PUFA: What is it and Why Should it Be Avoided? What’s worse for your health than processed white flour, refined sugar, or high fructose corn syrup?
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You might be surprised. Let’s have a little look at our food supply in recent history, shall we? At the turn of the last century, corn and soybeans were fast becoming the largest crop grown in the US.
When they started becoming by far the cheapest crops we were growing, thanks to government subsidies, marketing geniuses in the booming ag industry thought of a great plan. Genius, right?! This whole movement toward the use of polyunsaturated fats, instead of saturated fats, culminated a few decades later with the advent of the lipid hypothesis — the fraudulent claim made by one really terrible scientist that told everyone saturated fat and cholesterol were the cause of heart disease. We all know how that’s played out.
Saturated fat is still demonized to this day, while consumption of unsaturated fats, especially PUFA’s, are encouraged by practitioners of mainstream medicine. And of course, we have more heart disease than ever. What are PUFA’s? PUFA stands for Poly- Unsaturated Fatty Acid. In chemical terms, that means that the fatty acid has more than one (poly) double bond in the carbon chain. They’re unsaturated because they’re missing out on what saturated fatty acid has — hydrogen atoms.
That makes the bonds sort of incomplete, in a sense. So, imagine a chain of links that are sort of missing a joint or two, on each and every link — it wouldn’t be very strong or stable. Because of this instability, polyunsaturated fatty acids are very much prone to oxidation, which is basically getting their chain all kinds of messed up and broken, and causes problems with how your body reacts to the acid.
Um. Enough chemistry. It’s really pretty simple. Because of their instability, and the negative effects on the body’s systems these oils have in excess, PUFA is bad. Saturated is rad!
Omega- 3 and Omega- 6. There are two main types of PUFA’s — omega- 3 and omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Omega- 3 essential fatty acids are found in fatty fish, shellfish, liver, and in some seeds like flax. They’re good for us in moderate amounts. Mmm. Omega- 6 PUFA occurs naturally in small quantities in natural foods like seeds, nuts, legumes, and also in properly- raised animal products. Our fat cells are comprised of very, very little omega- 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and are instead are made up of mostly saturated and monounsaturated fat.
So when we start consuming the oils from these foods in concentrated form, instead of eating moderate amounts of the actual foods they came from, we wind up with a serious imbalance, and the various health problems that result. Let me put it this way. When was the last time you sat down and ate a big bowlful of cotton seeds? What’s that?? Well, thanks to modern technologies of the food processing industry, cottonseed oil has become a common food, that you’ve more than likely consumed in disgusting quantities, right along with soybean oil, canola (rapeseed) oil, corn oil, safflower seed oil, sunflower seed oil, and aaaall kinds of these concentrated forms of polyunsaturated fatty acids.
You should know almonds come in two varieties, sweet and bitter, and the latter is highly poisonous when raw. Bitter almonds contain glycoside amygdalin. We have told you not to stare at the Sun today. We have told you to use safety glasses. We have tried so very hard, and we are so very tired. Here are some people who. Somos Primos. OCTOBER 2015. Editor: Mimi Lozano ©2000-2015. Gustavo Arrellano's Ask a Mexican! It’s a good time to be vegan. The list of delicious plant-based substitutes for familiar products gets longer by the day, from marshmallows to cheesecake to.
Why is Polyunsaturated Fat So Bad? If you google “polyunsaturated fat,” you’re soon bombarded with the “facts” from mainstream medical sites advocating the use of PUFA over that dastardly artery- clogging saturated fat we’re all told to shun from our diet. But, those of us who’ve been educated from sources other than those profiting off of the food and medical industries understand that’s a big load of Metamucil’ed crap. They are onto something, though. Not all fats are healthy. So what makes polyunsaturated fat so inferior to saturated? There’s more to it than you might think.
DNA- Disrupting Inflammation and Free Radical Damage. The most widely- recognized danger of PUFA oils is the inflammation in the body caused by consuming it in excess. Lots of foods are somewhat inflammatory. And, that’s okay. A little inflammation actually keeps things like your immune system running smoothly.
But when taken to the extreme, inflammation isn’t so helpful. How To Watch The Full Goon Last Of The Enforcers (2017) Movie. High levels of inflammation have been linked to all sorts of serious issues, like heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.
Excessive inflammation in the body from PUFAs happens because of the presence of free radicals formed in the processing of the industrial oils (like vegetable and canola), which renders them rancid. Free radicals are atoms with an unpaired electron floating around, which causes them to basically go nuts. These compounds attack cell membranes and red blood cells, and they even cause damage to DNA and RNA strands, leading to cellular mutations in the body’s tissues. In skin, it causes wrinkles and premature aging.
In blood vessels, the buildup of plaque. In tissues and organs, it can set the stage for tumors to form. I think you get the picture. Free radicals are bad, bad news, and they’re ever- present in industrial PUFA oils.
Processing PUFA Oils from Corn, Seeds, and Soy. Free- radical forming oxidation of the PUFA happens when it is exposed to heat, light, or oxygen. Kinda hard to avoid that when you’re cooking with these fragile oils. But before they ever touch a frying pan or a Frito- Lay factory, the PUFA oils are oxidized to oblivion just by the process used to manufacture them. As you might imagine, it’s pretty difficult to make oil out of things like seeds. People have been making oil from olives for thousands upon thousands of years, because it’s pretty easy — you squeeze it. Oil comes out. Squeeze a genetically- modified rapeseed and, well, you’re still pretty oil- less.
Factory- processed PUFA oils are created through measures of high heat and extreme pressure, exposing the oil to all sorts of oxidative damage, polished off with a good dumping of chemical solvents to get every last bit of that profit- producing oil out of the seeds, or corn, or soy. Some of the chemical (usually hexane) remains, and yet another chemical is added to deodorize the rancid PUFA oil’s stench. In that process, the small amount of omega- 3 present in oils like canola, actually transforms into trans fatty acid. And finally, carcinogenic BHT and BTA are added as chemical preservatives, since any naturally- occurring preservative substances, such as antioxidant vitamin E which were once naturally found in the food, have been thoroughly killed off in processing. Yummy! PUFA and Your Metabolism.
PUFA oils have an absolutely devastating effect on the body’s metabolism. That’s because PUFA’s directly interfere with the functioning of the thyroid gland, and also how well the thyroid hormones are able to be utilized, or metabolized, by the body.
This type of interference with thyroid functioning is a major cause for a sluggish metabolism in the body. Oh and remember that pesky inflammation PUFAs tend to cause? Well, that leads to a big rise in the counter- inflammatory stress hormones of cortisol (the “belly fat” hormone) and a weird thing called Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling (SOCS- 3). That’s because those hormones come out to play when they start seeing things like Interleukin- 6, which although it sounds more like the name of a sci- fi starship commander, is an example of an inflammatory molecule which are known to rise in direct proportion to the presence of omega- 6 PUFAs in the diet. The stress hormones released as a result are a big, big deal.
Matt Stone of 1. 80. Degree. Health explains: It! Polyunsaturated fat, that is! You can learn a whoooole lot more about all this, and how to get your metabolism to a nice, healthy, fat- burning state in the book, Diet Recovery, which I highly recommend. Modern PUFA, Modern Diseases. I’m fast becoming an avid collector of vintage and antique cookbooks. I have a couple that date back as far as the late 1.
You know how everyone is constantly pointing to processed white flour and refined sugar as the be- all- end- all reason to why we’re all so fat and unhealthy in our modern age?