As someone who's quite interested in the anti-seed oil discourse/slowly forming movement, my endgame is simply having more people aware of what's in their food. We've accepted what's been handed to us for so long, without a significant percentage of the population stopping to look at exactly what's on the plate.

The more people that are stopping to read ingredients labels. analyze their diet, and think critically about their consumption, the better.

I suspect this will lead to more people believing in bunk rather than less.

I'd rather people eat cheeseburgers than seeing bottles of water advertised as "gluten free"

This is an avoidable problem though. We invented this by racing to the bottom and assembling “food” with substitutes for real nutrition. The goal is to educate humanity so that we can start making more conscious decisions about what we eat and move away from this.

>The goal is to educate humanity so that we can start making more conscious decisions

I don't think you can educate your way out of economies of scale that make it cheap to feed people garbage. The only real solution would be to declare PUFA as unfit for human consumption but that won't happen obviously

Besides, many people really will just eat whatever crispy oily sugary slop has the shiniest packaging. It is unpleasant to believe this, but it's true. Think of how health conscious or critically minded the average person is, and remember that 50% of the population is below that average. A lot of people really just go through life without making choices, just consuming whatever is directly in front of them. This can be hard to believe if (like most people on this site) you are significantly smarter and richer than average, and spend your time around others who are similarly smarter and richer than average, but it really is true.

Like think of how more than 2/3 american adults are overweight. Why? Because they literally can't stop picking up food with their hands, putting it into their mouths, and chewing and swallowing it. All you have to do to not be fat is to instruct your fleshsuit to stop picking things up and placing them in your mouth. Calories cannot legally enter your body without your consent. And yet 2/3 adults are overweight. So I don't think education will do anything here.

> Like think of how more than 2/3 american adults are overweight. Why? Because they literally can't stop picking up food with their hands, putting it into their mouths, and chewing and swallowing it. All you have to do to not be fat is to instruct your fleshsuit to stop picking things up and placing them in your mouth. Calories cannot legally enter your body without your consent. And yet 2/3 adults are overweight. So I don't think education will do anything here.

Do you think the average American's willpower has radically plummeted since the 70s? And the rest of the developed world nosedived with them? It's gotta be calories-in/calories-out and discipline to a degree, but things have shifted so rapidly and decisively that it's worth entertaining environmental explanations.

Plus there's little harm in kicking this hypothesis around. A fat person who is otherwise unmotivated by traditional health advice might perk up once you appeal to his inner conspiracy theorist and tell him he's being fed industrial waste.

>Do you think the average American's willpower has radically plummeted since the 70s? And the rest of the developed world nosedived with them?

That, and how much they exercise? Yes, absolutely I believe that. The signs are all there.

Actually there has been a well documented effort by the sugar industry to mis-educate our way in to this crisis so it seems perfectly reasonable that better correct education about health could help a lot. It’s not just about not putting too much in your mouth, it is about making informed decisions about what to eat. It’s about deciding which foods to eat and understanding what the trade offs are between various choices. That’s non trivial and requires education to get right. For example for breakfast should you have a bagel and cream cheese, a bowl of cereal, eggs and toast, a grapefruit, or nothing at all? These are things we can educate on.

I spent a month recently absorbing a lot of the videos created by NutritionFacts.org. The real answers are guided by scientific research and knowing them can make a huge difference.

This little panel discussion on the sugar industry’s efforts is a great watch. https://youtu.be/-s5szfPYKY4

yes, they are difficult to cut out. Your options are everywhere very much narrowed. But In 90% of cases I've been able to find a satisfactory alternative.

It is interesting how two simple rules (no seed oil, no corn syrup) almost entirely prevent you from putting terrible things in your body. It also repeatedly enforces a more mindful attitude towards diet.

I experimented with removing seed oils for the past six months or so. Almost every year in the winter I get a lot of pain in my joints and especially where previous injuries have occurred. Halfway through this season I've had very little discomfort, and it has been a bad winter where I am.

Recommend checking out this "How It's Made" segment on the process of making this stuff comestible (it involves bleach, very high temperatures and chemical refinement):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfk2IXlZdbI

No corn syrup or seed oil sounds like a wise choice. What do you do about eating at restaurants? Just avoid dishes that are likely offenders? And soybeans themselves, as well as unfermented tofu, is OK?

Whole foods, steamed or grilled vegetables, legumes, butter or olive oil, fish, eggs, or other protein that isn't fried. Fewer ingredients are generally better. Ingredients that have ingredients are worse.

The end game is policy changes and regulation so they get removed from the supply chain and it ultimately becomes automatic for consumers to avoid them. You need studies demonstrating the danger is real to convince legislators.

I don't understand what you mean. Seed oils aren't in most things; if seed oil is in even half the food you eat, your diet is likely appalling. I'm pretty sure I haven't eaten seed oil in at least a few months. I mean yeah if you're eating Doritos, sure, but it's really not that hard to cook from whole foods.

Plastic is much harder to avoid; not even remotely close I'd say.

