Imagine a world without any consequences,  in which we can eat a limitless amount of food.  We can eat whatever!  Whenever!  We probably wouldn’t care about what is healthy, and simply just enjoy food for only it’s taste.  Well, one can only dream about this alternate reality; unfortunately,  that is not the case.  What we eat, and how much we eat can really affect our overall health.  Now let me throw down that imaginary veil, and let you in on the real world we live in;  we live in a world full of processed food, making it so hard to start any kind of New Year’s resolution, and actually stick to a balanced, healthy lifestyle.  Food in America is pushed on us constantly, always swaying us towards the extra large spectrum of choices, and with that comes major consequences.  To add even more fuel to this fiery confusion of processed food mania taking front, and center stage in every state, and supermarket;  Food companies have changed the basic chemistry of food, making them extremely addictive.  Processed foods literally spikes your blood sugar levels so high, hijacking the balanced chemistry in our brain; We begin to want to consume it compulsively, because of how quickly it excites out brain.  We basically become wired to where we can’t just eat moderately.  I always thought chips, and fast food had these hidden powers, leaving me hungrier even after eating so much of it.  This powerful combination constantly had me hooked.

       All of these processed foods have been expertly engineered to keep us addicted, causing us to overeat, fueling a global epidemic of extreme obesity and chronic disease.  An example of a harmful industrially processed food is polyunsaturated fats, they contain high amounts of omega 6s;  polyunsaturated fats have a ratio of disproportioned fats that our body chemistry is not n-sync with.   The change in their composition of fatty acids caused ramifications which led to a significant increase in obesity.  I took the time to talk to an old friend Aiman Fatima about what I have learned about poly unsaturated fats and it’s affects on us;  she seemed to know a lot about it, being that she is health conscientious, and has been in the health field with her masters in nursing for a while now.   Aiman Fatima mentioned that, “hydrogenated fats are poly unsaturated fats with added hydrogen units by hydrogenation.  Also called trans fatty acids.  So there is a difference between poly unsaturated and hydrogenated fats, the former being good, and the latter being bad.  Some examples of good poly unsaturated fats are unhydrogenated soybean oil, omega 3 fatty acids in salmon, mackerel, and sardines.  Some examples of the harmful poly unsaturated fats are: mazola oil, canola oil, soybean oil, crisco, sunflower oil, cotton-seed oil, and corn oil.  As a nurse, if you are talking about a diet with your patient, you need to have that research presented to them, their willingness to jump on a diet depends on how educated they are about nutrition.  People seem more aware about nutrition, and are really trying these days, but they don’t seem to be healthier.”   There’s so much wisdom here; we seem to be seeking this knowledge, and have this thirst for nutritional growth, but as the years pass being consistently healthy seems exceedingly challenging. 

       This obesity epidemic was something Americans didn’t have to deal with four decades ago.  At that time an average American household had an increase of weight which averaged around  five to ten pounds a year.   Due to agribusiness and modern agriculture western diets, the average American household is now gaining an average of fifty to hundred pounds a year;  this is due to food containing excessive levels of poly-unsaturated fats, and it being stressed to us, to steer clear of any saturated fats.  In the 1990s the diet industry grew bigger and faster, affirming that our big enemy was full fat foods, a marketing scheme which blew up, low fat everything was born because of these false affirmations.  The crazy part of this process is, the food companies were swapping out the good full fat the food initially had and replacing it with hydrogenated oils and sugar, creating a low fat food product.  Americans were fooled for decades, food companies highlighted the fact that these products are low fat, and will in fact help you lose weight, but what they failed to even mention was that these reconstructed vegetable oils carry high levels polyunsaturated fats, an incredibly evil fat that destroys your heart, liver, raising your bad cholesterol, causing a major surge in our insulin, and ruining our basic metabolic function.  Unfortunately. hydrogenated vegetable oil is a way too familiar ingredient in almost all sauces, dips, condiments, and dressings.  Hydrogenated vegetable oil is in most of our snacks, chips, desserts, and foods.  They are in almost everything.  Can this be the real culprit of these spewing health problems increasing the past few decades? 

