Is there a way to measure healthiness of a single ingredient? I didn't find anything allowing me to label stuff as healthy or unhealthy. At least not scientific. I do not even think there's a scientific definition of healthiness of one single ingredient. I guess by your definition (vegetable oils increasing risk of some cardiovascular diseases) makes all meat, animal breast milk, eggs unhealthy.

I thought only diets and lifestyle can be healthy, regardless of what a single ingredient can do.

Also, if it is vegetable oil, how come there's protein in it? I thought oil is just fat? There's 4 grams of protein in 100mL of soy/oat milk (about the same as cow breast milk). Almonds on the other hand are a big scam with only 0.x protein, water with some flavour.

Industrially produced seed oils are thought to be unhealthy due to an over-abundance of Omega 6. But some regulatory authorities still cling to the decades-old wisdom that basically boils down to avoiding saturated fat at all costs, so they'll recommend vegetable oils over animal products.

There are definitely healthy fats and unhealthy ones, for example everyone can agree trans fats are in the latter category. The perfect fatty acid profile is a matter for debate but it's definitely possible to isolate bad ingredients by a variety of means (populational studies, etc). It's not easy though, if it were then there wouldn't be so much debate in this space.

If you're afraid of consuming too much Omega 6, choose oils with more Omega 3 such as flaxseed and rapeseed. Also:

"[We] have known about the harms of fatty acid imbalance, and an excess of omega-6, for a long time. So much so that sunflower oil in the US was 'upgraded' through selective breeding to produce a high-oleic-acid variety (high monounsaturated fatty acid) that now prevails, and AVOIDS the potential harms noted in this paper. The same thing is now being done to soybean oil, and the high monounsaturated fatty acid version of that will soon replace the old variety.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2016/04/13/the-ani...

But vegetable oils are healthy (unsaturated, HDL) and animal fats are unhealthy (saturated, LDL)! You should make sure you consume enough Omega 3 though (e.g. rapeseed oil, flaxseed oil): http://www.oatly.com/healthcareprofessionals/plant-based-eat...

(EDIT: And the oil in Oatly happens to be rapeseed oil.)

(EDIT2: And the oil in almond milk is almond oil...)

> But vegetable oils are healthy (unsaturated, HDL) and animal fats are unhealthy (saturated, LDL)!

There is very little evidence to support that consuming vegetable oils as a replacement for animal fats results in better health.

I'm not qualified to conduct a scientific literary review on this topic, but I did provide a reference that is based on the official dietary recommendations as a start.

There is an excellent book written by a science journalist who spent 10 years doing a deep dive on the best available scientific evidence surrounding dietary fats. It explains why it is so difficult to find high-quality evidence for anything in nutrition science and, having been written by a journalist, it also does a decent job of investigating the history and politics that have coloured diet advice over the last century or so.

https://thebigfatsurprise.com

She has also done a TED talk that gives a very quick summary of the book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CHGiid6N9Q

I'd rather not believe the picture painted by one book author as opposed to Wikipedia and "World Health Organization,[1] the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Medicine,[2] the American Dietetic Association,[3] the Dietitians of Canada,[3] the British Dietetic Association,[4] American Heart Association,[5] the British Heart Foundation,[6] the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada,[7] the World Heart Federation,[8] the British National Health Service,[9] the United States Food and Drug Administration,[10] and the European Food Safety Authority.[11]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovasc...

Have you read the book?

That Wikipedia article doesn't really support your contention that vegetable oils are healthy and animal fats are unhealthy. That is, at the very least, a gross simplification. In my opinion, the research is not yet good enough to draw any such definitive conclusion.

Vegetable oils have been a large part of the human diet for less than 100 years, but have been progressively increasingly consumed by western populations, especially in the U.S. In that time overall cardiovascular health has trended in what direction?

Anyway, this might all be a sideshow to the general reduction in calories being derived from fat in general. The replacement of calories from fat with calories from carbohydrates seems particularly harmful when taken to an extreme, especially for women.

But, again, my main contention is that the evidence is at best preliminary, based on observational studies which cannot show cause and effect, and often poorly controlled and based on small numbers of participants. The largest, best controlled studies often don't support the mainstream view. It's simply not scientifically settled.

Read journals from scientists... instead of science from journalists.

For what it's worth, as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s when the mainstream nutrition advice, supported by many of the organizations you've listed, was "eat lots of bread and pasta!" and "Fat is bad for you!" and "Stay away from eggs!", I'm more interested in what the actual underlying studies say, and how they were conducted, than any summarized "advice" coming from these organizations.

Most almond milk I see is just almonds and water. I've seen mystery "high protein nut milk" products that match what you describe but they're in the minority.

(addendum: most also have sugar and sometimes flavoring but it's not hard to find unsweetened)