Hi. And welcome to another episode of the Improving Berry podcast.
This week, I got to speak with doctor Chris Kenobi
about vegetable and seed oils.
Doctor Chris is well known throughout the Internet and in the medical profession
as somebody that advocates for health,
and wellness.
And he's not afraid to tackle controversial topics
like, vegetable and seed oils.
His new book, The Ancestral Diet Revolution,
will be out by now when you're listening to this podcast,
and you can get it on Amazon,
at the links below this podcast in the episode description.
Now in this episode, we talk about lots of things, including everything that seed and vegetable oils do to our bodies,
why they are so bad actually,
what the mechanisms are that cause them to make us sick,
and what we can do to prevent them, to get rid of them and to become more healthy.
I feel like this is vital information,
so Please listen all the way to the end and do something with it.
Now you can find the full transcript of this conversation on improving bari.com
including all the transcripts of all the other episodes as well.
Now without further ado, here is doctor Chris Kenobi.
So alright. Let's,
let's get into it.
I've been looking forward to this topic
Today,
just for listeners,
maybe
a little warning.
I I don't think that this is gonna be a very happy topic, at least,
Not not, the whole episode.
You know, it's gonna be some bad news here and there.
Hopefully, we can get some, some positivity,
out of this as well as in what can we do, you know, to, to improve.
But let's let's just dive
Head first into the the bad news here. And maybe we can start with some definitions so that we know what we're actually talking about. Right?
So there's different terms
when we talk about
oils and fats.
We hear sometimes seed oils. We hear sometimes vegetable oils,
and there's also fats. So perhaps maybe you can Talk to what's the difference between those is,
if any.
Okay. Sure, Barry. So
so the,
Let me just first preface this by saying that, you you know, my research has led me
down the path to to of science
to,
indicate that It is the highly polyunsaturated
vegetable oils that are the primary drivers of overweight, obesity,
And virtually almost all of the chronic disease, so coronary heart disease, strokes, cancers, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome,
Alzheimer's disease, dementia,
age related macular degeneration, the autoimmune diseases, and the list goes on and on and on. And and I'll just say briefly, Barry,
that the reason for this is
that the highly polyunsaturated
vegetable oils
are chronic metabolic
biological
poisons.
Yeah. And I don't use any of those terms lightly. And the reason that they are is because
they are highly pro oxidative,
pro inflammatory,
toxic,
and nutrient deficient. And you put those
Four pillars of hazard together, and you have the
the the the penultimate
recipe for disaster.
Yeah. That is exactly what, you know, what is going on with these highly polyunsaturated
vegetable oils. So but when to get to your question now,
So when we talk about vegetable oils,
there are some wheels in that category that are healthy. And so let's let's break this down
Yeah. Because I don't want
to demonize, vilify all of the
vegetable oils. We have categories
of that that,
That that'll break this down and make more make sense of this a little bit better because I think, you know, people seem to be obsessed with using oils,
You know, for better or for worse. So we have the let's talk about the bad ones first, and that's the seed oils
and,
The the seed oils, let me just name them, the ones that that
are the worst of the worst. These are
Soybean, which is not a seed. Okay? It's the only one that's a bean, but you've got soybean, corn, canola,
cottonseed, rapeseed, grape seed, sunflower, safflower,
Rice bran, sesame, and peanut oils.
And these
oils,
are none or none of them are from vegetables,
First of all, they're
from seeds primarily and beans,
and they're all very high in omega 6 Linoleic acid. They're very high in,
in that type of omega 6,
which drives all this disease when it's consumed in high amounts. And so the seed oils
That that category I just named, they're all above 20% omega 6 Linoleic acid.
And so now you have then you have another category,
the fruit oils, that's where olive oil and avocado oil are in. Alright?
These are much safer,
for a variety of reasons, but let's just say number 1 is is that they're far lower in omega 6 Linoleic acid. And Linoleic acid is the primary omega six of the omega six fats.
It accounts for around 80 to 90%, probably around 90 end of most all of our omega 6. Alright? So so what what is it in olive oil? The omega 6 linoleic
acid in,
Olive oil runs from about 2.3%
up to about
almost 22%, I believe it is. And now it's out of looking at 800 some types of olive oil. So the average for olive oil is about 10% omega 6 Linoleic acid.
Avocado oil is probably around typically around 14%
omega 6 Linoleic acid. I might start calling that LA for short. People remember that. That That's that's the omega 6 linoleic acid or LA.
Alright. So those those are much lower in omega 6 linoleic acid, and plus these oils are just pressed. They don't have to have all this this,
you know, this,
in in,
intensive
mechanical and chemical
processing that The seed oils do, which require that they're by the way, I should've I should've mentioned that earlier on, but they're they're crushed, heated, pressed,
And then they're chemically alkalinized, bleached,
and deodorized
before they're ready to eat. I I've made that you know, when I say that in all in 20 seconds, People have to understand this is an incredibly intensive process
that results in extreme oxidation
of these of those oils. Okay. So we talked about no. We've so we talked about seed oils and fruit oils, and then you have the tropical oils.
And the tropical oils
are palm, palm kernel,
and coconut
oils.
And
palm oil
is around 10%, omega 6 Omega 6 LA
and,
coconut and palm kernel oils are about 2% Omega 6 LA.
Alright. So
very low. So the so what are the healthy oils? If you have to choose an oil, it would be
In my view, it's coconut
or palm kernel.
You might consider olive oil because it's you know, it it's higher in omega six, But it's also
much richer in antioxidants
and vitamin E.
And so I think this is why it's so much better tolerated, but
I don't actually consume olive oil,
because,
it you you have to get it from a source that you know is authentic and you can trust. In the United States and I think most of Europe, Barry,
the the evidence shows that,
79%
of
so called
Extra virgin olive oils don't meet the criteria set forth by the North American Olive Oil Association for good quality
Extra virgin olive oil. They don't meet the criteria,
which means they're either adulterated with cheap oils like soybean oil or canola oil
or
They
are
oxidized.
