If you're at all in the nutrition space, you know that seed oils are a hot topic right now. There are two main reasons that seeds oils are suddenly being deemed "unhealthy.'
Seeds oils are processed in a highly genetically modified way - there are a lot of chemicals and added
Seed oils throw off the imbalance of omega 3's and omega 6's (linoleic acid) in the body
Why are these bad things? Excess linoleic acid leads to inflammation due to impaired mitochondria function. What are mitochondria? The powerhouse's of all the cells in your body. Our bodies are made up of thousands and thousands of cells and if we are constantly putting them under stress, they are eventually going to retaliate.
Examples of seed oils include:
canola oil
sunflower oil
safflower oil
rapeseed oil
soybean oil
Some ways to mitigate the inflammation:
Add in more omega 3's to help balance out the ratio of omega 3's to omega 6's.
- salmon, flaxseed, walnuts, sardines, fish oils, etc.
Reduce your consumption of omega 6's (seed oils)
- processed food (most packaged items tend to use seed oils), cook with olive oil, coconut oil, or avocado oil, use grass-fed or organic meat whenever possible
I bet now some of you are thinking "why go through all this effort, I feel fine?" This is one of those situations where you don't know what you don't know. Some benefits we have noticed from reducing seed oils have been:
zero sunburn - I did not wear sunscreen a single time this summer and did not get burnt once. Why does this happen? Linoleic acid causes inflammation causing the UV from the sun to react more strongly with your skin (ever wonder why skin cancer rates seem to be skyrocketting?)
less inflammation - I notice my joints in general feel much better and recover much faster than they did prior to cutting out seed oils
improved gut health - do you ever notice you get randomly bloated as the day goes on? the chemicals used to process seed oils can cause gut distress over time, gut those down and you may notice your gut issues also clear up
Once you start looking at food labels, reducing seed oils can be extremely daunting. They are in EVERYTHING. I'm not telling you to go thru your kitchen and throw out all of your food but as you run out of certain food items, try to replace them with better options. For example, most types of store bought bread are made with seed oils. Ideally bread should be made with water, flour, and salt (hello sourdough), not 50 different ingredients. The brands Izzio (found at Meijer and Safeway) and the Specially Selected sourdough from Aldi are two better options that I have found. Additionally, if you shop local you can usually find some version of sourdough that has less ingredients.
If you are looking for other swaps for certain food items, feel free to reach out!
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