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Olive oil? Healthy or not?!


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The monkey study was discussed here previously, though personally, I am rather leery of studies in animals being used to project effects on humans. The other thing about epid studies is that CRONies are a very special group, and I'm not sure that what pertains to ad-lib necessarily is fully applicable - but of course, this is a limitation not much can be done about. Btw. the value of EVOO as I understand it, is not the same as OO which is what Saul discusses - there is the considerable factor of various polyphenols present in one and not the other. It might be the same wrt. whole grains, but the research is sparse. Personally, I do take in some oat and wheat *bran* daily, but otherwise avoid the grain - other than special occasions, I never eat bread etc. I'm gambling - because of lack of conclusive evidence - that the bran will have some of the beneficial effects without the grain calorie hit. Who knows.

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I think your decision on bran is probably a good one; I'm tempted to do the same.

Concerning OO, the evidence appears huge to me that it's high cal junk food -- and "EV" OO is just as high cal, and just as damaging to your cardiovascular system, as "plain" OO.  True, the "EV" has a few beneficial polyphenols, IMO vastly too little benefit to make up for the high cal, and especially cardio disadvantage, of any kind of OO.

Also, i don't think that humans are very different from other mammals; IMO, the main difference between a human and e.g. a rat, is human arrogance.

😃

  --  Saul

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Bullshit.

Read the video that Luigi Fontana made -- Gordo has a link to it.  High ketones are not desirable -- keto "diets" are unhealthy.  High carb, low protein, low fat diets are the best for you -- carbs coming from fruits and vegetables, not prepared foods.  Olives -- not the processed food, olive oil. Olive oil is popular in Italy -- and I've been to Italy.  Italy is a beautiful country -- some years ago, I was in Padua, presenting a mathematics talk on my research at a conference, in honor of the anniversary of the birth of Galileo.  I also gave talks in Palermo and Sicily.   I'd love the privilege of visiting you someday -- but olive oil, like saturated fats, are very bad for your cardio health.

Look at the links in this thread on olive oil about the cardio dangers of this high calorie food; forget about whatever whatever Guru preaches.

Luigi is very Italian -- he was born in North Eastern Italy, I believe in the Alps.  Luigi's video is very instructive.  (My main disagreement with Luigi:  he likes "whole grains".  I like "no grains".)

  --  Saul

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5466936/

 

this article makes a compelling case against animal foods and OILS of any kind. Cardiovascular disease is endemic, according to this article, because of crazy eating patterns that stray away from whole, plant based nutrition avoiding virtually all animal foods and certainly oils and fats including EVOO. It is compelling considering these diets have been shown to actually reverse atherosclerosis with imaging technology and atherosclerosis is indeed endemic even in young people.

Edited by mikeccolella
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Yeah, that link is to Esselstyn, frequently and controversially discussed over the years on the list. I am personally not as hardcore opposed to epid studies as MR, because in select cases I find them fascinating - a case in point for me is Finland and CVD. Finland used to lead the world in heart attacks to such a degree that the goverment became alarmed, and decided to do something about it. They focused on saturated fat in animal (primarily dairy, butter etc.) products and there's been a remarkable turnaround. Now, epid studies have many serious problems and confounders, but Finland is such an amazing example that I think has some value even if it's an epid study. I read various articles over the years about the Finland case, but never a good comprehensive study summarizing the findings - I wish I could find one... if anyone has any leads, I'm all ears!

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My opinions:

  1. For those who do not suffer atherosclerosis, I see no benefit in following a rigid esseltsyn diet. That article proves that it is possible to reverse arterial obstructions in affected people, but it's not focused on prevention.
  2. The PREDIMED study proves the benefits of EVOO and nuts by epidemiological studies. Even though it was criticized by professo Joannidis and subsequently retracted because of flawed randomization, a reanalysis showed the same results of the original study. The reanalysis has been published.
  3. Some studies on olive oil  do not even specify if it is simple OO or EVOO, which is pretty different. Some studies which specify EVOO  do not analyse the nutritional properties of EVOOs involved. 
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More on the predimed study and it’s failures:

 

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/20/17464906/mediterranean-diet-science-health-predimed

 

but by far for this thread and all the glorious claims for EVOO the most important consideration of a defect for predimed is the FACT THAT THE SO-CALLED LOW FAT COMPARISON GROUP ATE 37% fat! That is hardly a low fat diet and yet the media had a field day claiming low fat diet not as healthy as a high fat EVOO/nut diet.

MY point here in revisiting this thread is simply this:

IS EVOO A HEALTHIER CHOICE THAN A LOW FAT DIET ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL. ideally a whole food plant based diet with say 12% fat vs a whole food plant based diet with lots of nuts and olive oil?  Small studies have shown reversal of heart disease following the former. the latter has only shown reductions in the biggest killer not reversal.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3891943/

Edited by mikeccolella
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1 hour ago, mikeccolella said:

Small studies have shown reversal of heart disease following the former

I haven't seen any study of heart disease reversal that tested a low fat plant food based diet in isolation.  Dean Ornish tried it in combination with a wide variety of other lifestyle factors which makes it impossible to attribute causation to the dietary choices, though it could be fair to say such a diet is not incompatible with heart disease reversal.  If one had control groups with matched lifestyle interventions (exercise, smoking cessation, sleep hygiene, stress management training, etc.) while each group eats a diet including incrementally larger quantities of high quality animal foods such as carefully selected wild fatty fish and game, and perhaps eggs, organ meats and fats from pastured animals, with animal foods prepared with minimal low temperature moist cooking and compared the results over a long period of time it might give better insight to the value of going vegan and/or low fat.

