Nina Teicholz – ‘Vegetable Oils: The Unknown Story’
Nina Teicholz is a New York Times bestselling investigative science journalist who has played a pivotal role in challenging the conventional wisdom on dietary fat. Her groundbreaking work, 'The Big Fat Surprise', which The Economist named as the #1 science book of 2014, has led to a profound rethinking on whether we have been wrong to think that fat, including saturated fat, causes disease.
Nina continues to explore the political, institutional, and industry forces that prevent better thinking on issues related to nutrition and science. She has been published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the British Medical Journal, Gourmet, the Los Angeles Times and many other outlets.
Funny thing is, in Greece, since we use olive oil most of the time along with lard(in the past and it is becoming again popular) we always refered to these oils as “seed oils”. There is no term “vegetable oil” in the language…The hilarious part is that every margarine in the supermarkets nowadays advertise their products as containing even MORE butter than before/or competitive brand and they did manage to creep into our lives afgter the 70’s as cooking fats(why get something that claims to have even more butter? just eat butter instead?…)…And another fun fact is that real Greek nutrition is LCHF at its core…Lots of animal fats and meats, fish, lots of vegetables(cooked in so many ways..) some fruit and honey, some beans and lentils and little to no bread and flour based products…our traditional holidays include fatty meats such as lamb(also some goat), and pork, wiith beef at a lesser percentage..lots of fatty cheese(feta is one of them with high fat high salt content, along with graviera and kaseri…). Since we usually had/have moderate and small winters there were little bulbous plants and even today our open air farmers markets(something that is everywhere in greek cities) switch to green leafy winter vegs such as broccolli, lettuce, spinach(its like dirt cheap…) mustard greens, cauliflower…you name it… The problem is that the surge of so much sugary foods into such a diet, was bound to cause the same metabolic problems we see everywhere else…
Please keep educating the people on the true Mediterranean diet. Idiot vegans and vegetarians have lied for ages about the nature of this. They claim it is low fat, high carb. Does not help the falsehood when north american “greek” restauraunts serve their tiny portion of meat with a pile of parboiled rice and potatoes.
Ancel Keyes used his “Seven Nation Study” to cherry-pick data and falsely show that the Mediterranean diet was low fat. This kicked off the fat-hating crowd in the late 1950’s or 1960’s.
One advantage you have in Greece as well as other countries along the southern Europe coastal areas is you have Limestone based souls. That means you have 60 or more trace Minerals. Joel Wallace of dead doctors don’t lie game points out how Limestone contains 60 or more Minerals. He points out that cenetenarian cultures all have the dumb luck to live in areas that have 60 or more Minerals in their souls. So my connecting of the dots is that the Mediterranean diet is so good because the Mediterranean soils are Mineral Rich. Grow those same vegetables in the deficient soils of the USA and all bets are off. I know people proud of their Mediterranean diet but sickly and dying.
@whisperingsage- and Zinc and Copper are the most important ones
grape seed oil for example
SOOOO Important. Sally Fallon opened my eyes to some of this years ago, on top of what I already knew about “vegetable oils” and trans fats, but this talk was amazing, so up-to-date. She is my new hero
LOVE Sally! And everything the Weston A Price foundation has done for humanity.
I’ve had 2 grandmothers: one who loved her piece of bread with butter, and the other one who was following the recommendations and was using margarine. The first one also was making a cake at home, a very simple one, without cream and the lot and to make it she would use flour, milk, tiny bit of butter and little sugar. She died at the age of 92 from old age in good health. In fact during her life, her tests results were better than her daughter’s who is on multiple drugs ( and using vegetable oils ). The grandmother who was using a margarine died of cancer in her 70s. Some may argue this proves nothing, but that is the biggest difference between the diets of 2 grandmothers I could point out. They both ate meat, bread, soups etc. Sure this is just anecdotal but still interesting.
Tell it Anna tell it!!
I think all these stories are much more than an anecdote. Thanks for sharing. My great grandmothers lived into their nineties free of cancer and what not. Butter, bacon, eggs, varuous meats, lard, natural unprocessed foods and home made simple cooking were a staple. My grandmothers are still around in their 80s. Both in good health and clear minded. Both eat meat and animal fats. My mother and I are in great health. We’re low carb and animal foods focused. I’m practically carnivorous now. No vegetable oils other than olive oil. Occasionally fruits and carbs (in social situations) but mostly not. These are not anecdotes. I see people dropping dead all the time and they’re either smokers or eating sugars and junk fats or both.
How can a person “die of old age”? There must be something that knocked them off!
