Walking the aisles of your local grocer, you are no doubt bombarded by the selection of so called “healthy oils”. Trying to decipher which ones are good for high heat cooking, which ones are safe to use in salad dressing and which ones to avoid altogether can be unnecessarily stressful and time consuming. Let me set the record straight.

Vegetable oils are often considered the safe bet and marketed as “heart healthy” but what most Americans don’t know is the omega fatty acids found in these oils can do more harm than good. The World Health Organization recommends that a healthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids be 4:1.

That 4:1 ratio is the key. Although vegetable oils are high in omega-6, a seemingly healthy fatty acid, the lack of balancing omega-3s essentially nullifies any benefits.

A high level of omega-6 fatty acids is extremely damaging to cell composition, and can cause the inflammation of arterial cells. Major cardiovascular diseases, as well as arthritis, depression and even cancer are known to develop from this type of inflammation. On top of dangerous levels of fatty acids, vegetable oils are full of poisonous chemicals resulting from the hazardous industrial processing techniques.

It is important for your health that you steer clear of these 3 oils when pushing your cart down the shopping aisle.

1. Grape Seed Oil

The American Heart Association finds that a moderate level of polyunsaturated fats can prove beneficial to heart health, however oils like grape seed which contain very high levels of polyunsaturated fats, are prone to oxidization.

When an oil oxidizes it creates toxic free radicals which are known to cause cancer, inflammation, hormonal imbalance, and even thyroid damage. Using grape seed oil under high temperatures only speeds up the oxidization process so the myth that it is the safe cooking oil proves false.

2. Canola/Rapeseed Oil

Many consider canola oil the healthiest of oils. And yet, the process by which it is made reveals otherwise. It is derived by heating the rapeseed and filtering that with a petroleum solvent to produce an oil. Acid is then added to strip the product of any wax residue and cleaned using toxic chemicals to improve its color.

The result does not smell very appetizing to say the least, so yet more chemicals are used to deodorize the liquid. By the end of its production, canola oil is found to have carcinogenic bleaches, hexane gas deodorizers and traces of petroleum. Sound tasty to you?

3. Vegetable Oil

Don’t be fooled by the label, 99% of the time what you are actually consuming is soybean oil. Like I discussed earlier, high levels of omega-6 can result in dangerous inflammation.

Soybean oil is packed with a whopping 54% omega-6.

On top of its high fatty acid levels, soybean oil contains phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors which contribute in blocking the absorption of essential vitamins and minerals. Soy has also been found to mimic estrogen in women and disrupt normal hormone function and fertility.

Vegetable oils are processed using harmful chemicals and toxic solvents which are also used in the refinement of industrial oils. Most of these oils contain BHA and BHT, also known as Butylated Hydroxyanisole and Butylated Hydroxytoluene. These artificial chemicals are used in preservation and keep food from going bad. The by-product of these preservatives are cancerous compounds which attribute to liver and kidney damage, immune deficiencies, high cholesterol and infertility/sterility.

Simply put, ingesting vegetable oil is a step away from ingesting motor oil. Doesn’t sound very natural to me.

Source(s):

http://www.healthfreedoms.org/3-dangerous-oils-that-you-thought-were-healthy/

www.heart.org

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