       A nutritionist, health coach, wellness educator, and founder of SLVRBK yoga mat, Steven Macari writes: 

The primary issue with PUFAs is that they are highly unstable. All fats have a temperature with which they oxidize (i.e. become unstable, go rancid, become toxic). For PUFAs that temperature is very low. An easy way to remember this is that Unsaturated fats are unstable and Saturated fats are Stable. Unstable fats are prone to oxidation. Oxidation lead to free radicals. Free radicals lead to cellular damage in your body that can manifest both internally in the form of damaged organs/glands and externally in the form of rapidly aging skin (Marcari, 2015).  Steven Marcari breaks down why PUFAS are so unstable, PUFAS become very unstable in low temperatures, the human body is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (which is way higher than their limit);  which basically would cause the PUFAS to go rancid once in our body and create inflammation within our body.  It should be noted that diseases in general has increased dramatically since PUFAS have been introduced, also the rate of obesity drastically increased in the average American household (Gifford,2021).    

       Professor Harumi Okuyama, the senior author, along with seven other prominent scientists have contributed their time and helped  with advancements in knowledge towards nutrition and disease.  Their findings contradict most of what we once believed was once “heart healthy for us.”   Professor Okuyama states,  “Certain types of vegetable oil and hydrogenated oil shortened the survival of stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats by decreasing platelet number, increasing hemorrhagic tendency and damaging kidney functions, which could not be accounted for by their fatty acid and phytosterol compositions. These vegetable oils and medicines such as statin and warfarin share, in part, a common mechanism to inhibit vitamin K2-dependent processes, which was interpreted to lead to increased onset of Cardio Vascular Disease, Diabetes Mellitus, chronic kidney disease, bone fracture and even mental disorder.”   I know this all seems like a bunch of medical terms swarming around our head causing confusion, but Professor Harumi is making a basic connection between statin (which is a medication diabetics take daily), and polyunsaturated fats. His findings include that when the lab rat was given statin vitamin K2 was inhibited completely; this inhibition also occurred when the lab rat was given any kind of vegetable oils or hydrogenated oils.  This makes me question the commodity of food and so much of the false pretenses that were highlighted to lure us into these industry traps.  The American Food Industry has pushed vegetable oils and hydrogenated oils down our throats, claiming they were healthy and not saturated in heavy fats like butter.  These polyunsaturated fats have been proven to have a causal effect on our bodies; as proven by Professor Harumi and his seven scientists they prevent any kind of vitamin K2 production in our body.  Vitamin K2 plays many importance rolls through-out our body.   Vitamin K2 works as kind of a map-quest system for calcium, our tissues utilize vitamin K to ensure that our calcium is deposited in our bones; when we become vitamin K deficient because of primal causation, the calcium has no guided direction through out our body, and starts to build up in all the wrong places like our major organs.  This calcification in our organs leads to most of the major diseases Americans suffer from today.

       We always hear from our primary physicians to steer clear of processed foods or any fast foods, and try to be mindful about what we are eating;  How can we even begin to become healthy individuals, when everything being sold to us in our local supermarkets are full of highly processed ingredients, designed to make us keep coming back for more, without any health benefits whatsoever.  All this regurgitated information probably helps explain why so many Americans have such a schizophrenic relationship with food the past fifty years.  Now that some truth is being brought to light, we can try to make better choices.  Purchasing an air fryer will help immensely; also reading the ingredients in the back of any food labels thoroughly will keep us aware;  this is the best way to keep those hidden poly unsaturated fats from sneaky up on us.    

 

Gifford, Dawn, and About The Author Dawn Gifford Dawn is the creator of Small Footprint Family. “Why Are We Fat? – Dangers of Polyunsaturated Oils.” Small Footprint Family™, 5 Aug. 2021, https://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/dangers-of-polyunsaturated-oils.

Macari, Steven. “A Nutritionist’s Holistic Guide to the Perfect Food Day.” Harper’s BAZAAR, Harper’s BAZAAR, 24 Feb. 2022, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/travel-dining/a12139/a-nutritionists-daily-diet/.

Okuyama, Harumi. “Https://Www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/446704.” 

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