That is really interesting. Remember Julia Child? She rejected oils….said that the butter was superior in taste, her phrase was “eveything’s better with butter” She died at 97.
Take a look at the authors of The Silver Palate Cookbook. Two women. They eventually had a falling out as one pushed the vegetable oils and the other felt that low fat was better. Well, the one that pushed the oils died in her 60’s of cancer, the other is still living. Kind of like your grandmother comparison story.
My mom always used margarine and Crisco…and I could never change her mind because, she said, “Aunt Betha”made cakes all the time with loads of butter and sugar and she died while young.” Too bad mom didn’t know it was all the sugar in combination with the butter, not the butter alone.
This won’t mean anything until we see how somebody’s 100 year old grandmother did using no butter, margerine, olive- or any other oil.
i cook with tallow in my fish and chip shop and after years of cooking with vegetable oils i can tell you the clean up is completely different, at my old work the exhaust fans were constantly covered in grease and grime and at my shop not one drip after three months i think it was this video that made me decide i would use animal fats when i opened up shop so thank you Nina
Oh my !! Chips fried in TALLOW are THE BEST ! Pineapple rings are also great fried in TALLOW
I wish your restaurant was close to where I am. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any restaurant that uses tallow in their deep fryer.
Fish and chips cooked in tallow are bloody amazing 🤤
Wow i would really like to taste your food….
thanks so much for sharing that experience Philosophy Bug! Would really like to dine at your chip shop now. Sure its even tastier now too ><
My elder brother told me back in 1973 or 74 that the problem was not
cholesterol or saturated fats. The issue was polyunsaturated fats and
sugar in our diets. Later (~1993) I attended a small local ACS
chemistry meeting where they presented papers. One of which showed HOW
our bodies took polyunsaturated fat and sugar to make arachinidic acid
(sp?) which is one of the main building blocks of vascular blockages….
WoW. No wonder the people were so ill.
Ss a former member of ACS I remember when the food chemists were asked not to give too nuch “coverage” on the bad effects in the human diet of different oils.
All this research was done during the Second W. War, because all these seed oils were used as lubricants in the war effort. Then they invented uses for “the new chemical products”.
Definitely ahead of his time. In 1973 I was eating wheat germ with a dab of honey splashed with skim milk and eating a lot of chicken livers a la Adelle Davis. Then again, I always eschewed margarine in favor of butter. At least I got that right!
@Kinky we had butter too, on occasion we would make popcorn with a rectangle of NUCOA margarine, which I hope I spelled right. I never liked the looks of margarine. We used it because it can heat up more.
This woman’s book The Big Fat Surprise changed my life. I’m still struggling with getting the keto thing but she helped me realize that the same diet I lost weight on as a 13yo in 1976 can help me as a still fat 50-something. Very grateful to this woman for her work.
No reason to struggle just do it. It comes down to the life choices you make.
I struggled decided to go full carnivore because it is just easy to follow. Once I heal my body and lose the weight I will add veg back but never again will I ever go back to process foods again.
@Tricia Pyke you might decide to not bother with veg, I certainly don’t feel like I need it anymore
Thanks Nina, for all your research and hard work you’ve put into enlightening us all. As a nutritionist, I agree with everything you are saying.
I like how non-judgmental and objective she sounds as she describes one of the biggest scandals of the century.
Yeah, she’s nicer than I would be. She had a seat on the committee that was going to write our new dietary guidelines. The PTB pitched a fit and had her removed. I think they are scared of her.
The biggest scandal of the century is how the monetary system works to basically enslave everyone.. Read the book “The Creature From Jekyll Island” to understand. It’s 100x more corrupt / evil than this story.
@Andrew hmm.
@Andrew True but central banking is highly related to public health issues via Basel III via WHO and the Flexner Report, etc.
Yes, but it’s not true, is it? She’s the one who’s perpetrating the scandal.
I’m glad I’m no longer in the restaurant business I was in it from 16-22 and she is 100% right about the oils the cleaning issues it is disgusting seriously
My husband’s maternal grandparents lived to be about 96 and 107. They used lard everyday. My paternal grandparents uses lard and lived to be in their 90s. My maternal grandparents uses vegetable oils and ate oatmeal all the time, they died in their 70s and 80s and had lots of health issues. My husband’s grandmother who died at 107 did not take any medication. She only had cataract issues and used dentures. At 44 I’m finally understanding how important it is to go back to lard and butter, olive oil….
My sister cooked w seed
Oils. Lots of chips and French fries. She ate in restaurants (which use seed oils) she developed breast cancer and died of it. I truly think the oils played a big role as well as sugar, alcohol and processed food.
