First: from here on out if I say PUFA, that means Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids.
For many years, I bought into the whole idea of Omega-3=good and Omega-6=bad for a a long time. I didn’t worry a lot about how much Omega-6 was in my diet (mostly from high PUFA nuts, seeds and their oils) and instead tried to balance it out with fish oil.
About a year ago, I read what Brian Peskin had to say about fish oil. He feels that the problem is not that we have too much Omega-6 but that we have too much crap Omega-6 and that fish oil supplements are mostly junk wearing a healthy halo.
Fish have no oil glands so in order to get the oil fish have to be “juiced.” Imagine putting rejected fish (those not used to sell in restaurants and supermarkets) into a blender, sifting out all the fleshy bits and bones, then encapsulating the “juice.” Not only is this just disgusting to imagine, but fish oil in such concentrations is the worst way to get your EFAs.
While this description seems hyperbolic, I had never really thought about how fish oil was produced. Generally, any industrial processing is far worse than one might imagine. In general, I’ve found people don’t really think about it at all. How many people who eat hot dogs, for instance, want to think about how they are made?
His other articles are about how saturated fats don’t cause heart disease and how being in ketosis is not dangerous and is not the same as ketoacidosis. I certainly had heard before that most of the Omega-6 and -3 in oils or nuts are already oxidized or rancid and therefore really bad for you. It’s not much of a leap to believe that fish oil is similarly oxidized during processing and could be heavily damaged by the time it gets to you. He seems to otherwise have it together, but his idea that we need to supplement Omega-6 really left me cold. Instead of dismissing fish oil, I sought out better fish oil and tried to eat more wild-caught fish. I filed his data point away.
More recently, while looking into subclinical (as defined solely by blood tests) hypothyroidism and how hard it is to get a proper diagnosis and treatment for hypothyroidism generally, I wound up reading a lot of work by Ray Peat, PhD, Dr. Broda Barnes, Dr. Bruce Rind and even more recently, a little of Dr. Mark Starr’s work. Starr’s book hasn’t shown up yet, but there’s bits salted around the web. What all these people have in common is a dislike of the current medical tests for hypothyroidism. They think they are very inaccurate, and that the net result is that people with real metabolic problems can’t get treatment. Ray Peat also has a lot of information about curing estrogen dominance and it’s inter-relationship with everything else, including hypothyroidism. He feels that PUFAs are involved with low progesterone and low thyroid conditions, and this was very interesting to me as I have very real symptoms of both.
So, eventually, I found myself reading this article at Ray Peat’s site.
In declaring EPA and DHA to be safe, the FDA neglected to evaluate their antithyroid, immunosuppressive, lipid peroxidative (Song et al., 2000), light sensitizing, and antimitochondrial effects, their depression of glucose oxidation (Delarue et al., 2003), and their contribution to metastatic cancer (Klieveri, et al., 2000), lipofuscinosis and liver damage, among other problems.
Hey, tell us what you really think!
Peat also doesn’t believe that the so-called “Essential Fatty Acids” are at all essential. He recommends getting as much of your fats as possible from saturated sources like butter, cream and coconut oil. I used to take for granted the idea of EFAs, but I recently read Peat’s dissection of one of the core rat studies (Burr and Burr, 1929).
Over the last thirty years I have asked several prominent oil researchers what the evidence is that there is such a thing as an “essential fatty acid.” One professor cited a single publication about a solitary sick person who recovered from some sickness after being given some unsaturated fat. (If he had known of any better evidence, wouldn’t he have mentioned it?) The others (if they answered at all) cited “Burr and Burr, 1929.” The surprising thing about that answer is that these people can consider any nutritional research from 1929 to be definitive. It’s very much like quoting a 1929 opinion of a physicist regarding the procedure for making a hydrogen bomb. What was known about nutrition in 1929? Most of the B vitamins weren’t even suspected, and it had been only two or three years since “vitamin B” had been subdivided into two factors, the “antineuritic factor,” B1, and the “growth factor,” B2. Burr had no way of really understanding what deficiencies or toxicities were present in his experimental diet.
He goes on to say:
Several publications between 1936 and 1944 made it very clear that Burr’s basic animal diet was deficient in various nutrients, especially vitamin B6. The disease that appeared in Burr’s animals could be cured by fat free B-vitamin preparations, or by purified vitamin B6 when it became available. A zinc deficiency produces similar symptoms, and at the time Burr did his experiments, there was no information on the effects of fats on mineral absorption.
We all know what happened next: margarine was born.
But around that time, the seed oil industry was in crisis because the use of those oils in paints and plastics was being displaced by new compounds made from petroleum. The industry needed new markets, and discovered ways to convince the public that seed oils were better than animal fats. They were called the “heart protective oils,” though human studies soon showed the same results that the animal studies had, namely, that they were toxic to the heart and increased the incidence of cancer.
