PUFA’s, what’s that? It sounds like a new line of cuddly toys for preschoolers. What if I told you that they are the number one cause of chronic disease in America today? Now it starts to sound a little more interesting. So what are PUFA’s? This acronym stands for Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids. For practical purposes, these are the omega 6 and omega 3 oils found in various foods. Over the past few years, we have heard about the value of omega 3 fats for fighting inflammation. That is why we have the huge salmon farming industry today that never existed in years past because salmon is a good source of omega 3 fats.
So why am I saying that PUFA’s are bad for us? Just like every subject I try to unfold in my newsletters, the reality is much more complex than a simple good versus bad. But no one likes complex because it gets in the way of automatically knowing what to do in any situation. Unfortunately, the industry takes advantage of our desire for straight forward answers to sell us stuff that is very unhealthy for us. They pay for the media that convinces us what is good and what is bad. Most of us are too young to remember some of the super obvious examples of this, like the huge media campaign back in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s that told us cigarettes were healthy. They had doctors promoting them as a cure for asthma and as a preventative for cancer. We are not medical researchers, so we believe what doctors tell us. Unfortunately practicing doctors are not medical researchers either, and only know what they were taught based on the popular fad medical beliefs at the time they were in school.
True research is very difficult, involves mountains of studies that then have to be challenged and restudied over and over until maybe they get a glimmer of what is going on. All research is biased to some degree because all humans are biased to some degree. That is why part of the validation process of any theory is in reproducing the results by different researchers looking at the problem from different angles. All along the line, you get loads of so-called experts that spout official-sounding opinions, all of which mean absolutely nothing until the full round of research is completed. For example, there have been loads of experts over the last 70 years certain that cholesterol causes hardening of the arteries. Because of their wrong opinions based on incomplete, biased, and faulty science, we now have runaway rates of not only heart disease but a load of other chronic diseases.
This is where PUFA’s step into the picture. Because of the cholesterol hypothesis, primarily promoted by a researcher named Ancel Keys, the US policymakers decided we should abandon tropical oils (palm and coconut oils) and instead use oils derived from seeds like corn, soy, sunflower, and rapeseed (canola), also called vegetable oils. The problem is all these oils are polyunsaturated. Back then this was thought to be a good thing. Arteries were being lined with hard waxy fats so the idea was to substitute soft liquid fats in the body to prevent this. This seemed so logical that by 1981 doctors were declaring that this hypothesis was conclusively proved. That is the problem with logic, you can logically prove that white is black. The research simply was not there yet. It has taken 40 more years to show how wrong they were.
Saturated fat is like tiny hard tiles of various shapes. Polyunsaturated fats are like smaller tiles with flexible hinges between the pieces. Every cell wall in our body is made from a mixture of these two tile types – the rigid ones to give the wall a flat shape and structure and the flexible ones to allow the walls to curve around into different shapes. Most cells need an even mixture of both types of fats to have cell walls that work right. These fats are also used to provide energy to the body and to form various hormones and the neurotransmitters we need. The traditional human diet for millions of years provides a fairly even mix of these two types of fat. Both are essential and we need an even mix of them to be healthy.
Omega 6 and 3 oils also form chemicals called prostaglandins which control inflammation. Omega 6 creates inflammation while omega 3 fights it. We need both processes to stay healthy. Inflammation is necessary to seal wounds and promote healing while anti-inflammation says when to stop this process. Aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen block the inflammation prostaglandins. As I have said before, health is not about good versus bad, but about the balance and dance between opposite processes. The fact that we are ingesting 20 times as much of the omega 6 inflammatory oils as the omega 3 anti-inflammation oils might have something to do with the huge inflammation excess we see in patients these days. In fact a basic question I ask patients is “Do over the counter anti-inflammatories help relieve your pain.” If they do then I know they have too many omega 6 derived pro-inflammatory prostaglandins. Part of their treatment is to cut vegetable oils out of their diet.
With the change in US health policy and the birth of the huge seed oil industry in the US, the consumption of flexible poly oils started increasing at alarming rates. At this point in time, the average American consumes 20 times as much poly oil as saturated fats. We are a nationwide nutrition experiment to see what happens when we unbalance the natural diet to such extremes. The result has been a complete explosion of chronic diseases. A hundred years ago hardly anyone died from heart attacks, now it is the biggest killer of Americans. Asthma was almost unknown when I was a kid, now everyone is carrying around their inhaler. Dementia existed in the old days, but it is 10 times as prevalent today. Before 1940 the prevalence of chronic disease in the population was only 7.5%. Today, in 2020, that number is around 60%. Diet is the most likely cause for chronic disease increasing as health issues from infectious diseases have gone down in that same time frame. Poisons could be a cause, but we consume a lot more food each day than we do poison.
Arguments have been made for various foods being the cause of this chronic disease explosion. Sugar and grains have been implicated as have meat-based diets on some studies showing issues with these foods. However, the consumption of grains and sugars has decreased over the last 20 years while chronic disease has increased from 45% to 60%. Meat consumption has increased, but red meat has gone down. The increase is from eating chicken. The one food that has steadily increased in consumption since 1940 is polyunsaturated vegetable oils.
The data is there. The science has been accumulating over the last 50 years or so about how damaging these oils are when their concentration exceeds healthy levels. Here is part of the confusion – omega 6 oils are essential for health. They help form the doorways into and out of the cells. But like a house, how well built is a house that is made from 95% doorways and only 5% walls? That is what happens when the ratio of fats is out of balance. Think of water. A couple of quarts a day of liquids is necessary for health, but what happens if you consume 40 quarts of water? You drown. That is what is happening to us. We are drowning in polyunsaturated oils. It makes everything not work properly, which is another way of saying you have a chronic disease.
Where do we run into these kinds of fats? Anything deep-fried like chips, fast food, fries, salad dressings, and mayonnaise, anything baked commercially, almost all restaurant food, practically everything that comes from the store other than fresh foods is full of polyunsaturated oils. Start reading labels. They are everywhere. Here is one you wouldn’t think of, chicken, farmed fish, and feedlot animals are full of omega 6 oils because they are raised on a diet of grains. That is why grass-fed is a thing because grass has the natural balance of the oils in it. A few years ago the worst offenders, trans fats, got a bad reputation and the government has tried to reduce their levels in our food supply. But the rest of the vegetable oils are still being touted as healthy, heart-healthy foods. Right now the average American eats about 700 calories a day of these oils, 800 calories a day of grains, and about 600 calories a day of sugars. A healthy diet has almost none of these in it. You don’t need any grains, you don’t need any sugars, and you only need 2 to 3 grams a day each of good omega 6 oils and omega 3 oils.
So what can we do? Eat fresh food, real food, not stuff that comes in a package with a bunch of ingredients on the label. If you are a vegetarian, eat vegetables, legumes, and fruit, not pasta, bread, and candy. If you are a meat-eater, eat real meat, not fried chicken, hot dogs, and Big Macs. And no, you are not eating healthier when you order sweet potato fries instead of regular fries. They are both fried in the same toxic goop.
I know these newsletters on the toxicity of our food supply are not fun. But without the truth, how can you make better decisions about your health?
Take care,
David