The Dark Side Of Omega 6 Cooking Oils
Once touted as heart healthy, these oils are now a proven, concealed health hazard. Let’s begin with a simple question: Would you expect the manufacturers of omega 6 cooking oils to caution consumers about negative side effects associated with their product and which could endanger your health? Of course not. Just like the tobacco industry, which never freely admitted that cigarettes are a health hazard. The vegetable cooking oils that you should be concerned about include soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, etc. These are the oils that contain a high amount of Omega 6 linoleic acids in their fatty acid spectrum. Not too long ago, these vegetable oils were regarded as heart-healthy because of their high levels of Omega 6, a polyunsaturated fatty acid. When these oils are exposed to heat however, like they are in the refining process or when heated to make things such as baked goods, potato chips or any fried foods, they form a toxic compound from the oxidation of linoleic acid called HNE. This toxic compound attacks your arteries, nerves and eye tissue causing inflammation. Imagine a harsh acid etching patterns into glass. Researcher A. Saari Csallany, a professor of food chemistry and nutritional biochemistry at the University of Minnesota, reports that HNE has been related to the onset of several diseases, including atherosclerosis, stroke, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and liver diseases. It should be noted here that the oil seeds themselves, containing omega 6 in its natural form, are perfectly healthy. The danger stems from the high heat extraction of their oil and the refining process that manufacturers expose them to, which denatures the food causing toxins and thereby endangering our health and wellbeing. The technology for transforming seeds and grains into cooking oils rich in Omega-6 was developed only in the early 1900s. Thus poly-unsaturated fats are fairly new to the human diet while hydrogenation of vegetable oils into trans-fatty acids is an even more recent development. The transformation of these seeds explains the dramatic rise in the degenerative diseases mentioned above, as well as rheumatoid arthritis, heart attacks and cancer. All of these diseases, and to some extent even diabetes, asthma, obesity, vasculitis, sinusitis, inflammatory bowl disease, depression and insomnia, have recently been recognized as stemming from inflammation caused by HNE. This groundbreaking medical discovery has forever changed the way we look at chronic disease. We learned that inflammation plays a key role in the onset of many disorders that afflict most people in the second half of their