Impact of Seed Oils & Saturated Fats on Health | Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge & Dr. Andrew Huberman

Snack Chip Research Findings

00:00There's a paper on your CV that I could not help but ask about. Snack chips fried in corn oil alleviate Mhm. cardiovascular risk factors when substituted for low-fat and highfat snacks. Yep. What? Mhm. What? Yes. Tell me the data. I believe you.

00:15I'm just like, what? This is wild. This was funded by Fredo. At that time, they had changed the oil that they were using to fry their corn chips. So this was Doritos, Fritos, Cheetos, and toitos. All the all the All the Etos. Uh and so they had changed to corn oil.

00:37They're like, "This is an oil that's higher in polyunsaturated fats than what we usually have." What were they using before? I'm not sure. I forget. But it wasn't tallow. I don't think so. Like does it make a difference? Is it going to improve health if people choose those snacks compared to other snacks?

00:56So we had three arms in that study. Uh each person went through each of the three arms. It was for 25 days. The question was, okay, let's say you have a choice for a snack today and you're going to go to the vending machine and you have your option.

01:15Do you eat a low-fat high carbohydrate snack, a highfat, high more highsaturated snack or those chips? So, you just pick one and that's that. So, I think we gave it was two snacks a day for for 25 days. It was a rotation. So, they had four Yeah, they had four different uh chips.

01:37So, it was two one day, two the next day like that for 25 days. And then the controls and yeah the the better lipid profile was the one with was the one from the the corn chips. They had the better lipid.

Seed Oils Vs Saturated Fat

01:56Yeah. And they had less uh lipoprotein little a which is another you know factor card metabolic risk factor. Data or data data or data. Well I know that in the head-to-head comparison of seed oils of which corn is right with saturated fat. This is where kind of the contention starts to erupt where there are many studies now I think showing that when you substitute saturated fat with seed oils that cardometabolic risk factors go down and this is true right well I by the way I'm just going to say I I I avoid seed oils actively because I like olive oil and butter

02:33mostly olive oil I avoid seed oils I don't like the way they taste I love olive oil okay and there's some health effects of olive oil and I eat small amounts of butter and I so I just like duck the whole controversy, right? And you have to make sure you're getting real olive oil, but that can be done.

02:49When you look at the studies that compare saturated fat to seed oils, you do see uh better outcomes for seed oils. But then there's this crowd that comes in and says, but that's on a backdrop of reasonably high carbohydrate intake. When you start replacing some of those carbohydrates with lower carbohydrate diet, increasing protein intake, so not keto, but kind of like lowerish starch and sugar, then maybe that balances out.

03:15Okay. But the big contention seems to be around the processing of these seed oils. This idea that when especially when you make things like chips that when you take fats and you combine them with carbohydrate and you heat them up a lot that you create factors that are not good for the body.

03:30What is the evidence for or against that? Well, so different oils have different

Cooking Oils & Smoke Points

03:36smoke points, right? So each oil should be used for its appropriate usage, right? So cooking uh process. So I think that's that's where you know people think that they should be using one type of oil for everything that they do, but some oil like you wouldn't put flax seed oil for example and and heat it up to very high uh temperature.

03:57Are you a fan of flax seed oil? I'm a fan of every liquid oil. I use I have no no uh personal you seem very healthy restriction on the on the types of oils. I think that you know oils are that remain liquid at room temperature. That should be your your your barometer for what's better to use.

04:20I'm also not saying that people should avoid butter like the plague, right? So all in moderation is is okay. Is there any reason to I just can't find the argument for why anyone would replace olive oil with a seed oil. Olive oil has a lower smoke point than uh than other seed oils.

04:44So peanut oil, for example, has a higher smoke point. So you can fry in peanut oil. You wouldn't fry anything in olive oil. I wouldn't eat anything fried. Well, yeah. So that's that's a different question, you know, so depending on how you want to use your oil and you know, also some people find, you know, olive oil and baked goods might impart stronger taste.

05:06So depending on the type. So some of them are more flavorful, right? And so they're more fragile, let's say, and they'll impart flavors to different uh different foods where they're not supposed to be. So you you're not seed oil averse, nor are you pro- seed oil is what I'm hearing

Navigating Processed Food Labels

05:24personally? Yeah. No, cuz I think that the um the seed oil debate has been very contaminated by the issues that I mentioned before, but also because many many processed foods contain seed oil. They're much less expensive than using, you know, grass-fed butter or or olive oil or even just ordinary butter.

05:41So, it's important to be nutrition facts literate. So when you're talking about uh processed foods, so as much as possible cooking at home, but that's something that a lot of people don't really know how to do, feel they don't have the time for.

05:58People aren't going to start doing that. And then I'll tell you, they're not going to start doing that. I wish they would, but they they're not going to at the grocery store to to look at the nutrition facts panel and being like, "Okay, what's in here?

06:07What's in there?" And comparing products to one another, right? And and also what's more important for your own health, right? what's relevant for my health may not be what's relevant for your health. You know, some people are, we're talking about salt sensitivity.

06:22Some people are very salt sensitive. Some people are very active and need to replace salt and so salt is not an issue for them. But so being able to know uh where to what to pay attention to because otherwise it just gets overwhelming.