Tag: canola oil

Canola Oil Proven to Destroy Your Body and Mind

(Dr. Mercola) According to a study by AARP,1 93 percent of Americans are concerned with their brain health, but very few understood some of the natural strategies they could use to improve it. Contrary to popular belief, your brain function and cognitive performance do not have to decline with age. There are steps you can take that influence your memory, processing, executive functions and more.

Even if you are already in your “golden years,” simple changes may prompt brain health for the better. For instance, where once it was believed that neurons were only generated early in life, scientists now know that neurogenesis (generation of new neurons) continues into adulthood.2 Exactly what influences the rate of new neuron growth is still being explored, as are other factors that play a role in brain health.

Related: How to Read Food Labels and Avoid Toxic Ingredients

Recent research, for instance, has uncovered damage canola oil consumption triggers in your brain and the effect this may have on your memory and learning ability.3 The study, published in the journal Nature, also found the consumption of canola oil increased weight gain.

Canola Oil Negatively Affects Brain Health and Weight Management

The study was led by researcher Dr. Domenico Praticò from Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Praticò commented to the Los Angeles Times that canola oil is perceived by many to be healthy — a widespread misconception:4

“Canola oil is appealing because it is less expensive than other vegetable oils, and it is advertised as being healthy. Very few studies, however, have examined that claim, especially in terms of the brain.”

Researchers used an animal model to evaluate the effect canola oil has on the brains of mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s disease.5 Canola oil developed a reputation of being healthy when doctors began warning people to reduce their saturated fat intake and consume vegetable oils instead. Canola has the lowest percentage of saturated fat of all commonly used vegetable oilsand is relatively inexpensive, but is actually one of the worst oils for your health.

Related: Best Cooking Oils – Health benefits, Smoke Point, Which to Use and Avoid

Canola oil is often used in homes and restaurants for baking, sautéing, frying and other forms of cooking, with consumers being deceived into believing it’s better for them than saturated fats. The mice were split into two groups; one group was fed the usual chow and the second group was fed chow with the human equivalent of 2 teaspoons of canola oil per day.

At the end of the experimental six months, researchers observed that the mice eating chow laced with canola oil were significantly heavier than the mice that did not eat canola oil. Additionally, the mice who had eaten canola oil demonstrated significant declines in working memory together with a decreased level of post-synaptic density protein-94, a marker of synaptic integrity. The researchers found canola oil had a negative effect on health and concluded:6

“Taken together, our findings do not support a beneficial effect of chronic canola oil consumption on two important aspects of AD [Alzheimer’s disease] pathophysiology which includes memory impairments as well as synaptic integrity.”

Your Brain Needs Healthy Fats

The same researchers used a similar model to evaluate the effects of olive oil on the brain function of mice.7 In that study,8,9 neither group was heavier than the other, and the mice fed chow enriched with extra-virgin olive oil performed significantly better on testing that evaluated the animals’ working memory, spatial memory and ability to learn.

The brain tissue of these mice, genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s disease as they age like the mice in the featured study, also revealed dramatic differences. The mice fed olive oil demonstrated preserved synaptic integrity and an increase in nerve cell autophagy, ultimately responsible for a reduction in amyloid plaques common in the brain of those with Alzheimer’s disease.10

Healthy fat is an essential component of the structure of your brain, which is composed of nearly 60 percent fat.11 It should come as no surprise that your brain needs quality fat to function optimally. Although your brain is a small part of your complete bodyweight, it uses 20 percent of your metabolic energy. Essential fatty acids are required but cannot be synthesized in your body, and so must come from dietary sources.

Most people get well over what is needed of omega-6 fats, which are found in most vegetable oils, and not nearly enough omega-3 fats. One omega-3 fat, DHA, has been linked with the growth of your retina and visual cortex during development,12 visual acuity and reduction in depression. Research has found those suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have lower levels of DHA, and DHA may play a role in neuroprotection.