Before the supposed essentiality and heart-healthiness of PUFAs were “discovered”, they were primarily used in paints and varnishes. When they oxidize they are very sticky. You may have noticed that when vegetable oil drips on something, it gets very tacky. Its unique ability to oxidize quickly made it useful in paints and varnishes. You might also note that coconut oil and olive oil do not do this. If you drip olive oil on the *outside* of the bottle accidentally, it will remain very slippery until you wash it off there. Not so with sesame and peanut oils. I’ve always found peanut butter to be disgustingly sticky.
Since I brought up healthy halos1, what about linseed oil?
Linseed oil can polymerize and the reaction is exothermic, and rags soaked in it can ignite spontaneously. Due to its polymer-like properties linseed oil is used on its own or blended with other oils, resins and solvents as an impregnator and varnish in wood finishing, as a pigment binder in oil paints, as a plasticizer and hardener in putty and in the manufacture of linoleum. The use of linseed oil has declined over the past several decades with the increased use of alkyd resins, which are similar but partially synthetic materials that resist yellowing.
Linseed oil is *flaxseed* oil. Sounds tasty, right?
If you’re interested in avoiding PUFAs, I have provided some tables below. I don’t worry too much about PUFAs in meat since those are locked up with other fats and keeping meat fresh specifically involves avoiding spoilage, and fats are the first thing to spoil. I do try not to rely on chicken too much (I love chicken broth made from bones and the carcass), and I only eat turkey on holidays anyway.
I’ve moved towards only using coconut oil, ghee and olive oil for cooking. There’s no commercial salad dressing or mayonnaise that isn’t full of PUFAs (unless it’s fat-free, then it’s full of HFCS). The same is true of anything found in a restaurant fryer. With the exception of white potatoes (and I’m not eating those at present), there’s really nothing coming out of a restaurant fryer that tempts me. Salad dressing is a snap to make from extra virgin olive oil, but I still haven’t come up with mayonnaise I like from olive oil, coconut oil and/or bacon fat, so I have not had mayo in quite a while. I know baconnaise sounds like it would be awesome, but I didn’t like it.
I now mostly stick to cashews, macadamia nuts and coconut products. I do eat almonds once in a while, and I would eat hazelnuts, but since I’m not eating mixed nuts right now, and I don’t like them enough to seek them out, they are not present in my diet. If I get sick of cashews and macs, maybe I’ll buy a pound of them.
1I will NOT go off on a tangent about agave nectar…must not go off on a tangent about agave nectar.
Here’s what I use for mayonnaise: http://www.instructables.com/id/Mayonnaise!/
I double the batch and make it in a blender because I don’t have one of those stick blending thingys.
I use EVOO, lime juice instead of lemon, fresh garlic, and both the spicy mustard and the Sriracha sauce. I don’t know if you are eating all that stuff right now, but as for me, I try not to just eat the stuff with a spoon.
There is way more flavor than anything you’ll get off the shelf at the store near the “miracle whip” though. Hope you don’t like it bland.
here’s something I haven’t tried yet:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Budwig/
I bring it up because he’s grinding the flax seed right before consumption. So the theory he goes on is that if you grind the seeds fresh and assimilate the oil before it becomes varnish, then it’s healthy.
I’m pretty used to not having mayonnaise at all, at this point, but if I make it again, I’ll use EVOO and Extra-light olive oil. I find all EVOO has too much olive flavor for some applications. I can really only use that to emulsify a salad dressing.
I do think canola is a crap oil. It’s a heavily processed industrial oil, I’ve never liked it anyway (often smells off to me), and it has too much PUFA for me at the moment.
And flax seed, fresh ground or otherwise, has never done anything good for me. I used a fair amount of it way back on Atkins induction, and my digestive system hates the stuff.
I do love Sriracha sauce. Ever since I saw someone else call it “cock sauce” (and LOLed), it’s really hard for me not to think of it that way.
I made some mayo/aioli once with EVOO. You’re right, it had an overwhelming olive taste, even in a tuna salad with chopped shallot, capers, hot mustard and other powerful stuff, so when I make tuna salad now I use a good mild mustard to act as a sort of binder. Really, since I don’t eat bread anymore, there’s not much use for mayo other than as a binder for my world’s best tuna salad.
I buy cold-press unfiltered organic (expensive!) olive oil for liberal dousing of salad greens, where the taste is welcome. in mayo? Not so much.
Agreed on the fish oil… I’ve been taking it but only because I have some, once it’s gone, no more, except maybe good cod liver oil (in caps; I tried it straight once and ended up gagging and heaving for an hour. blech). I don’t really agonize over omega-3 vs -6 anymore. Pork is loaded with -6 but damned if I’m giving up bacon.
I must have defective taste buds. I buy the most flavorful stuff that claims EVOO (seems there’s no US legal definition for “extra virgin”) and can just barely taste it. “Extra Light” EVOO never made any sense to me, but I know people buy the stuff. I just figured that there’s people who buy Bud Light too.
