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vitamins, minerals, and (if it’s a plant) protective phytochemicals that work as antioxidants. Extracted oils are fats that are forced out of this whole food matrix and put into a capsule, bottle, or tub. Liquid vegetable oils, margarine, and fish oil are all examples of extracted oils.
What Fats do you Need? There are two kinds of fats you do need to get from your diet. These are the “short-chain” omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (which are polyunsaturated fats). Your daily need is low, only about 3% of your total calories. Extracted oils are not necessary to meet this requirement if you are eating a wide range of whole plant foods. Given an adequate supply of calories from any source (including carbohydrates and proteins), your body can handily make other kinds of fats you use, including saturated and monounsaturated fat, and can construct long-chain omega-3 and omega-6’s from their short-chain precursors.
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How Extracted Oils Hurt You Your body has no need for extracted oils. How do you know this? Extracted oils have been available for only the most recent part of human history, and then only to a fraction of the planet’s population. If these oils are so necessary, how did people survive, reproduce, and thrive before they were available?
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Consuming extracted oils, which all have about 120 calories a tablespoon, crowds out healthy whole foods. The oil can also become a significant source of empty calories to bump up your weight. When early humans were foraging in nature for food, they were finding nourishment that had close to equal amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. However, modern extracted vegetable oils are high in omega-6’s. So eating such oils skews your ratio of these two essential fats. You end up with too many omega-6’s in relation to omega-3’s. This has the potential to change some body processes in undesirable ways.
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ASK THE EXPERT (And most dangerous). Extracted oils are heavily attacked by oxygen, and the resulting damaged oil particles start a cascade of assault on your cells. The scientific name for this is “lipid peroxidation.” A “lipid” is a fat or related substance in your body that does not dissolve in water. “Peroxidation” means the lipid was damaged by oxygen or another particle generated as a result of oxygen’s actions.
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You don’t need to worry about the technical jargon to understand this process. Oxygen loves to attack fat, which stores a lot of energy in a small space. Its first strike leaves an unstable, wrecked fat particle, which then itself harms other parts of the cell it’s in (including your genes and proteins), or even injures your other cells. The resulting trail of destruction includes inflammation, malignancy, and aging.
Which Fats are the Worst? The most chemically unstable fats – the ones most likely to be oxidized and start a cascade of injury –
are long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. This is based on their chemical structure. So the fat you are being advised by the media and medical establishment to swallow capsules of is the fat that is virtually certain to generate plentiful free radicals and other dangerous byproducts. While your eyes and nervous system do require small amounts of long-chain omega-3’s, your body can make these tiny quantities from short-chain omega-3’s, which are more stable. This is definitely not a case of “the more the better.” In fact, “just adequate” is the safest scenario. There is no reason to take fish oil pills full of deteriorating long-chain omega-3 fatty acids that act as time bombs in your cells. The most chemically unstable oils in plant and animal foods are (in order of their likelihood of being attacked by oxygen): • Long-chain omega-3’s • Long-chain omega-6’s • Short-chain omega-3’s • Short-chain omega-6’s • Monounsaturated fats • Saturated fats
You Really Need the Whole Package Antioxidants, abundant in whole plant foods, can stop the oxidation process and protect the plant, not to mention your cells. This is why small amounts of naturally occurring fats in whole plant foods are low risk to your health. While the fats in whole plant foods are bathed in antioxidants, extracted oils lack this protection and are vulnerable. When extracted oil is damaged by oxygen, it is called “rancid.” But sometimes the rancidity is difficult to detect, and the process also continues inside your body.
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NUTRITION & THRIVING
More Milk, More Problems: Science Contradicts Milk Marketing The Incredibly Inedible Egg Keep Healthy and Slim: Eat MORE Sugar in the New Year
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MORE MILK, MORE PROBLEMS
MORE MILK, MORE PROBLEMS SCIENCE CONTRADICTS MILK MARKETING by Dr. Neal Barnard
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ecently, another study has illustrated that milk actually has a negative effect on bone health. Researchers in Sweden published findings in the British Medical Journal showing that women who drink milk have a higher incidence of bone fractures — and an increased risk of mortality from heart disease and cancer. According to the study, women who consume three or more glasses of milk per day have a 60 percent increased risk of developing a hip fracture and a 93 percent increased risk of death. And each glass of milk increases mortality risk by 15 percent.
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JUICE GURU / Steve and Julie Prussack
The Cure for Anything that Ails You If you see any of these celebrities, please pass on our recommendations. In the meantime, we recommend that you try daily juicing yourself for 30 days. By day 31 you will look and feel better than you can ever remember. Once you’ve rediscovered the best you in there, you will likely have already created a habit for life.
About the Authors
Steve Prussack is the author of Amazon Bestselling book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Juice Fasting.” He is CEO of Juice Guru ™, a brand dedicated to spreading the message about juicing for healthy living. He is the host of “Juice Guru Radio” which airs on i heart radio. In addition, Steve is the founder and publisher of the #1 health-related magazine in Apple’s Newsstand on juicing and veggie living, “VegWorld Magazine.” Julie Prussack received a crash course in juicing when she reconnected with her first love, Steven, after nearly 25 years apart. Julie is Associate Editor of VegWorld Magazine, and became the first certified Juice Guru Practitioner in her forties.
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FEATURE 2015 New Year’s Resolutions: Think Small (And Achieve Big)
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