So my cherished little M&S salad pots are killing me too, now!

[StrangeAntics]

Just stumbled upon the whole seed oil fiasco, went down a few rabbit holes, came back up feeling somewhat dizzy!

Geez, is there anything left that faddy diets and pseudo scientific book hawkers haven't told us will destroy our hearts, gut biomes and brain tissue? It's like no one appeals to credited sources any more, and even the most intelligent people are listening to some really odd shit on youtube and substituting it for fact.

According to most health authorities, seed oils are ok. Don't go overboard, like with other fats, but chill out about it.
Wiki also states that the anti seed oil sentiment is an alt right political obsession, started by someone called Rogan and taken up by various members of the Trump campaign.

So now we have politics spilling over into food science, it's truly bonkers.
We live in a world ripe for criticism since we have a fairly messed up food industry, and we are aware that a lot of what sells isn't great. But this seems to have opened up endless opportunities for someone to capitalise on our fears and paranoia, creating a barely navigable web of tangled misinformation and potentially harmful trends.

I often buy little grain/salad pots from M&S, so since they contain a bit of seed oil, they're going to destroy me. Well heck, what to do about that?
Every month someone will come up with a new, fresh (and lucrative) food to demonise and blame for the obesity epidemic, and it seems the crowds lap it up and don't care much about credible sources.
No one hardly ever mentions what a correlation is - or else they use it to stiffen their own bias.

There's always someone who will claim an absolute, such as "I quit meat/dairy/whatever and my entire life improved and it cured my cancer!"

There are likely many factors that have led to an obesity crisis, from vehicle dependence, poverty, sedentary work, cheap fast foods, excess portions, to depression, loss and loneliness.
To try to single out a new food group every few months as the cure all for this is surely bonkers.

Just ignore it girl 😄, click bait rubbish x

They can shut up with all of that big food, big meat, big veg, big ag, big pharma crap too!

Big Bollocks I say.
Just eat food mindfully and don't go overboard.

This isn’t good advice though. Many foods are designed to make you go overboard.

I am also a fan of the M&S salad. Work shifts and not always able to plan ahead and be near heating sources…
I’m the sort of person who eats pretty much anything in moderation. Even opening a packet of biscuits and eating one or two. For meals at home I am fairly ‘plain’ not much ‘junk’
obviously there are things (like lard!) that we should rarely touch but for the rest of the time it’s important to be realistic!

We have had politics spill over into Food Science since the dawn of food science!

Im sure the salad pots don't form a huge part of your diet, whereas cooking in seed oils at home will add up. It's a fairly simple switch to olive oil, ghee or butter.

Exactly this

Respectfully, I don't agree. I don't like butter or ghee and already use olive oil. I see nothing problematic, outside of flimsy science that says some seed oil is bad for me.

What bothers me the most, thanks to family history, is how much salt they stick in everything.

Not as sexy as fat or sugar, but there it is!

My brain is tired but what seed oil is/ are the oils of ill repute?

If its sunflower then I.m done for 😩

There's nothing wrong with seed oils, it's just the latest unproven health scaremongering nonsense. There's no evidence that seed oils cause inflammation. I've been cooking with sunflower oil my entire life and I'm not going to stop because of this rubbish 🙄

I wouldn't bother googling, you will only end up more tired..

The general idea is that they oxidise and are killing us, and that they are the only reason obesity has risen since the 80's. Since, like water and salt, it appears in many ready made foods, they think this means SCIENCE. We could easily blame salt or water, but like I said, it isn't as divisive or political (yet!).

Some say cold pressed are ok, but anything in a ready made meal is toxic as it is the same stuff we use to clean car engines, or something.

It also has links to the carnivore diet, so from one extreme to another, generally speaking.

If anyone is ever truly bored or stuck in a lengthy queue, sample the nutrition/fad diet stuff on reddit. Some extreme stuff there, I have no idea how or where they find the time, energy or such an enormous wealth of mangled information.

One good quote I read recently : extreme diets tend to attract extreme people.
Unless you have a physical issue or food allergy, common sense should be enough to get us through life. We might even be able to enjoy the odd glass of port.

One thing's for sure, divisive politics is big money.
I wish we could ban the left-right misery mill from existence.

I am forever amazed that people take this pseudo-science rubbish seriously, the 'experts' will produce the results they're being paid to produce, they won't say x is good for you if their paymasters want the result that x is bad for you. People need to stop taking this stuff on board and start thinking for themselves.

actually, lard has health benefits in moderation. It has less saturated fat than butter and is also a source of Vitamin D, more than you would receive from the sun!

But people won't think for themselves. We live in a society where many people are happy to be told what to think let alone what to eat. That's just life.

Since covid there has been a huge uptick in conspiratorial thinking, so much now is about extremes (it sells), but it is a shame that a reasonably intelligent person can't just locate some valuable, well measured food facts without having to grope through the chaos.

In one thread on here some time ago, someone said we can no longer trust our doctors as they're being manipulated by Big Margarine. You couldn't make it up!
What I do find odd is how easily that very same, shrewd individual will swallow unchallenged bro-science from a populist influencer or politician.

I use the Yuka app to scan barcodes to warn me about potentially dangerous ingredients and it doesn’t seem to get excited about seed oils/sunflower oils apart from obviously the fat content. In fact they generally score a higher score than the avocado oil which I saw being promoted online as a healthier alternative.

there are things (like lard!) that we should rarely touch

Funnily enough, the same people lambasting seed oils promote lard as some sort of panacea, even smearing it on their faces as moisturiser.

This one drank the Kool Aid...

I swear I heard about people putting lard in coffee??

When I went down my rabbit hole I came across various communities who post their high LDL cholesterol results to boast about it.
They truly believe that high cholesterol is protective, that all plants are the work of satan. I would be interested to hear how they'd feel about that soaring LDL when they reach 50...

And this:
"Seed oils are bad because they are in all of the highly palatable, fatty, sugary processed foods that I gave up. I lost so much weight and feel great now, so seed oils must have been the cause of my obesity".

Or it might just be that you lost weight because you made healthier choices in general.

It's like, if you don't like vegetables, just own it. No one cares. Relax.
Don't preach a wildly out of proportion red-meat-only diet to justify it.

Hence, so don’t go overboard. We all have a pretty good idea of what is bad for us. And we have free will. No one is forcing us to eat it. Encouraging, yes, forcing, no. Grey rock it!

Many seed oils weren't originally created for human consumption in mind and were actually industrial lubricants.
They are highly processed and done with hexane and bleach and omitting them is an easy way to reduce the amount of upf as they are always in those foods. Nobody is stopping you eating your salad or seed oils as they are in so many things. Also you need to think about the wider picture and not take it as an attack on your salad! Deep-fried food is not the same as cold-pressed sunflower oil in a salad.
Too much omega 6 can contribute towards chronic inflammation and I found cutting them out has massively, massively reduced to almost nothing the inflammation I had. Maybe that is the placebo effect, but only using olive oil or coconut oil works for me.

First they came for the seed oils and I didnt speak out.....

I'll tell you something else that's anti inflammatory - everything in moderation.

I eat well balanced diet and enjoy my food. I don't do anything to excess and will continue to eat the occasional prepared super nutty seed oil of death salad from m&s.

(why do these anti food ranters always say the exact same thing as if it's perfectly crafted from a Joe Rogan quote circa deep-paranoia-covid phase 1?)