Vegetable oils are still the smart choice

QI read that vegetable oils are bad for your heart and that even if they lower your cholesterol, you will die sooner than if you ate saturated fats. Is the whole “vegetables are good for you” thing a myth? — Charles O., Lafayette, Ind.

aNutritional science has shown us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that veggies are nature’s gift; they’re loaded with phytochemicals that our brain, some organ systems and all of our cells need to thrive.

So no wonder it’s confusing when headlines recently declared that vegetable oils could kill you!

That news was generated because of a new study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health who did a deep dive into data collected by the 19681973 Minnesota Coronary Experiment.

What they found was that even though study participants — in a nursing home and six state mental institutions — who ate fats from vegetable oils (primarily linoleic acid from corn oil and corn oil polyunsaturated margarine) lowered their cholesterol by around 14 per cent, they didn’t have lower rates of heart attack, and often died sooner than folks in the study control group, who ate a diet high in saturated fat from animal fats, common margarines and shortenings.

But the study doesn’t tell us whether the folks on the veggie-oil diet plan ate heart-destroying trans fats (made from hydrogenated vegetable oils) in baked goods and margarines.

And we know they reduced their artery-clogging sat-fat intake only 50 per cent, while increasing linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid) intake 280 per cent!

Too much omega-6 (and too little omega-3) in this analysis of 50-year-old data seems to be associated with bodywide inflammation and heart woes. So what’s the bottom line? Eat five to nine servings of veggies and fruits and two servings of 100-per-cent whole grains daily; no trans fats; no red or processed meats; and choose lean proteins such as walnuts, skinless poultry and salmon, ocean trout, sardines or anchovies, which are rich in omega-3s.

And stick with olive, canola and safflower oil; they’re lowest in omega-6.