So they've, you know, they have been they've got they've been, subject subject to heat, to light,
And to travel across continents
and, you know, many weeks on,
ships, for example,
And the quality is, is really
poor. So now let me con okay. So now we've talked about
all the oils, right? So let's compare that to
butter,
lard, and beef tallow. Now before we, before we go into there, Maybe we can talk a little bit about the omega
sixes here. Right? Because we've,
prefaced this with okay. These oils are high in the omega sixes, and that is bad for us.
But why is that the case? Because when I go to the doctor and he does my standard LDL panel,
He says, alright. You need a
ratio
of omega,
or omega panel, I mean,
a standard ratio between omega threes and omega 6. And the the doctor says it doesn't really matter. It's just about the ratio. Right? To get the ratio right.
So why is omega 6, in this case, linoleic acid l l a, why is that bad in high quantities?
Yeah. Good question, Barry. Because and the answer is because these
the the omega sixes and omega threes,
They accumulate in our body fat. Mhmm. And they accumulate in our cell membranes and in our inner mitochondrial membranes.
And they are meant to accumulate,
and and preferentially, I believe, and not be burned for fuel
Because in all natural diets, which all natural diets contain
no oils at all, essentially, unless it's Olive oil maybe,
but or or maybe coconut
oil would essentially be about the only oils that really would have existed,
Just by pressing
and, you know, would be used by any native traditional cultures for the most part. Yeah.
And we could get I mean, there's there's a little more detail there. But but anyway so the omega 6 accumulates
In our body fat so whatever the fatty acid profile
is in in your consumption will ultimately be reflected in your
Body fat stores, which means also in your cell membranes and in your inner mitochondrial membranes.
And so,
so there are
There there are in in my I have a new book coming out in about
2 weeks,
called The Ancestral Diet Revolution. And in that book, I reviewed all of this in great detail. But what I'm gonna tell you is that
there,
to to to show you
what The omega 6
should be in our body fat.
There's only 4, possibly, you know, 5 studies that I I know of, but let me mention 4 of them that looked at,
adipose, you know, the body fat,
omegas
or fatty acid profiles Mhmm. And that are that were done on ancestrally living populations. In other words, populations who consumed none of these oils.
Right. And there was 4 of the studies done,
all done by Ian Prior and colleagues back in 1969,
And they were done on,
the New Zealand Maori,
who are on a completely ancestral diet. They didn't have any oils at all
and they're The New Zealand Maori, their body fat was, I think, their adipose
linoleic acid was 2.66%,
I believe.
And then they they analyze the New Zealand,
the, Europeans
from new that are in New Zealand
and their body, their body fat, Adipose
LA was,
3.02%,
I believe. And then he analyzed,
Pukapukans
On 2 islands, the island of Pukapuka,
and theirs was something like,
3.2%.
And then the Pukapukans
of Rarotonga,
another South Pacific island, and theirs was 2.86%,
I believe, or 2.8%,
something like that.
The average of these was these 4 was 2.86%
omega 6 Linoleic acid.
This, I will submit,
is absolute proof that this is where our body fat, omega 6 Linoleic acid should be, 2.86%.
Should be under 3%, definitely under 4%.
Let's look at, you know, Americans. Where were we in
1961?
We were already study shows Stephan Guillenet Put together 37 studies of body fat, omega 6, LA,
in the body fat in Americans
Far back as they were available,
1959,
we were already at 9.1%.
Alright?
2008,
we were at 21.5%.
Now in the book, I've looked at every,
Not not every single one, but most all of the
adipose biopsies in humans all around the world. And since
ninety,
the average in the world is around 14 a half percent.
Omega 6 LA. Compare that
to the 2.86%,
which is where we should be. Right? Okay. So when you so, when you accumulate this omega 6 in your body fat, it accumulates in the, as I said, in your cell ramp some cell membranes and in your inner mitochondrial membranes.
And collectively,
as I mentioned early on, these are pro oxidative,
and we can go through this in more detail, but pro oxidative, pro inflammatory,
Toxic,
directly toxic to cells and nutrient deficient.
And by nutrient deficient, I mean, the vegetable oils, none of them Have any vitamins A, D, or K2?
So, but it but anyway, so if you look at, and this is what I've done extensively
In my research over the last,
5 or 6 years particularly,
is looked at all the evidence
in
In in correlation
to this omega six consumption
and everywhere you look,
and I mean everywhere,
As the omega six goes up, as the seed oil, vegetable oil consumption goes up, you see obesity
Go through the roof, coronary heart disease,
strokes,
cancers,
Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome,
Alzheimer's disease, dementia,
age related macular degeneration, the autoimmune diseases,
Everything. All of these chronic diseases
go through the roof and you say, well, why is it, you know, You know,
why is it that
this is so broad,
you know, broad spread in terms of its,
harm. And the answer is because this is, as I mentioned, this is chronic metabolic biological poison.
You know, we're getting this we're getting this intensive oxidation, which is like we're rusting inside.
Right? We have a whole inflammatory
cascade that's set off by the high omega
6. The the omega 6 is directly toxic because
they the as these as the omega 6 Linoleic acid breaks down into metabolic
Components.
These components then,
are toxic to cells. We'd go through that in more detail. And then as I mentioned,
None of the oils none of the vegetable oils can even support
life,
when they're the only fat included in the diet. Why? Because they don't have any vitamins A, D, or K2.
So
so and and if I contrast this real quick, Barry, to To,
animal fats.
So
the omega 6 Linoleic acid in butter, for example, is about 1 a half to maybe 2 a half percent.
That's where we should be. And, of course, the butter carries vitamins a, d, and k two. Right? And it's the the same situation for
Ancestorally raised eggs.
Right? And this means that the chickens are not fed corn and soy, and we can get into that. And the body fat of of pigs,
Ian Prior's research on toke on the island of Tokelau way back in 1969.
These pigs were eating an ancestral diet and their body fat, LA was 2%
and the chickens,
same situation. Their body fat LA was 2 a half percent
And beef tallow, so,
you know,
100% grass fed beef, their body fat LA is about 2%.
