgery was to reduce those. Four of the five RN areas were surgically removed and one was left as it had two brain blood vessels running through it. My second left brain tumor, thank God, only 2mm in size first appeared in January of this year. And, it was 3mm then. So, perhaps it really is shrinking.

   So, amazingly, with my two good neurosurgeons and and two oncologists (one of whom is a per se melanomist), I’m still here for now, right at 2.5 years, and with the two most annually deadly cancer problems available. Number one cancer fatality globally is lung cancer (mostly due to smoking), and number two is brain tumors. I’ve got number one, and number two and have amazing survived with both for over two years! Thank God.

   Anyway, you can likely now see why I’m as interested in your area of work as I am, with both my health coaching work, and my own pretty darn serious efforts at continued survival. I’m 70 years old, a financial planner, a cattle rancher, a health coach, and a serious survival from S4 cancer worker. I live on a ranch 40 miles northwest of downtown Fort Worth, where my financial planning practice is (two hours of driving to and from work), with Kamee, my wife, Virginia, my 94 year old Mom, and Cate, our 19 year old only child who just finished her first year in college at SMU in Dallas. Cate actually took a nutrition course and successfully completed it in high school.

   Anyway, I hope you can now see why I’m seriously trying to figure out why you’re seriously suggesting that the modern extreme imbalance of the current dietary Omega 6 vs. Omega 3 imbalance is not the principal problem with most plant/seed oils. My understanding is that the Omega relationship should ideally be between 1 to 1 and maybe 2 to 1. But, it is currently, at least in the U.S., closer to 20 to 1. I understand this to be a radical nutrition based problem that creates a major, major problem with our metabolic health.

   Are we in disagreement? What’s going on here?

   Thank you very much for a serious response.

   Sincerely,

   Guy

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   1. Hi Guy! Thanks for your interest in this vitally important topic .

      Dr. Ovadia is a great doctor. I’m an admirer. Just this week we recorded a podcast on his platform and it was a great conversation that included my reasoning for focusing on oxidation over the ratio. I hope you can listen to it when it’s released around June 11.

      I’ve discussed the ratio versus oxidation issues with Dr. Knobbe, too, at some length. And he seemed to agree.

      If we’re going up against huge moneyed interests trying to shut down the warnings it’s important to have science on our side. And there’s an overwhelming amount of science showing how these oils promote oxidative stress, which is the root cause of health problems. So much so that I had to write a 500 page book to cover it.

      I also discuss vegetable oils and cancer.

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      1. I am not a doctor or a scientist, but I have been researching these topics for about 30 years in order to sift out the truth about nutrition, i.e., what is and isn’t healthy to eat and why.
         I went through a phase of O6 to O3 ratio being THE most single important factor. Seed oils were of course out (good thing). Grassfed or wild products were good, the more natural the diet of the critter the better the food derived from them, whether it was beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, butter, or wild game.
         The problem with that approach is that if you go first and foremost by the O6/O3 ratio, you have to eliminate what are obviously healthy chioces. Like raw nuts, sprouted pumpkin seeds, avocados (and avocado oil), coconut (and ev coconut oil), and olives (and evo oil). Macadamia nuts and oil are about the only permissible chioce, by ratio. Something was missing here, so I dared to not eliminate those thing from my diet and kept researching.
         Enter oxidation. It explains the above paradox perfectly. Nuts in their narural state have compounds to prevent oxidation (go figure). Cold pressed oils (as opposed to heat processed), ditto. It oxidation that’s key. It also explains why Bonk probably had a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of O6/O3. Nuts are seasonal, and hard to find before other critters do in the wild, and Bonk wasn’t cold pressing olives, avocados, or coconuts for the fat inside (they weren’t even around back then). There is evidence for nut consumption by Bonk and his friends though. Just saying…

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3. I cook with olive oil, but I eat hot ten-grain cereal almost every morning into which I throw a variety of nuts and dried berries. I always use organic berries, but safflower oil is always used. I can’t find an organic brand that does not coat their dried berries in safflower oil. Do you know of a brand that doesn’t?

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   1. Have you considered switching to frozen fruits instead of dry fruits?

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   2. I also dislike that fact that most of the seeds, nuts and dried berries are, more often than not, coated in some sort of oil to preserve them. There must be a message in there somewhere. That’s one of the reasons I lean towards in-season fresh berries (well rinsed) rather than the “shelf-stable” dried options.

      On a different point, apparently, we should avoid high-temperature cooking with olive oil and instead use avocado or coconut. They apparently both withstand the temperatures of cooking better than olive oil. Olive oil is best consumed at room temp on salads and such. I read it on the internet, so it must be true. 🙂

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   3. A friend of mine gets dried cranberries and dried cherries without seed oils on etsy. You might try there. Probably should not cook with olive oil. Use ghee, butter, lard or tallow . Been on this diet for years since Dr Cate was my primary physician in CA. She told me to stop eating grains too. No more oatmeal or grain breakfast cereals. Fresh eggs every morning now unless i am doing a periodic fast. Also limit fruit in general. But I do like dried dates and the sugar/oil free ones my friend sends me.

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4. Another fascinating article by Dr cate. Some thoughts on it.

   Shame on doctors, nutritionists, and scientists for accepting dogma instead of being skeptical. Science as I was taught and executed should be skeptical and free of preconceived notions.

   The huge roadblock , in addition to the bias above, is economic and political. Think of the revenue that would be lost by ADM, Carrillo, and the like. They will fight this tooth and nail and use all their political influence.

   We need an ally in congress.

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   1. Center For Science in the Public Interest, CSPI, lobbies for changes in the food industry. Among their achievements are: product labels now include trans fats, they now include added sugar, Happy Meals had to include healthier options, and we now know the calories/nutritional facts of fast food. I’m not sure whether they have a position on seed oils.

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