Unlike the highly damaged fats in vegetable oil, saturated fat is the optimal “clean” fuel for your brain and is one of the main components of brain cells. As such, it’s excellent for brain health, with one study demonstrating that those who ate more saturated fat reduced their risk of developing dementia while those who favored carbohydrates had a significantly increased risk.13

To maintain optimal brain function, you need high-quality, undamaged omega-3s and omega-6 along with antioxidants to protect them from oxidation — not processed vegetable oils like canola oil. In summary, processed vegetable oils are bad for your brain health for a number of reasons, including the following:

  • They are loaded with damaged omega-6 fatty acids without protective antioxidants
  • They strip your liver of glutathione, which produces antioxidant enzymes, which further lowers your antioxidant defenses
  • Most vegetable oils are made with genetically engineered (GE) crops designed to resist herbicides like glyphosate. As such, they may be more contaminated with glyphosate than non-GE crops, and glyphosate has been shown to disrupt the tight junctions in your gut and increase penetration of foreign invaders, especially heated proteins, which can cause allergies

Vilification of Healthy Fats Has Contributed to Rising Rates of Disease

Defaming healthy fats over the past decades has contributed to a rising rate of disease. Although healthy fats are used as fuel and leave you feeling full, many turned to eating carbohydrates when fats were discouraged. Carbs are metabolized and burned quickly, using insulin to usher blood glucose into the cell.

However, carbs trigger insulin resistance over time and increase the potential for crashing blood sugar levels two to three hours after a meal, leaving you hungry once again and increasing your food intake. This one mechanism increases your risk for obesity, which in turn increases your potential risk for insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke.

In a time when healthy saturated fats and dietary cholesterol were publicly slandered, Canada developed an alternative oil that met with the approval of the American Heart Association (AHA) — canola oil.14 Now sitting in the first position of recommended oils for healthy cooking on the AHA website, author Praticò had this to say about the results of his canola oil study:15

Related: 35 Things You Could Do With Coconut Oil – From Body Care to Health to Household

“Amyloid-beta 1-40 neutralizes the actions of amyloid 1-42, which means that a decrease in 1-40, like the one observed in our study, leaves 1-42 unchecked. In our model, this change in ratio resulted in considerable neuronal damage, decreased neural contacts, and memory impairment.”

In other words, consuming canola oil may increase your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, as the oil decreases the production of a protein that protects your brain against neuronal damage and cognitive impairment.

Toxicity of Canola Oil May Result From the Seed, Source or Processing

This short video shows you the conditions under which canola oil is manufactured and produced, including the deplorable number of chemicals and bleaches added to the product to achieve the clear liquid you see on your grocery store shelves. Just the way the oil is processed should be enough to encourage you to steer clear of consuming the product. But the risk associated with canola oil doesn’t stop with processing.

The canola plant was developed from rapeseed plants by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the University of Manitoba using plant breeding techniques. In fact, the Canola Council of Canada calls the development, “Canada’s greatest agricultural success story.”16Rapeseed oil was originally used as a motor lubricant during World War II.17 Once the war ended, demand plummeted and Canada began an intensive program to make the product edible.

Before it could be ingested the erucic acid and glucosinolates had to be bred out of the plant, as they are dangerous to human health.18By the late 1970s, both chemicals were reduced to lower levels, and the plant was officially accepted as consumable. In the 1980s, research focused on shelf stability of the oil, animal diets and gaining a wider consumer acceptance.

Related: The Dangers of Industrial Vegetable Oils

By 2012, nearly all low-erucic acid rapeseed plants were genetically engineered to increase yield. Today, what began as a motor lubricant is now one of Canada’s most profitable crops.

The erucic acid is a long-chain fatty acid that is especially irritating to mucous membranes. Consuming canola oil has been associated with the development of fibrotic lesions on the heart, lung cancer, anemia, central nervous system degenerative disorders and prostate cancer.19

The featured study evaluated the effect of canola oil on brain function without identifying which characteristic of the product triggers the problems. However, as most canola oil is produced from GE seeds, using plants originally unfit for human consumption and taken through a process that injects multiple chemicals and bleaches, it isn’t surprising the study was so conclusive.

Genetic Engineering Raises Health Risk With Each GE Food Consumed

This documentary details what happens when we use GE foods. Scientists are only beginning to uncover the long-term effects of splicing the genes of one living creature into another or developing a plant immune to the effects of herbicides.