So you can see you're all around 2, 2a half you know, 1a half to 2a half percent
omega 6 LA in these natural animal fats.
And that's all the world ever had to consume,
you know, for 99.7%
of the world's population up through the year 18/65,
And then we started getting vegetable oils. And then, you know, the it just was, it just was a landslide after after, you know, after where they introduced cottonseed oil in the United States and then soybean oil, and then we got all the others. And then the omega 6 just went through the roof. And as I said, with that came this onslaught of all this disease.
Yeah.
So,
let me poke at this a little bit.
Sure. What if can we offset this by consuming more omega threes, which are supposedly good for us. Right? Things that are in fish, with supplements, things like that.
Very very temporarily.
I think you can offset it Just slightly, but not well at all.
And the reason is is because
The
both the o the omega 6,
let me, let me, let me mention this. Okay.
Omega 6 LA is an 18 carbon fatty acid,
and its counterpart,
omega 3
alpha Linolenic
acid,
is also an 18 carbon omega 3 fatty acid.
Those can both be,
elongated
to longer chain fatty acids. So,
omega 6 can go to omega 6 LA can be converted into arachidonic acid, which is 20 carbons,
And its downstream effects are inflammatory.
The omega 3 alpha Linolenic acid, ALA,
can be,
Converted into
EPA and DHA, eicosapentanoic
pentanoic
acid and docosahexaenoic
acid.
20 carbons and 22 carbons. Right?
The both of these
pathways use the exact Same in,
it it you know,
elongates and desaturase
enzymes to create
the longer chain
Fatty acids. Right? So if you, if you push a bunch of omega 3 in there, you push a bunch of omega 3 ALA in there,
you Cut down a little bit the the
conversion
Mhmm. Of LA Okay. Onto arachidonic acid, you know, from its 18 carbon to its Twenty carbon component, right, which ultimately becomes more inflammatory.
So you can slightly control inflammation.
But to me,
it's like,
you know, slightly control inflammation by throwing more omega 3. But, you know, it's this is You're missing the point when you do this, and you can't fix the problem,
in this way because your Because your body fat stores in your cell membranes, your intermychondral
membranes, they're they're they're loaded with this
Omega 6 fat. I mean, think about it. You know, when you should be your body fat should be under 3%, but it's in, like, in America,
21 a half percent
Average?
This is a diss you know, this is a recipe for disaster. You cannot fix this with omega 3. And by the way,
In the United States, over the 20th century,
the the omega 6, of course, went through the roof, right, But the omega 3
almost doubled.
This is proof in itself because the, the feed wheels have lots of omega 3.
And so the you if the if the omega 3 was the answer, we would have fixed this a long time ago with just pumping in omega 3. Everybody who is, You know, throwing their flaxseed oil and fish oil and all this. And it's it this is not helping.
And in fact, there's there are serious problems with that because also when you the the the more double double bonds you have
In a fat, the the greater the likelihood of oxidation.
And so the omega threes are more likely to oxidize than the omega sixes
Because they don't have just 2 double bonds. They've got 3.
Right? And so
the omega threes. So So they're more likely to oxidize. So when you put so when you pull
fish oil,
or, you know, flax oil out of the, You know, the fish or the plant,
now it begins to oxidize
more rapidly. And in fact, on a on a
Her weight basis, if you just look at it on a mass basis,
the omega threes
are worse
When they're
outside
of the their natural habitat, which is, you know, either in the animal or in the plant,
They're worse than the seed oils in terms of their,
their,
oxidized metabolites.
Alright. These are called advanced lipid oxidation end products.
And if you just look at them by weight, you know, if you look at Two gram. In other words, you look at 2 grams of
of the,
omega 6, you know, of a of a seed oil, for example,
like soybean oil. And you looked at 2 grams of fish oil. The fish oil,
you know, that's been stored
in a, you know, similar conditions
will have more advanced lipid oxidation end products. And this is what I was talking about is the toxicity.
So it is not a good idea in my you at all to be
I I would not never recommend take taking
fish oil. If you want fish oil, eat fish.
Yeah. You eat the whole animal. Right? And
those oils,
when they're inside of the cell and they're protected by all of the
Mechanisms
inside
of an animal even at long after it's been killed, those oils are protected from oxidation
extremely well.
And so, so that's the way you wanna get your
your your fats. You wanna get them from naturally raised animals
And animals that are by the way, we can get we can get into this detail too if you want to, Barry. But, you know, animals that are not fed corn and soy, which raises their omega six high, And I'm talking about only about
pigs and chickens here. That doesn't happen to beef
for, you for other reasons because beef, You know, beef will not ever develop high omega 6.
But anyway, so that's the way you wanna, you know, the if so if you use, you know, If you if you consume only natural butter,
and natural animal fats from animals raised
ancestrally, and this is critical critical to understand,
Then you will have a very low omega six consumption,
and you will start to get healthy.
Yeah.
Jesus.
You know this?
It bumps me out a little bit always, topics like these. But they are very important,
because we need to know how this works. Right? So so let's talk about
one of those primary things that makes this so bad, which is, the oxidation and then,
the downstream
effects and the artifacts that that creates.
This is how I view oxidation as you also just explained it, just maybe to summarize it.
So you you have a, a fat, like something in an omega 3 or in an omega 6.
And especially when it is outside of its natural environment, like you say, outside of a fish, for instance, outside of a plant, or you extract it from a seed,
Then quite immediately, it starts to rust, basically. Right? What's what's oxidation is. Like, when you have an apple, for instance, you take a bite of it. You put it down and it becomes brown. That's also oxidation.
This happens,
to a fat that you then maybe consume, or Maybe you even use that,
as baking oil, like many people do sunflower oil, for instance, in the Netherlands here. It's just such a terrible
idea, but we've now been, told that that's much better than, for instance, animal fat because it doesn't contain,
saturated fat, we'll come come back to that,
that oxidizes
it more
and other things like sunlight,
exposure to, oxygen as well, again,
when it is out of its,
environment.