Sorry about your sister 😕 The only food that is undoubtly connected to hormone related cancers is dairy since it contains enormous amounts of oestrognes.
correlation does not make causation.
And of course your sample size is way too small to be significant.
Doesn’t mean there is no link, but you can’t draw the conclusion you did.
@Timexcape it’s also not a given, not at all.
It may, it may not.
I don’t use those products, but I don’t use them because they are highly inflammatory for the digestive system and without them my IBS is pretty much gone.
@Metal runner NoSuchThingAsAveganEngineerL0L.
This video should be pinned to youtube’s home page forever. This lecture teaches better about how our evil society works than any professor or family member has ever taught me, and teaches more about health than any doctor has ever talked to me about.
Trace bk 2 big pharma👀
That will never happen. Google used to be one of the good guys, not so much anymore. There’s a reason why they removed their motto “do no evil”.
@Sagesat you’re right!
@Penny O’Flahertyand Big Agra… tax dollars subsidize the production of these crops which makes it even worse
I just came across this video and think about what I was told growing up. We tried to consume “low fat” foods that were high in sugar or artificial sweeteners. We changed the types of fats, used to “vegetable oil” as this video describes. As a nation, we can see the deleterious effects this had had on the population. Fast forward to today, and we have a pandemic with higher death rates due to obesity amount other health conditions. I wonder if all this past guidance from government “health experts” has lead to greater distrust. A growing “hesitancy” if you will.
It should!
I have lost 25 lbs in the last 2.5 months just by switching to low net carb diet that’s completely vegetarian (grass fed dairy and eggs ok). Switched to cooking with butter and ghee. It has been life changing in terms of increased mobility and lower inflammation. I would have done this years ago but the hardest part was getting my spouse on board who was so completely sold on “low fat” and said I was making stuff up as excuses to eat what I liked 🙄. It was easy for him to say that because I was a little chubby and turned out he is a TOFI. I was never able to convince him to stop cooking with the bad stuff whenever it was his turn. After his diabetes diagnosis and his doctor now telling him the same things I was, he finally stopped questioning evvvverything I was saying. I switched us completely to low net carb diet and now both of us are better for it including my own appearance. It’s a shame this issue with the food industry didn’t become more popular earlier. It would have saved him a diabetes diagnosis 😒.
My grandparents used to feed their kids dripping, basically meat fat. When I was younger we were in disbelief at how ‘unhealthy’ this was. How wrong was I.
So did my grandmother!!
No bullshit, so did my gran. It was very successful disinformation campaign against animal fat in the 50’s because of the explosion in seed farming.
As a perfectly healthy 25 year old in the mid 90’s, the company I worked for sent us for annual medical check ups. I remember very clearly the doctor at the time telling me I should switch the butter I was using for margarine. Lucky I didn’t listen to him then and I’m here now as a perfectly healthy 55 year old. Thanks to my wife who saw through the BS very early on and stayed away from seed oils.
Props to your wife sir! And good on you for making that decision. It’s not easy when you’ve got a so called professional looking you in the eyes and telling you that. We just need to stand on our own two.
@Mike 👍🏾
@Mike If more people did this and questioned their doctors and used some critical thinking in general, there would be a lot less sick people.
Never liked margarine anyway. Good for u.
Spot on Ian. Good on you.
I remember my mom being really worried when I was using butter to fry my eggs one time. She was told by her various doctors over the decades to watch her cholesterol so she used these seed oils, mainly canola and margarine.
For years she struggled with her cholesterol. Including osteoporosis, arthritis, high blood pressure and weight. She died at the age of 61 from pancreatic cancer. Younger than her mother by 1 to 2 years
I found the truth about this veg oil bs last year. My health has improved a lot since then.
One of the lessons I taught my children was to question everything. Another was to always ask “What’s in it for them” whenever someone tried to get them to do ANYTHING. They learned that seeking profit is the key motivation for most things in life now and that if a company or government is telling you to change a behaviour that works you should be incredibly wary and investigate it thoroughly. Not always easy.
“Question everything”. I still remember the first time I read that Bible verse. Saved me a lot of troubles. Thank God.
Since going carnivore (2.5 years now) my sense of smell has become very keen. When we go to the post office we park opposite a fast food place (chicken) and now what just smelt like “fried food” is a STENCH on the breeze. Similar story today driving past a restaurant we used to like. It really has totally removed my desire to eat out.
Fried chicken is healthy.
Nina is so relaxing to listen to. I actually use this video as a sleep aid because her voice is very calming and friendly, but each time I play it I find a little nugget of information I’ve previously missed. This is a great video helping me sleep better and educating me.