However, some companies are not convinced by independently funded research and have relied on information from organizations such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and World Health Organization (WHO), which claim there is no credible evidence that GE foods are unsafe. However, even WHO admits:20

“Different GM [genetically modified] organisms include different genes inserted in different ways. This means that individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods.”

In 2015, the European Commission decided it was in the best interest of their citizens to say “no” to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) within their borders, and all 28 countries required labeling of foods containing GMO products.21 This is in stark contrast to the U.S., where most canola grown is GE22 and products created from it not labeled as such.

Healthy Cooking Options

Cooking with nearly all vegetable oils is problematic as they don’t tolerate high heat. Healthier options for cooking include pastured, organic butter, virgin coconut oil, ghee (clarified butter) and lard. Olive oil and sesame oil add wonderful flavor and healthy fats to your foods, but they have very low smoke points and should be used unheated in salad dressings or drizzled over meats or vegetables for flavor.

Boosting Brain Health Naturally

It is never too late to support your neurological health. Remember, even small changes you make each day reap big rewards over time. Seek to change your habits consistently and persistently to support your memory, cognitive function and ultimately your enjoyment of everyday life. Here are several strategies you may use to improve your brain health:

Vitamin D

There are strong links between low levels of vitamin D in Alzheimer’s patients and poor outcome on cognitive testing. Optimal vitamin D levels may protect brain cells by increasing the effectiveness of the glial cells in restoring damaged neurons. Additionally, vitamin D has anti-inflammatory properties.

Carotenoids

These antioxidant compounds are found most often in orange colored vegetables, such as sweet potatoes and carrots. Some carotenoids, such as lutein and zeaxanthin, are found in dark green vegetables, namely kale and spinach (as well as egg yolks). Lutein and zeaxanthin are best known for the role they play in vision health, but accumulating evidence suggests they play a role in cognitive health as well by enhancing neural efficiency.23

Probiotics

You are likely familiar with the importance of probiotics for your gut health but may not know of the role they play in your cognitive health. Certain beneficial bacterial strains, such as those found in fermented foods, have a positive effect on your brain function.

In a study by the University of California Los Angeles, scientists found women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria via yogurt experienced changes in multiple areas of their brain, including those related to sensory processing, cognition and emotion.24

Exercise

Physical activity produces biochemical changes that strengthen and renew not only your body but also your brain — particularly areas associated with memory and learning.

Diet

Reducing overall calorie and carbohydrate consumption, while increasing healthy fats, has a powerful effect on your brain health. Beneficial health-promoting sources of healthy fats that your body — and your brain in particular — needs for optimal function include organic grass fed raw butter, olives, organic virgin olive oil and coconut oil, nuts like pecans and macadamia, free-range eggs, wild Alaskan salmon and avocado, for example.

Increasing your omega-3 fat intake and reducing consumption of damaged omega-6 fats (i.e., processed vegetable oils) in order to balance your omega-3-to-omega-6 ratio also has a significant benefit for your brain.

Sleep

Sleep not only is essential for regenerating your physical body, but imperative for reaching new mental insights and being able to see new creative solutions to old problems. Sleep removes the blinders and helps “reset” your brain to look at problems from a different perspective.

Research from Harvard indicates that people are 33 percent more likely to infer connections among distantly related ideas after sleeping,25 but few realize that their performance has actually improved. Sleep is also known to enhance your memories and help you “practice” and improve your performance of challenging skills. In fact, a single night of sleeping only four to six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day.

Common Food Ingredient Leads To Alzheimer’s

(Natural Blaze) One of the world’s most common food ingredients is finally being outed as a big, fat fraud. We hope you are sitting down for this one!

This polyunsaturated oil is touted as healthy by the big food industries, fast food industries, the natural health communities (!), and even our regulatory agencies.

We’re talking about canola oil! One of the worst food creations in modern history if you can even call it a food product. A study came out showing that canola oil was like battery acid to the cardiovascular system – and no one listened. Cooked polyunsaturated oils were recently linked to cancer….nothing but crickets.

This oil is everywhere – in most restaurants, in pretty much all fast food items, every packaged snack you can think of, in everything you can store in a cabinet and worst of all – in nearly all natural health snack goods. 