And just over time, it just becomes more unstable and and oxidizes as well even
when it is not oxidized, but then you put it in your body,
and it is an something that oxidizes quickly, like omega sixes, for instance, then still, I think it can then still oxidize within your cell. Right?
What happens then when it oxidizes?
Why is that so bad?
Right. Because
So,
Martin Greutfeld and a number of other researchers have all looked at these oils that have been heated
Primarily. Because when you heat these oils
like they do in
restaurants, especially fast food restaurants Yeah. They fill these vats. As everyone knows who's ever been
in almost any of these fast food restaurants like McDonald's, they have these vats
of oil.
And in the United States, it's mostly soybean oil and canola oil.
But anyway so they so they, like, they they put the French fries or the, you know, the
I mean, you know, breaded chicken or whatever
in those, and they fry them for a while. Right? And they leave those oils heating For days, sometimes a week or so
until they actually begin to polymerize
and, you know, they become like,
like varnish,
actually. But
but what happens is is so so
Martin Groitfeld
and colleagues, for example, they They analyzed a lot of these oils from these fast food restaurants. And what they find is that
these oils produce All of these advanced lipid oxidation end products.
And these are products like 4 Hydroxytenone
and all, called 4 HNE,
Malondialdehyde,
MDA,
Carboxyethyltyrol,
Acrylene,
and,
there's actually,
hundreds of others. Oh, there's
really, 9 and 13 HODE,
Which is hydroxy octadecadienoic
acid.
Anyway and there's literally hundreds of others that don't have
Names. They would just have chemical names, but I tell people that when you take an oil and you heat these oil heat the oil, especially heat it heating it,
and you produce all these advanced lipid oxidation print end products like I just named, these ales.
It's a lot like smoking a cigarette. When you smoke a cigarette, when you burn it, you create,
literally,
1,000 over more than 6,000 different Chemicals,
many of which are mutagens and carcinogens. Right? And it's the same thing
with these vegetable oils. They create these downstream end products that are oxidized, that
dream end products that are oxidized
that
collectively
all those that I just named in our body, like 4 H and E, MDA,
Carboxympylpyrol,
acrylene, and all these hundreds of others, these are collectively cytotoxic,
genotoxic,
mutagenic,
carcinogenic,
Atherogenic,
meaning causing atherosclerosis,
thrombogenic, meaning causing clotting,
obesogenic,
causing obesity, and diabetogenic,
Causing diabetes.
These alone,
these
ales, these advanced lipid oxidation end products alone,
Can account for a whole lot
of
the, you know, pandemic of chronic disease that we see. Yeah. Alright? Now
But that's when you just heat them. And as you already alluded to, Barry,
when you consume these oils, even if you consume them cold and they've never been heated and they've never seen light
And they've been, you know, kept in great condition and they're fresh. When you consume these and you've you start raising your omega 6 in your body,
This is what I call that once you develop this higher omega six in your body fat, in your cell membranes,
You set off what I call a, a catastrophic
lipid peroxidation
cascade because
these omega sixes and omega threes, by the way, That are have these you know, they're they're unsaturated
molecules.
They're very prone to oxidation. In fact, they're more prone to oxidation than any other
molecule in your body. Right? And they don't need oxygen to oxidize.
They oxidize when they're when they're attacked by free radicals Like hydroxyl radicals, superoxide,
hydrogen peroxide.
I'm leaving one out. But anyway, But with so but these radicals are produced in extraordinary numbers in our body all the time. And so
So those if we go back to the omega 6 Linoleic acid, when it's attacked by a hydroxyl radical, for example,
It degrades into a lipid hydroperoxide,
and that lipid hydroperoxide
will only last something like nanoseconds,
or milliseconds
generally before
it degrades into
those
advanced lipid oxidation end products, the ales.
Again, 4 H and E, Melondialdehyde,
carboxy carboxyathyl pyrole, acrolein, all those.
So there so this happens in our body and we know this.
So you can so now you have a double whammy. So you're consuming these. If you eat it fast why is fast food so bad? Number 1 is is you're eating heated oils
Because that's what's what they're frying everything in. And you're getting all these you're getting the high omega six, you're getting the
all these ales,
And now you're raising your omega 6 in your body fat. Just think it's just going up and up and up, right, and in your cells. And The that is oxidizing.
That is producing more ales endogenous
endogenously,
so you're getting them exogenously
and endogenously.
Right.
Recipe for disaster.
And, you know, I'll let me mention could I can I mention obesity for a second? Mhmm.
Okay. So the United States
is the quintessential example because we have data.
We have the data
That goes clear back into the 19th century for sugar and for vegetable oils. And in the 19th century,
in the 1800 in United States,
Scott Alan Carson did research that looked at,
the obesity in men aged 18 to 80, and and he did this by
analyzing,
prisoners, though they took the height and weight of prisoners as they went into prison. That's just so man aged 18 to 80, obesity was 1.2%
In the United States in the 19th century. Right? And,
of course, did we have vegetable oils? Not really. They weren't introduced until 18/66,
right after the American Civil War. And so in the 19th century, the vegetable oil consumption averaged
Around a gram a day
per person. Alright? So that's where we were in 1900. Obesity, 1.2%.
Now By 1960
in the United States, obesity was,
13.1%,
I believe it I believe it is.
And so
so ever this is when we Americans look back at our 1960
ancestors and they go, wow, you know, nobody was fat. Right. Nobody's obese.
But the answer is is obesity had risen 11 fold since 19th century between the 19th century and 1960.
But what was the old vegetable oils? 1961,
19.5
grams a day. Okay. Now obesity continues to By 2018,
Americans,
obesity,
42.5%
and another 31.5%,
I think it is,
are overweight.
Total obesity and overweight, 74%
in the United States as of 2018.
Right?
What happened with vegetable oils by 2010? This is our data. It's all extracted from the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Anybody can can pull up this data, and I've shown people how to do this,
so they can validate all the state. But, anyway, vegetable consumption was 80 grams a day in 2010 in the US.