Hi Nicole,
In my opinion the best work being done right now on PUFA’s is by Chris Masterjohn: http://bit.ly/df9hml
I would be careful with olive oils. A lot of that extra light stuff is being cut with something other than olive oil.
Macadamia nut oil is a great low pufa oil.
Thanks for the link to Masterjohn. It’s nice to see that Ray Peat isn’t actually alone in pointing out the idea of EFAs is wrong.
You are welcome, although Chris doesn’t deny there are EFAs, just that they aren’t the ones everyone normally thinks of and that they do not normally need to be supplemented. So he is close to Peat, but not quite.
I have heard about the olive oil trickery, and I actually returned some extra-virgin olive oil last week because it was liquid in the fridge. I just didn’t trust that. My grocery store is good about returns, and I just said that there was something wrong with it, and it didn’t taste right. When I got up to the customer service counter, I just couldn’t manage to go through the whole deal about how I thought it was adulterated.
I’ve gone back to the extra-virgin olive oil brand that I trust, and I bought that brand of extra-light olive oil.
Short of an assay, I’m not aware of any other tricks but the fridge one to test if it’s been blended with PUFA.
Yes its best to know your sources, and many have described over the years what various manufacturers do. The best olive oil I have ever had is one made like wine, where the oil is decanted and not mechanically crushed under a lot of pressure. That stuff was sooooooooo tasty (and expensive).
I thought by definition light olive oil was cut with something else, even if it is only olive pumice oil. It has been awhile since I dug into this subject.
Nicole – you may want to know that polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats interfere with vitamin D adsorption, and can cause vitamin D defiency. In countries with a lot of sun this is of lesser concern, but in the northern hemisphere this can be troublesome –
http://www.westonaprice.org/The-Miracle-of-Vitamin-D.html
To Astrogirl
To my knowledge there is much science that clearly show fish oils can be toxic, but this is because they are concentrated. If the oils are heated or exposed to light or oxygen they oxidise, and most fish oils on the market have no natural antioxidants (A and D) included, except from syntetic ones which also are documented to be toxic.
In my own experience (I fish my own seafood), and via feedback from a lot of patients, fatty whole fish is okay, if it is fresh or cured when fresh without heat in a traditional way.
Any fish oil, however it is processed, is toxic in anything but very small amounts. Even the best and cleanest brands, without any chemicals like f.ex mercury or arsenic, are toxic because they are a concentrated source of extremely oxidative fatty acids, and the oxidation starts when the fats enter your warm body.
However, in the days of yore, when most people in countries with extensive costlines ate a lot of fish, in particular herring (in f.ex scandinavian countries – which where cured so it would last a year or so) they always, and I repeat; always ate the fish with lots and lots of butter or milk products (always fermented) like cheeses, soured milks, kefir, yoghurt, etc so that they got quite some saturated fats to stabilize the fish fats and protect them from oxidation. This practice is almost universal, and in warmer climates you find fish eaters always use f.ex coconut milk or oil or palm oil, or butter or ghee (clarified butter) when consuming fish.
Therefore, if you are to use fish oils, you first have to find the best and cleanest brands, which also include the natural vitamins A and D, and then always use only the recommended small doses, and those small doses only.
And always consume fish oils with saturated fats of any kind, and prepare any fatty fish with saturated fats (coconut, palm oil, butter, ghee, lard, tallow, suet, etc) like the wise people in days of yore always did, in whatever country they inhabited.
Another point is to use very little heat when preparing fatty fish, or even better, to use only traditional curing methods that does not degrade any nutrients and also protects the fats from oxidation.
So in theory buying packaged frozen wild salmon is better than “fresh” which was frozen on the boat like the packaged stuff then thawed to look pretty in the seafood case? Consumption with SFA noted, will bake in butter from now on instead of EVOO.
I have to say that the “previously frozen” tag on seafood is really unappealing to me anyway. Not as bad as “farmed”, but still not awesome.
Excellent arrangement of information–Thank you! I have been working with a friend of Ray Peat’s to help straighten out my hormones and hypothyroidism. Her name is Lita Lee, and she’s a wonderful nutritionist. I had been duped into taking cod liver oil with high vitamin butter, with the hope that my cavities would start to heal, as is Weston A. Price’s claim. His adherents say that taking a lot of cod liver oil can help repair estrogen dominance. But all I got from eating cod liver oil was worsening of my melasma (dark spots on my face) which I’d started to get a few years ago when I started using a synthetic hormone releasing IUD. Years after removal of the IUD I’m still trying to get rid of the melasma. Dr. Peat defines melasma as spots of unsaturated oils with iron. 2 years ago when I was a vegetarian, I used to eat flax oil every day too. Hopefully, now that I’m throwing the cod liver oil away, taking natural progesterone in vitamin E, and taking other steps to improve my thyroid function, I will be able to heal from the melasma. Here’s to health.