Rebuttal to: The Exoneration of Seed Oils
A written rebuttal to James Collier, Co-Founder of Huel, Registered Nutritionist and Former NHS Dietitian.
Dear James Collier (
),In your article, The Exoneration of Seed Oils, you fail to exonerate them. If you want to throw words like dangerous around and label people as quacks because they have a different opinion to you, then you should be more explicit. How can advising people to avoid oils that were not present in the human diet until the mid 19th century be ‘dangerous’?
You warn of ‘dangerous pseudoscience’, that ‘influencers’ are ‘alarmingly’ claiming that the consumption of seed oils is ‘linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD), inflammation, cancer and other health issues’.
They are linked, as you well know.
‘Indeed, there could be a plausible link that involves oxidation’, you write towards the end of your piece. Continuing with, ‘Oxidation is a process that results in the production of harmful free radicals with potentially negative health implications including an increased risk of CVD and cancers.
For this statement, which is true, you diligently provide four references.
One from Fred Kummerow, author of Cholesterol is Not the Culprit, a nutrition scientist and biochemist who devoted his long life to the study of lipids, cholesterol and heart disease. He epitomised ‘anti-conventional-science rhetoric’. For decades, conventional science recommended people replace saturated fats with margarines and hydrogenated oils, aka trans fats. Kummerow warned us about trans fats from 1957. But, according to you, this would have made him an anti-establishment conspiracy theorist.
Well, thank God for people like Kummerow who are willing to question ‘conventional science’ and prevent it from stagnating benefiting only those with vested interests.
Polyunsaturated oils (seed oils) are more likely to oxidise than saturated fats, as you rightly state. But this happens in the human cell wall as well as in restaurants, people’s kitchens and cupboards. The more we eat the more likely they will oxidise, especially combined with a nutritionally inadequate diet. Our antioxidants, the status of which is highly individualised, can only protect us so much.
There is plenty of evidence linking an excess ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 with dysfunction.
Linoleic acid oxidises inside LDL, creating a dangerous version of it, therefore increasing the chances of cardiovascular disease in its most acute form. A review and meta-analysis of 14 mixed human studies showed a high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is linked to cognitive decline. A seven-year study (2017) on young people showed a dose-dependent high 6:3 ratio increased the risk of mood disorders.
Your article is centred around four core very old papers, dated between 1968 and 1979. These, you believe, exonerate polyunsaturated oils. Chronologically, the first published in the Lancet (1968) was not a blinded study, used people who had already had heart attacks, showed no correlation between cholesterol levels and outcomes, and by their own admittance, the results could not be extrapolated to prevent sudden cardiovascular outcomes.
The second, published in Circulation (1969), showed a non-significant difference between primary events (sudden heart attacks and death) but an 82% increase in the chances of cancer for those on the higher polyunsaturated oil diet.
The third, the Oslo study (1970), was not well controlled because they left the participants to get on with it at home. The incidence of deaths was the same in both the control and intervention groups, the authors admit ‘deficiencies in study design’ and stated, ‘the results of this trial alone lend little support [...] to the suggestion that a diet of the kind [swapping saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats] should be recommended in the treatment of patients who have suffered a myocardial infarction. Taken together with the results of the Oslo trial [not the one above] there is no indication that this type of diet affects mortality.’
Finally, the fourth of your core argument studies was the Finnish Mental Hospital Study (1979) which is not an RCT and used people that were being prescribed cardiotoxic medication. This skews the results completely and shouldn’t be referenced in a piece about a supposed protective effect of polyunsaturated fats. It was included in Hamley’s (2017) review of RCTs, which showed a narrow positive for polyunsaturated fats. However, once the Finnish study was excluded, which Zoe Harcombe PHD did in her analysis, the results were flipped to show an overall negative effect.
You state that because linoleic acid is essential, then it’s ‘bizarre’ that there may be a problem with it. It’s possible to over consume many things that are essential, water for example can cause hyponatremia and death and all the fat soluble vitamins can become toxic in excess, so what’s your point?
As you say, linoleic acid deficiency is rare (almost unheard of in a real-life setting) because so many foods contain it and we need such a small amount of it to meet our needs. Therefore, people don’t need it in a concentrated form from seed oils.
A Cochrane review of randomised control trials (2018) writes of ‘limited’, ‘low-quality’, ‘very low-quality’ and evidence making ‘little or no difference to CHD’ and even that ‘there was a suggestion of greater protection in participants with lower baseline omega‐6 intake across outcomes’. The only good evidence of anything was that increasing PUFAs reduces cholesterol. But given that cholesterol in isolation is a very poor predictor of cardiovascular disease and mortality, it’s not much evidence of anything.
You end with, ‘any assertion [negatively about seed oils] is likely ideological and indicates an alignment with a particular dietary camp.’
How is your article any different?
Disclaimer: I am a co-founder of Hunter & Gather, which produces products that are free from seed oils. Having established the potential harm of seed oils to human health in 2012, I have not consumed them for 11 years and counting
Thank you for this rebuttal. It’s important people realize the truth about fats and oils in our diets. Some members of my family refuse to give up their margarine and vegetable oil, and are shocked by the cost of the fats and oils we use at my house. I don’t point out they are all overweight, on meds, and struggling with health issues because that would invite an argument I can never win. They have been lied to so well they can’t even consider revised facts or opinions. I believe that is very common, and quite tragic as well. Your takedown of the propagandist tripe attempting to keep them all eating awful and very profitable products is good enough to almost convince even my family members, a difficult task. What’s even harder is trying to keep bad fats and oils out of our house. They are in so many ‘products’ it is nearly impossible.