So
so, you know, this is and you could see that that you've got the same correlations with diabetes, only the numbers are even worse in terms of the increase, and I can go through that if you want me to. But, you know, you we see this everywhere
we look. We see this correlation.
So, you know, it so we have the, you know, the correlative data. We have the you know, the bi the pathophysiological
mechanisms.
We have animal data that supports this. You know, when you feed animals,
vegetable oils, they rapidly become obese.
They rapidly develop diabetes. They rapidly develop cancers if ex if exposed to a carcinogen.
They rapidly produce congestive heart failure or heart you know, or heart failure.
It It's you know,
everywhere we look this, you know, it it fits with this
this theory.
Yeah.
And
Let let's stay on this negative path for a bit more before we turn around. We can get to the good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. We we will. Turnaround. But,
so so As these things are made, from vegetables,
and from from seeds
that are in plants,
I'll bet most of these things are also not organic, meaning that somebody came around and sprayed some,
Roundup on it. Right?
So that's like a double whammy. So all this stuff is also covered in extra poison
that makes it more poisonous.
Right.
So why in the world
would all of the Western governments
recommend that we eat this stuff instead of saturated fats?
Are they actively trying to poison us?
This is the e this is the easiest answer of all. They it they lower cholesterol.
They lower
LDL cholesterol. And, Barry, I have looked at this and looked at this.
I I have been, you know, investigating this since 2011
and, and especially intensively
since 2015.
And the only thing I can come up with
from all of these organizations,
you know, from from Harvard to Tufts to Mayo Clinic to American Heart Association,
the Cleveland Clinic, and the list goes on. And I'm sure some of this is you know, there's international support for this as well, the the World Health Organization supports this belief system that we should be consuming,
these vegetable oils. Why? Because of this Old belief system
that LDL
causes, you know, LDL cholesterol causes heart disease, and so therefore, you need to lower it. And what I say is is they Absolutely do lower the cholesterol.
And guess what? So does arsenic.
And it's true.
Arsenic,
I have a I have a I have a folder, Barry, that is literally this thick.
You know, I keep thousands and thousands of scientific Papers in my files. I just have I'm just running out of place to I have a a file this thick
on arsenic,
And and the reason I do is because it is incredibly
similar
in terms of its effects on people
To the vegetable oils, why would that be
oxidation?
And I've said this over and over. In you know, people often say,
Yeah. Inflammation
is the root of all disease. I don't believe that. It it runs parallel, but the root of all disease is oxidation or Not all disease. I shouldn't say that. But most of this chronic disease, it's oxidation. And and inflammation
cannot hold a handle to oxidation in terms of its destructive capability.
So a big dose of arsenic will kill you in hours. Right? Yeah. We know this. But if you but if you if someone is poisoned
or animals or or people are
slowly poisoned with doses of arsenic that don't kill them,
Curiously, they get all the same effects
that you get
with vegetable oils. They become insulin resistant
And then they develop diabetes, they become
obese,
they develop,
brain disease,
they develop heart failure,
neuropathies.
It's a disaster.
Right? It's the same thing,
You know, that we see with vegetable oils, just to it's all a matter of the dose. And the reason I'm so interested in this, as you could tell, is because
They they this is similar. This is analogous evidence is what it's called. If you look at the Bradford Hill criteria, you wanna you know, when you're when you're looking at a hypothesis,
You want to look at analogous evidence. Well,
arsenic is the example that's analogous to the seed oils. What again,
Because it drives oxidation.
And so,
so so so so back to the LDL.
Well, So when when you consume
these
seed oils
and with their high omega six linoleic acid, guess where they're incorporated? Well, The all of the they,
the the lipid, they,
all of the lipids that are carried around in the bloodstream,
you know, like LDL,
HDL,
chylomicrons,
VLDL.
All of these are lipoproteins,
Right. And they're, they're carrying around fats.
And so when you look at LDL, for example, when it incorporates those fats, again,
there's a reflection
From whatever your diet is in terms of that LDL, it's going to reflect that in the LDL because that's what they're doing. They're carrying around fats to distribute them to your cells all over.
Well, the LDL then is has a high omega 6 Linoleic acid just like everything else in your body when you're consuming these oils,
And that LDL then oxidizes
just like we keep talking about. And what does it oxidize into?
9 and 13 Hode
And malondialdehyde.
These are advanced lipid oxidation end products or what are sometimes called 9 and 13 hold code called Oxlams, oxidized linoleic acid metabolites.
So that's how we actually define
oxidized
LDL
And it is oxidized
l d LDL that causes heart disease. So LDL
has virtually no relationship to coronary heart disease,
The oxidized LDL has a very strong relationship
to coronary heart disease and it's strongly
related to the coronary artery calcium scan scores.
The higher scores, the higher the oxidized LDL.
And so what does this tell us? That when you consume seed oils, you you ox you're going to put more Linoleic acid in your LDL, it will oxidize. And when it oxidizes,
your your,
arterioles,
your arteries are gonna pull that Oxidized LDL out of circulation,
put it into the you know, through the endothelium into the,
into the intima, into the advent tissue. It's gonna start
plaque, and it's going to propagate that plaque as long as you consume keep consuming these oils. So indeed,
your LDL
measured in the blood will go down When you consume
these fats
and
and at the expense
of causing atherosclerosis,
the very thing you're trying to prevent.
Yeah. So it all fits together. It all makes sense if you just look at it
logically.
Yeah. Absolutely.
So that's what that's why they tell us to consume to consume these oils. And it it produces precisely the opposite results
of what they're
Telling us it's going to help us with, which is to prevent heart disease. And that's their only
that's the only benefit that
that
Allopathic medicine,
suggests
is the is is available by consuming these vegetable oils. That's the only benefit. And it's not obviously not a benefit.
No. And
I'll bet that, you know, some people will probably become very rich from all this nonsense as well over the backs of our health.
Right. And perhaps, maybe some other things that might happen as well,
is that,
as LDL goes down and these,
end products go up,
we don't have enough LDL, which is also anti inflammatory, right, which can help,
combat the damage that this oxidation does.
