Plugsly

This article, by the @nytimes by Alice Callahan gives a 👍to vegetable (seed) oils. But in my view, she fails to make her case. This is a long tweet with hard facts, some🔥‼️ -Her first quote is from Stanford's Chris Gardener, a longtime vegan, for ideological (non-health) reasons, whose entire center is underwritten by Beyond Meat. It's safe to say he's biased against animal foods. Seed oils entered the US food supply to replace animal fats (eg, Crisco, not lard. Margarine, not butter). If we get rid of seed oils, we're likely to go back to those natural animal fats, which, as a vegan, Gardener rejects a priori. So, his opinion is highly biased. -Callahan acknowledges that omega-6 fatty acids in seed oils morph into inflammatory compounds but says they also create some “non-inflammatory ones too.” No citation is provided for this latter statement. -Convincingly, she cites a systematic review of clinical trials that showed “people who consume more omega-6 fatty acids generally do not have higher markers of inflammation in their blood.” !! I was surprised, given all the studies I've read showing these oils to be inflammatory. Turns out, the review she cites was put out by researchers at a lab at Jiangnan University in China. This school says that “No less than 180 famous food companies in China joined the [school's] Board of Directors,” and that it works closely with ultra-processed food giants “Mondelēz, PepsiCo, P&G, Danone, National Adhesives, Nestlé, Cargill.” The schools' entire focus is pro-industry. foodsci.jiangnan.edu.cn/engl… Because seed oils are the backbone of the ultra-processed industry, there’s no small incentive at this school to defend this core ingredient. I wouldn’t expect all reporters to dig up this information, but I found it after only two ChatGPT queries. And the NYTimes, on a hot, contentious topic? Yes, it should. -Callahan says that people with lower o6 in their blood have lower risks of all kinds of diseases. This information all comes from observational studies, which are a very weak form of evidence that can only show associations. V. rarely can they establish cause-and-effect relationships. “Association is not causation,” writes Callahan herself later in the piece. So she gets it? Or maybe not. -She quotes Alice Lichtenstein, the country’s most stalwart opponent to saturated fats. Alice has a very strong intellectual bias against saturated fats and thus, in favor of seed oils. She once accidentally sent me an email about her work with Bunge, a giant seed oil manufacturer. This is Callahan’s third, highly biased source. -Callihan says LDL-C drops with seed oils, whereas it goes up with saturated fat. This tired old argument has been rebutted so many times. Suggests to me Callahan did virtually no research for this story. Yes, LDL-C goes down on seed oils, but reducing LDL-C through diet has NEVER been shown to reduce cardiovascular or total mortality and only rarely shown to reduce cardiovascular events. These “hard” health outcomes (heart attacks, death) are the ones that matter, and for them, lowering LDL-C through diet has no effect. Many large clinical trials have shown this (There are about 8 other arguments I could make on the LDL-C point, but I’ll spare you) Perhaps most egregiously, Callahan does not provide a single quote from the ‘other’ side of the story, for balance. This is a fundamental standard in reporting…why did she not bother? I have written some of the original work on these oils (on cancer/oxidation/inflammation issues). Paul Saladino is an MD and yes, a YouTube influencer, but he really knows his science. Why not even reach out to us? We are pretty well known entities. So, in sum, another subpar job of reporting in the NYT health section. And worse, not at a service to its reading public. @paulsaladinomd @heartandsoilHQ @ChrisKnobbeMD