County Fare

The Oiling of America: What you should know about your food

Sunday, August 31st, 2008 | Health | No Comments

Below is an excerpt from an article by Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. and Sally Fallon. After reading this and other texts on oils in food my wife and I cut vegetable oils (polyunsaturated fatty acids) from corn, soybeans, and sunflower/safflower from our diet. The results amazed us. All of the excess weight that I have gained since deciding to quit work and stay home with our daughter has melted off.

I didn’t notice the difference right away, but after two month the signs were obvious. And now within 6 weeks of noticing the first changes in my body I am almost as lean as when I was still at work. And this happened without any other changes to our lifestyle.

Please take the time to follow the link below to the article, where you will find it in its entirety, on the Mount Rainier Clinic Yelm, Washington website .

“In 1954 a young researcher from Russia named David Kritchevsky published a paper describing the effects of feeding cholesterol to rabbits.1 Cholesterol added to vegetarian rabbit chow caused the formation of atheromas—plaques that block arteries and contribute to heart disease. Cholesterol is a heavy weight molecule—an alcohol or a sterol—found only in animal foods such as meat, fish, cheese, eggs and butter. In the same year, according to the American Oil Chemists Society, Kritchevsky published a paper describing the beneficial effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids for lowering cholesterol levels.2 Polyunsaturated fatty acids are the kind of fats found in large amounts in highly liquid vegetable oils made from corn, soybeans, safflower seeds and sunflower seeds. (Monounsaturated fatty acids are found in large amounts in olive oil, palm oil and lard; saturated fatty acids are found in large amounts in fats and oils that are solid at room temperature, such as butter, tallows and coconut oil.)

Scientists of the period were grappling with a new threat to public health—a steep rise in heart disease. While turn-of-the-century mortality statistics are unreliable, they consistently indicate that heart disease caused no more than ten percent of all deaths, considerably less than infectious diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. By 1950, coronary heart disease, or CHD, was the leading source of mortality in the United States, causing more than 30% of all deaths. The greatest increase came under the rubric of myocardial infarction (MI)—a massive blood clot leading to obstruction of a coronary artery and consequent death to the heart muscle. MI was almost nonexistent in 1910 and caused no more than three thousand deaths per year in 1930. By 1960, there were at least 500,000 MI deaths per year in the US. What life-style changes had caused this increase?”

The Oiling of America

Tags: diet, disease, Health, nutrition, oil, prevention