And then,
mechanistically,
perhaps what also happens is that because you have so much of these End products
may be your mitochondria aren't able to produce,
ATP at a level that they did, especially,
whilst burning fat. Is is that fair to say? Is that also the case?
Yeah. That's a great point, Barry. And the next the next thing that I I should have brought up,
I'm glad you did,
because and this is something that I presented back at the Ancestral Health Symposium,
at the University of California San Diego back in 2019,
is the the very fact that
that the high omega six,
in your body. And this has been this has been shown by multiple investigators in multiple different studies that the high omega six,
ultimately,
damages
a molecule called called cardiolipin,
which is in a critical molecule inside the inner Kenobi. Membrane. And when that
molecule is oxidized,
again, in the face of a high omega six diet,
the inner mitochondrial membrane becomes leaky and it leaks
hydrogen protons. Well, those hydrogen protons, the gradient
That is naturally produced when you're eating a healthy diet, low omega 6,
that holds that that proton gradient and those protons
Move through,
what are called ATP synthase,
to produce ATP, our energy currency.
And so but when the when the cardiolipid
is oxidized
and that that inner mitochondrial membrane becomes leaky, these protons can leak through
And not produce energy. And now you've you've crippled
the electron transport chain, the primary
mechanism in our Andre are the powerhouses of ourselves
that produce energy. And so what I believe,
and I think the evidence Support is that when you cripple your,
your,
mitochondrial energy production
by
By damaging the electron transport chain in this mechanism,
the cell will begin to,
store that those fats coming in,
because the fats gotta go somewhere. But the but it but you can't properly burn fats for fuel
when your mitochondria
Electron transport chains are damaged. And so the s the facts then sit there. So so and you become more,
More,
prone to requiring
carbohydrates
for fuel.
Because you can't burn fat for fuel properly. And so now you develop these lipid,
lipid
deposits
in your cells
That are that are affected in this way.
And I think this is
exactly how people become it's one of the one of the reasons that people become
Morbidly
obese
while they're not consuming higher,
calorie consumption. Even in the face of normal calories,
They you can become
you know, this is how I think people get to 300, 600,
and a 1000
pounds
or, you know, or hundreds of kilos Is because
that you've crippled this energy production mechanism and you're just you're storing fat for fuel
While you have no energy because you because you've damaged your mitochondria. So ultimately,
these
Fats damage mitochondria.
They cause you to store
energy rather than burn it for fuel because the cells are sick.
When you cripple energy production, you make cells sick
and they cannot function.
And,
This is yet another there's other mechanisms that make us obese with regard to seed oils, but but this is one of the what I think is one of the most,
one of the one of the major mechanisms by which we become,
overweight and obese. And we see this In animals, this happens
incredibly rapidly, like in in 2 or 3 weeks,
animals on high on on A 19%
seed oil diet, which is typical of Americans.
Yeah. These animals become they develop heart failure in 3 or 4 weeks,
And they become morbidly obese in a matter of
6 months.
I mean, up to twice their natural size,
and even on isocaloric
diets, in other words, you know, if if so 1 set of mice is on 1% omega 6
That they stay lean and healthy.
And another,
set of animals on
about 11%
omega 6 Linoleic acid, typical,
Actually lower than Americans today, and those animals
and everything else those animals become morbidly obese And everything else and they is the same in terms of their diet. And the animals have become morbid morbidly obese. They develop
diabetes. They develop fatty liver disease.
They're sick. You know? They're incredibly
sick.
Yeah. Yeah.
So let me put one last thought out there whilst you were talking. I was thinking that this might also then be a mechanism before we turn this around and go to the positive things.
So as you were saying, these animals, for instance, they develop heart disease very quickly.
And we've just discussed that,
mitochondria
don't work well anymore, which means
that, you don't have the,
energy production that you used to have. A while back, I was talking to doctor Steven Hussey,
who,
talks about, heart disease and all about the heart, and also about how,
easy water or structured water,
in your cells and also in your blood,
can prevent,
atherosclerosis
by simply the charge that it has, which it gets also
from, energy that's produced from ATP or being close to that. And because of that, it is less likely when you have highly charged water because your It's gonna be a work well. And it's less likely that particles get stuck in your artery walls and also that, for instance, calcium builds up there if you have a lesion there. So I think this is probably an additional mechanism.
You know, your your mitochondria are sick. Your cells are sick. You don't have enough,
energy,
you don't have enough of that structured water,
which can then prevent that, heart disease as well. So perhaps that is also another mechanism that works against us when we consume
these oils and fats.
Yeah. I I I'm not really aware of that research, but
I would be shocked
if this
purported mechanism
with this structured water held true in the face of a high omega six Diet.
Yeah. So I would I'd like to I I'd love to see that, you know, run if that's, You know, if that's their the belief system,
or or if that's a that's a theory that that is held, you know, I
I don't I don't I just cannot I cannot fathom that it could prevent
the, you know, devastation from the high omega 6 because, to my knowledge, Oh, no. Probably not. No. No. But I'm just saying, as you consume the these, high omega 6 oils, this will just work more and more against you because of this.
I see. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So okay. So this is bad for us.
We we know.
And it is also in everything. Right? If you go to the supermarket,
everything that has a wrapper around it, which is everything in the supermarket, basically,
contains some sort of seed vegetable oils.
Might not even be recognizable, maybe in some numbers or something, either for filling or for
because it's cheap. I don't know.
So everything contains it. So so what do we do? How can we,
You know, eat better and prevent all of this bad stuff from happening. And maybe,
you know, and for myself as well,
as I've consumed
All of this in the past, how can I get rid of this from my body?
Right. Okay. So the,
Bad news first.
Okay. Little bit of bad news, and then we'll get to the really good news.
So the half life of omega six
Fatty acids or any fatty acid
in your body is 600 to 680
days. So it's roughly 2 years.
So it takes a long time
to change your
the fatty acids in your body,
One way or the other, it takes years to happen.