Canola oil was recently linked to declining memory, learning deficits and… obesity!

Natasha Longo reports:

After the public health scare in the 1970s over animal fats, sales of vegetable oils of all types increased. It was the established wisdom that those oils high in polyunsaturated fatty acids were especially beneficial. However, more research into vegetable oils continues to surface showing their damaging effects on health. A new study published online in the journal Scientific Reports shows that consumption of canola oil in the diet with worsened memory, worsened learning ability and weight gain.

[…]

….In the journal Scientific Reports by researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) associates the consumption of canola oil in the diet with worsened memory, worsened learning ability and weight gain in mice which model Alzheimer’s disease. The study is the first to suggest that canola oil is more harmful than healthful for the brain.

Canola oil contains a long-chain fatty acid called erucic acid, which is especially irritating to mucous membranes; canola oil consumption has been correlated with development of fibrotic lesions of the heart, CNS degenerative disorders, lung cancer, and prostate cancer, anemia, and constipation.

Not only are canola, soybean and corn oil now coming from genetically modified crops, but their processing is beyond toxic to human metabolism.

Any health claims for the brain regarding canola oil appear to be patently false according to the lead study author, Domenico Pratico, MD, who also directs an Alzheimer’s center at LKSOM.

Pratico and Elisabetta Laurett originally used this same Alzheimer’s mouse model while investigating olive oil earlier this year. They actually found that “Alzheimer mice fed a diet enriched with extra-virgin olive oil had reduced levels of amyloid plaques and phosphorylated tau and experienced memory improvement.” They were actually checking to see if canola oil could do the same.

The report continues:

The researchers started by dividing the mice into two groups at six months of age, before the animals developed signs of Alzheimer’s disease. One group was fed a normal diet, while the other was fed a diet supplemented with the equivalent of about two tablespoons of canola oil daily.

The researchers then assessed the animals at 12 months. One of the first differences observed was in body weight — animals on the canola oil-enriched diet weighed significantly more than mice on the regular diet. Maze tests to assess working memory, short-term memory, and learning ability uncovered additional differences. Most significantly, mice that had consumed canola oil over a period of six months suffered impairments in working memory.

Examination of brain tissue from the two groups of mice revealed that canola oil-treated animals had greatly reduced levels of amyloid beta 1-40. Amyloid beta 1-40 is the more soluble form of the amyloid beta proteins. It generally is considered to serve a beneficial role in the brain and acts as a buffer for the more harmful insoluble form, amyloid beta 1-42.

As a result of decreased amyloid beta 1-40, animals on the canola oil diet further showed increased formation of amyloid plaques in the brain, with neurons engulfed in amyloid beta 1-42. The damage was accompanied by a significant decrease in the number of contacts between neurons, indicative of extensive synapse injury. Synapses, the areas where neurons come into contact with one another, play a central role in memory formation and retrieval.

“Amyloid beta 1-40 neutralizes the actions of amyloid 1-42, which means that a decrease in 1-40, like the one observed in our study, leaves 1-42 unchecked,” Dr. Pratico explained. “In our model, this change in ratio resulted in considerable neuronal damage, decreased neural contacts, and memory impairment.”

In other words, long-term consumption of canola oil – which is what most Americans are currently doing – is not beneficial to the brain at all.

“Even though canola oil is a vegetable oil, we need to be careful before we say that it is healthy,” Dr. Pratico said. “Based on the evidence from this study, canola oil should not be thought of as being equivalent to oils with proven health benefits.”

They want to conduct shorter duration studies to see when is the shortest amount of time for “exposure necessary to produce observable changes in the ratio of amyloid beta 1-42 to 1-40 in the brain and alter synapse connections.”

Pratico concludes:

We also want to know whether the negative effects of canola oil are specific for Alzheimer’s disease. There is a chance that the consumption of canola oil could also affect the onset and course of other neurodegenerative diseases or other forms of dementia.

There you have it – if you don’t want to chance it with your memory and Alzheimer’s, then drop that french fry and step away from the snack section at the health food store. At the very least, canola oil’s damaging health effects have already been established for the heart, inflammation and obesity.