If you buy anything premade in any way, to the level of white bread, it has seed oils

I don't buy anything pre-made, generally. If it's not seed oil it's HFCS or some other garbage ingredient. I 98% just buy ingredients themselves. The bread I buy is whole wheat and I've just confirmed that it does not have seed oils.

The thing is, I'd like to stress that I don't go out of my way to do this or expend much extra effort. It's not a burden to eat a potato instead of a cup ramen or something. People just don't care about their health and buy every trash food they see.

Basically speaking, you CANNOT eat out, no sauces, only home cooked foods. Even those need to be careful checked to not contain oils.

Technically, if you did the carnivore diet using 80% animal fat butter, or lard, then it'll be fine.

Except, the price you pay is enormous. Can't even eat a caesar salad!

I’m vegan and already prepare basically all of my meals so this seems fine. I bet there are crackers and stuff I eat with this in it but I can control that. And I don’t eat caesar salad. I’m not going to worry now but I’ll keep an eye on this seed oil discourse, I hadn’t heard of it!

>Like what is the endgame, exactly?

A clear understanding of why these oils cause these problems would be a good start, methinks.

>Trying to avoid them is like trying to avoid endocrine disruptors by not touching plastic or eating anything that has touched plastic.

Is there any evidence that something transfers to you if you do touch it? This is the first I am hearing about something like this. I thought plastic was essentially a solid.

I have been interested in converting much of my daily interaction of plastic to other materials. Things like converting my Zerowater water filter to a homemade ceramic pot....but the water filter itself is plastic so whats the point?

Transfers to you? There are microparticles of plastic in every liquid you drink, floating in the air, in the digestive systems of practically every animal in the food chain.

When you wash a piece of polyester or microfiber in a washing machine you are sending millions of little microscopic pieces of plastic into the water supply.

Ever drink from a plastic water bottle that sat in a hot car and it tastes really funny? Enjoy your plastic.

If you google "plastic in the air", "plastic in food", "plastic in animals", "plastic in water", it's pretty much impossible to not find evidence. It's incredibly depressing. It's in the Mariana trench and on Everest.

It seems like there are varying definitions of microparticles. Are you referring to stuff that is still slightly visible to the naked eye (if you squint), something the requires a regular microscope or something that needs an electron microscope. I'd like to think that my zerowater filter which filters out enough such that a TDS meter reads 0 would filter out microplastics but who really knows. I don't inspect every cup of water I drink with a microscope.

I always wondered why there hasn't been more of a push to explore plastic pyrolysis technologies to help remove these plastics from circulations. I see countless pictures of discarded clothing, and other plastic based waste and I'm thinking that there is some potential solution: break it down back into its original oil based input.

This is a bit of an aside, but how do you like that filter? I've been using Pur for a couple of years.

>Is there any evidence that something transfers to you if you do touch it? This is the first I am haring about something like this. I thought plastic was essentially a solid.

I recall a few years ago there were a few articles/studies saying that that BPA were in thermal paper (ie. receipt paper). I think the conclusion was that if you were picking up a few receipts per day, the amount was negligible, but if you worked in retail it might be a hazard.

I believe I recall that if you used hand sanitizer and then handled a receipt the BPA transfer was significantly higher.

Also if you crumple a receipt and don't wash your hands, and touch food, its a hazard

As an example, thermal paper receipts used to literally be BPA powder on paper. Ever known someone to eat after handling a receipt without washing their hands, or to tuck the receipt in their mouth (yes) to told its while juggling other items?

They're mostly difficult to cut out because we thought they'd be fine to mix in to all kinds of stuff. If we stop thinking that, and in particular if there were to be regulatory changes that made certain seed oils less desirable as an agreement, there would be rapid change.

Research like this can also help cut back on a lot of the scapegoating that goes around about the obesity crisis.

It's actually not all that difficult to parse ingredients lists while shopping. A good rule of thumb in American grocery stores is to stick to the perimeter while shopping (produce, dairy, meat) to avoid seed oils. :^)

If you cook your own food, it is easy to avoid. Simply don't buy them. Use tallow, ghee, butter, coconut oilt.

Note that this simple method of making what you eat will mitigate exposure to endocrine disrupting plastics too.

Coconut is a seed.

The coconut is surprisingly complicated, a seed and more.

Botanically speaking, a coconut is a fibrous one-seeded drupe, also known as a dry drupe. However, when using loose definitions, the coconut can be all three: a fruit, a nut, and a seed.

Full article is worth reading:

https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/item/is-a-coconut-a-f....

The botanical classification doesn’t matter - coconut oil is primarily saturated fat which is what makes it better for you over the PUFA that comes from seed oils.

The endgame is to avoid them where possible in order to minimize the risk. It's not absurd and very reasonable. People stick to all kinds of obscure diets and most are not going insane.

On a societal level, I think the endgame should be to eliminate the subsidies which make seed oils so cheap, and to design a subsidy/tax structured to reduce the cost of healthy foods and increase the cost of unhealthy foods.

You can avoid them by buying raw single-ingredients and cooking at home. It is also cheaper.

Oils are not an essential nutrient. But many people claim to have a cultural exemption from a decent diet nowadays.