So in other words, and this is I don't recommend this ever, but if if but If you took somebody like me who's been on an ancestral diet, meaning, no, I've not had any oils
at all,
Except rare occasions where I couldn't avoid it, you know, traveling or something, you know, in tiny amounts. But anyway, if you took somebody like me who would have a very, very low,
omega 6 Linoleic acid in my body fat.
And if I drink a cup of oil today
And a cup of oil tomorrow and a cup of oil for a few weeks.
Guess what?
In in, you know, 3 months, My body fat LA won't change at all.
It takes a long time to change it.
And so,
so that's good news. But in the in the short term that that just so people know,
that you will develop all sorts of inflammatory you'll you'll Go down those inflammatory cascades right away.
I mean, as soon as you eat it, like within minutes or hours, you know, like you're increasing your
Inflammation
and your your risk for clotting and all that. Right? So don't do this. Put it in your in your body. You won't store it
immediately.
Store it. Exactly. You won't it won't raise your stored levels of omega 6 that fast. It's gonna reflect what you've done over the last, mostly, 2 or 3 years.
Alright.
Okay. So if you go to if you go to a completely ancestral diet, you completely get your omega 6 Linoleic acid in your Food consumption down to where it should be, which is under 2% of your total calories,
then it it's gonna take you probably 2 to 3 years To get your levels down to ancestral levels where you're gonna enjoy the the most beneficial health,
most benefits in terms of your health.
And
but in the in the meantime,
you're going to be getting healthier and healthier. And a lot of people, When they get seed oils out of their diet, they start losing weight very rapidly. I mean, like, within weeks,
they're you know, they they The inflammatory conditions decrease, they get leaner,
they get healthier, they feel better. All these things start happening pretty fast,
and some people notice inflammatory
conditions
improve markedly just within days.
So
so you have, you know, you have that benefit.
The only way that I
know of that you can speed this up other than going really low on your omega 6 is exercise. That that at least that makes sense to me because
You
we we burn omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids for fuel. We can burn them for fuel. We've stored them. You can burn them.
And I think this is why even extremely
high,
carbohydrate
diets,
like, you know, like,
Like like the Papua New Guineans of Tucacenta who consumed
94.6%
carbohydrate diets and the Okinawans who consumed
84%
Carbohydrate
diets, they're very, very healthy, but why? Their omega six is under 1%.
And you can do the same thing like, You know, Walter Kempner showed way back in the 19 thirties
putting people on 95%,
carbohydrate diets.
It was, you know, he was using mostly white rice, fruit,
fruit juice, and sugar,
and these people
dropped 100 of pounds.
And it's very interesting, but what but if you look at it, and I haven't I haven't done the math, but I know already know in my head because I've looked at all these different populations, That their omega 6 will be under in that kind of a diet, it's under 1%. Yeah. It's you know, this is where like the Japanese,
the mainland Japan in 1960 consumed and this is everybody knows they're fantastically healthy back then, And same with the Okinawans. And the the mainland Japanese consumed 84%
carbohydrate diet, it's all white rice,
and their diet was 5% fat
And the rest of it would be protein. So it's around 11%
protein, roughly. Yeah.
And,
the same for the Okinawans. Their diet was in 1950
to 60. You know, their diet was mostly,
sweet potatoes.
Their diet was 84%
carbohydrate exactly like mainland Japan. It's just that they were deriving their carbohydrate from a different source. Theirs and Okinawa was Traditionally for 100 of years with sweet potatoes,
and yet and they had, you know, they ate,
pork
And vegetables, and that was it. And but if you do the math, once again, their omega six would have been under 1% of their diet. Again, contrast that To the to the typical westerner that's between 6
12% of their diet from, you know, omega 6.
Right.
So
so again, you you so I think,
you know, you just want to get your you want to get your omega 6 super low,
Keep it
there. Right? Avoid vegetable oils like the plague.
Cook all your own food would be the very best thing you can do, so you're in control of it. Cook with butter
or, you know, if you if you wanna use anything besides butter, if you need an oil, I would say probably coconut oil or palm kernel oil would be safest because they're 2% omega 6 Linoleic acid.
Exercise
does doesn't mean kill yourself,
The exercise will be beneficial.
I think resistance exercise is excellent because it'll help you, you know, maintain muscle mass or grow muscle mass And muscle burns fuel.
That'll help you burn away your your excess,
omega
Omega 6 and omega 3 fats that you don't need.
And,
and, you you know, you're you're gonna rapidly
Get healthier.
Okay.
And and so you're talking about the ancestral
diet.
What would that, be would that be for instance, mostly, animal fats or animal meats?
Yeah. So the fat would come, you know, in in an ancestral diet For the most part, for most populations,
their fat is going to come from,
animal fat.
Lard butter or beef tallow. And,
we might wanna discuss, you know, pigs and chickens again. I guess we did.
People need to be very cautious about and understand that
omega 6 Linoleic acid in pigs and chickens that are fed corn and soy will go up to 20% and beyond and higher.
So again, pigs and chickens, they're monogastric animals like humans, and they'll develop pi omega 6.
So But for most populations,
the the the
the traditional
fats in the diet are going to come from animals,
lard butter and beef tallow. And for most people, they know that the cooking fat
would be traditionally, would be butter.
You know, olive oil would have been traditional
way only where olive oil was avail immediately available.
And that was not not a very big part of the World had access to olive oil, but olive oil would be okay. Although, I don't recommend
heating it,
significantly. Because, again, it's It's higher in omega 6 and it'll oxidize.
Yeah.
Coconut oil, is,
is certainly,
would be 2nd in line in terms of being considered completely
ancestral,
because some of the populations like South Pacific Islanders, they used
Extreme amounts of of coconut oil, like the Tokelauans.
Their diet was,
fifty
6%
coconut,
from, from coconut fat, coconut oil.
Were they just from eating, The you know, their diet was mostly coconut,
fish, starchy tubers, and fruit. And they're fantastically
healthy with a diet of precisely
50%
saturated fat.
