This is a linkpost for https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/

A friend has spent the last three years hounding me about seed oils. Every time I thought I was safe, he’d wait a couple months and renew his attack:

“When are you going to write about seed oils?”

“Did you know that seed oils are why there's so much {obesity, heart disease, diabetes, inflammation, cancer, dementia}?”

“Why did you write about {meth, the death penalty, consciousness, nukes, ethylene, abortion, AI, aliens, colonoscopies, Tunnel Man, Bourdieu, Assange} when you could have written about seed oils?”

“Isn’t it time to quit your silly navel-gazing and use your weird obsessive personality to make a dent in the world—by writing about seed oils?”

He’d often send screenshots of people reminding each other that Corn Oil is Murder and that it's critical that we overturn our lives to eliminate soybean/canola/sunflower/peanut oil and replace them with butter/lard/coconut/avocado/palm oil.

This confused [...]

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Outline:

(01:46) On seed oil theory

(01:49) There is no one seed oil theory.

(02:10) We ate seed oil and we got fat.

(04:06) And seed oils are highly processed.

(06:18) And some studies say seed oils are bad.

(06:58) And there are plausible mechanisms.

(07:43) On fat

(07:46) There are many kinds of fat.

(08:45) Different oils have different fats.

(09:33) Trans fat is bad.

(12:32) The outside view

(12:36) Much of this is plausible.

(13:53) But correlation ⇏ causation.

(14:09) And it's a complex mechanistic argument.

(15:42) And seed oil theories have features that make them hard to falsify.

(17:37) Some seed oil theorists are selling stuff.

(18:01) The inside view

(18:04) Human RCTs mostly say saturated fat is bad.

(20:11) There's no conspiracy against the Sydney Diet Heart Study.

(21:29) There's no conspiracy against the Minnesota Coronary Survey either.

(24:07) Public health authorities mostly say saturated fat is bad.

(25:14) Seed oils don’t seem to cause inflammation.

(26:08) It's not clear if the timelines work out.

(29:23) Omega-6 doesn’t explain inter-country obesity.

(31:17) On distraction

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First published:
April 20th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DHkkL2GxhxoceLzua/thoughts-on-seed-oil

Linkpost URL:
https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Thoughts on seed oil” by dynomight

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

[Linkpost] “Thoughts on seed oil” by dynomight