That all that saturated fat's coming from coconut oil, and they're fantastically healthy. They had no obesity,
no diabetes,
And no heart disease. This was back in the 19 seventies eighties when they were
evaluated,
by,
I I forget. I think that was Ian Prior, but I can't remember. Anyway, but they they were They were evaluated back in the seventies eighties, and they're extremely healthy
on a diet of 50% saturated fat.
So but anyway yeah. So but for most populations,
most people,
their traditional
added is gonna come from butter.
Yeah.
Yeah. So It's pretty typical. Or lard, you know, may or lard, but, you know, again,
You've gotta be careful about getting if you're gonna use lard, you gotta you need to make sure you're getting it from a an ant from animals or an animal that
is not consuming corn and soy.
Yeah.
So
dump the seed oils, which means no more processed food.
Nothing with the package, basically. Right.
Only whole
real foods that you could recognize,
get proper
animal based foods, Met.
And so
does it matter if you,
eat a cow that is not grass fed in this case, that is eating corn, for instance?
A cow.
Not very much.
The the the the interesting thing
about cattle,
The ruminants
or well, you know, what you might classify as the ungulates, the hooved animals,
that,
like, you know, like cattle,
bison, buffalo,
is that
these ruminants
have a multi compartment stomach.
And one of those stomachs
is what I is really what's called might be called a bio hydrogenation chamber. So they can take a high omega 6 diet,
like corn and soy,
and they will hydrogenate those omega sixes And convert them into saturated and monounsaturated
fats and then store those.
So even cattle that are completely raised on corn and soy,
They'll have
low omega 6. If an example let me give you an example. So like a a com a 100%
grass fed
Cow
will,
you know, have roughly,
maybe have as low as or lower than 2% omega 6 Linoleic acid in its body fat.
Whereas
a cow that is
fed,
corn and soy
will raise up to maybe 3%.
Oh, okay. 3% Omega 6 Linoleic acid. Compare that to olive oils, the average is 10%. Right? Yeah. And soybean oil is 56%,
And safflower oil
is 78%.
So the so the cheapest
beef
in the store bought, you know You know, beef, the the the CAFO raised, concentrated animal feeding operation raised fed GMO corn and well, corn and soy,
That, you know, that is tremendously
better than any
oil there is. I mean, any typical seed oil there is.
And,
but, and again, but, but that so that's cattle. One of the re one thing you've already mentioned that we have to be cautious about is The animals in CAFOs
that are fed g they're fed GMO
in the United States, GMO corn and soy.
And so
everybody in America
who's consuming those animals, they're consuming much higher levels of glyphosate
poison because those animals that are fed GMO corn and soy, that corn and soy
is GMO and it's sprayed with Roundup. And Roundup has the glyphosate. And the glyphosate accumulates
in the plant,
and the animals eat it, and they accumulate it more so in their body fat. And then we humans Eat it. And so this is one reason to try to look for you don't have that in Europe, you know, all of Europe We're we're there that problem does not exist, I don't think, because GMOs are not allowed.
No. We do have glyphosate. So if things are not biologic and they do eat, Grain and soy, then still it's sprayed with Roundup.
Oh, really? Yeah. We we do have that problem, but not in, in the same,
Volume as as you have in the US. That that's true. Yeah.
So but that's definitely something to be mindful of. But, you know, like you said, it's already a big step up from using these oils, for instance.
So that's that's a good thing.
Okay.
So we've gone through a lot,
a lot of bad news and also
lots of good steps. And there is hope, like, we can get rid of this stuff from our bodies once we stop consuming it and then eat, the right things.
Goodness me.
Okay.
This was excellent.
Where can people find more about you and your upcoming book.
So,
people can find
me and our organizations. We've got 2 of them, 2 non Nonprofit organizations,
CureAMD
Foundation
and Ancestral
Health
Foundation.
And,
they can look for
me and my work there.
They could find me all over YouTube with lots of, presentations
and podcasts like this one.
And our book,
oh, let me grab it.
I do have a copy here. This is not available to the public. I don't know. Can you see that okay? So oh, I've got a bunch of stickers here for my own,
but this is just my copy, but ancestral The Ancestral Diet Revolution
is the name of this book. It will be out On,
May 15th, so here in 2 weeks. It should be available through online,
Retailers like,
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and so forth. So and it should be it it'll be,
it'll be,
Sold through IngramSpark,
which means it'll be available all around the world.
Excellent. So yeah. After so after May 15th,
Should be available in different different formats,
at those online retailers. Excellent. And as we, you know, podcasting sometimes is time travel. So this episode will be out after, May 15th.
So when you're listening to this, you can look for the book. It will be linked in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, look in the show notes, and there's a link to this book. Is there an audiobook,
as well?
Not immediately, but we will we We are going to produce 1. So it will it'll take a little while to get that one available, but
but, I I wanna mention to your viewers,
our listeners that
The this book is loaded with graphs that, you know, I've worked on for many years now.
This data
That I think is
extraordinarily supportive of this hypothesis. There's 80 graphs
in this book, and thus this evidence is
It is really important to if if if you want to really
understand
the theory and understand the evidence,
Then you need to see those. That'll be a lot easier,
to, you know, to to look at in the actual book or in a PDF or, You know, ebook or whatever.
Although I think that, you know, when we,
produce an audiobook that people will be able to they can, You know, while they're listening, they can stop and go to those images, I understand.
So I've never produced an audiobook yet. This will be this will be my first. Are you doing it yourself?
Well, I,
I'm told that I need to read the book.
Excellent. That's always the best.
I don't want you know, I don't wanna hand that off to anyone else. Yeah. So that's a pretty big task. This is, about a 160,000
words, and there's
It'd be a lot of description
on these graphs and tables, you know, that that's a that's a that's a pretty big task
To create an audiobook. So it'd be a that would be a very long listen.
I'll listen to it. I'll buy it. One customer already.
I'd rather you read it, Barry.
Alright.
I'll do that too.
I appreciate that.
Okay. Thank you very much for All that you do and for educating us today. Thank you very much.
Thanks so much for the opportunity, Barry. It's been an honor and a pleasure. Alright.