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The predimed study, after the critics of prof. Joannidis, has been republished with the suggestions adopted and the conclusions still hold.

Of course if the secoiridoids are ingested from whole olives rather than from EVOO that's the same thing, except the convenience.

I'll have to consult the 37% low fat, I agree that in today's extremistic dietary faniticisms it looks high.

The diet proposed by Dr. Esseltsyin and acolytes  suffers the same drawbacks of the ketogenic diet: it is unnaturally unbalanced and very hard to follow in everyday's life, so it makes sense to adopt it only if there is an already existing cardiovascular problem.

I've listened to some podcasts by Dr. Esseltsyn, he himself suffers from fanaticism.

Besides, not everyone cares about the reversal. Sick people do.

There are so many healthy people who eat a lot of fats, me included. and exhibit a low cholestorolemia.

Praises to him though for proposing a valid regimen for  cardiovascularly sick people. Should I discover I have arterial plaques, I know I have a valid weapon against the condition.

Edited by mccoy
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5 hours ago, Todd Allen said:

I haven't seen any study of heart disease reversal that tested a low fat plant food based diet in isolation.  Dean Ornish tried it in combination with a wide variety of other lifestyle factors which makes it impossible to attribute causation to the dietary choices, though it could be fair to say such a diet is not incompatible with heart disease reversal.  If one had control groups with matched lifestyle interventions (exercise, smoking cessation, sleep hygiene, stress management training, etc.) while each group eats a diet including incrementally larger quantities of high quality animal foods such as carefully selected wild fatty fish and game, and perhaps eggs, organ meats and fats from pastured animals, with animal foods prepared with minimal low temperature moist cooking and compared the results over a long period of time it might give better insight to the value of going vegan and/or low fat.

The spectrum regimen by Dean Ornish implies a multifactorial reversal strategy, whereas I'm not sure about the Esseltsyin strategy.

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3 hours ago, mccoy said:

The spectrum regimen by Dean Ornish implies a multifactorial reversal strategy, whereas I'm not sure about the Esseltsyin strategy.

 

Here's Dr. Esselstyn's most relevant published work https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7500065

Quote

 

CONCLUSIONS:

A physician can influence patients in the decision to adopt a very low-fat diet that, combined with lipid-lowering drugs, can reduce cholesterol levels to below 150 mg/dL and uniformly result in the arrest or reversal of coronary artery disease.

 

Very small sample of patients, no controls, no isolation of diet by which to evaluate its relevance.

 

Edited by Todd Allen
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I’m looking at it from this perspective:

 

atherosclerosis is involved in the vast majority of heart disease death, stroke  death and disability, and, based on a recent review about 35-40 % of non Alzheimer’s dementia and consider the many milder cases of dementia that are undiagnosed and all the undiagnosed atherosclerosis and mini strokes in older ages that manifest as milder health issues but the person never actually gets diagnosed and it’s written off as old age etc. that being the case and add to that the primate study showing severe susceptibility of our closest relatives, not rats here, to high fat diets. So if low fat whole food plant based diets reverse this terrible pathology that appears to afflict a vast number of us to a greater or lesser degree why would we not opt for that diet and to hell with EVOO.

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6 minutes ago, mikeccolella said:

So if low fat whole food plant based diets reverse this terrible pathology that appears to afflict a vast number of us to a greater or lesser degree why would we not opt for that diet and to hell with EVOO.

We don't have scientific evidence that restricting EVOO improves outcomes or scientific evidence that a whole food plant based diet is superior to a quality animal foods based diet for reversing heart disease.   There are many published studies suggesting health benefits of EVOO.  Undoubtedly all of the studies have flaws and we will never know with certainty how healthful/unhealthful EVOO actually is, but if it is as bad as Dr. Esselstyn claims there should be a strong signal that ought to have been well measured by now or at least could be tested for in a scientific manner.

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I agree EVOO is most likely favorable in comparison to saturated fats, but I wouldn’t draw any further conclusions wrt EVOO.  There aren’t any clinical trials comparing WFPB diets that are low fat to WFPB with added EVOO. We do have limited evidence that WFPB has profound effects on cardio when it is low fat. The Evidence for EVOO Is always in comparison to junky diets so I’m not too impressed. It could simply be a case of the polyphenols in the EVOO LIMITING THE DAMAGE OF THE HIGH FAT MEAL, rather than anything with baseline positive effects. Those primate studies are troubling when you consider the pandemic of atherosclerosis among humans even if they exercise and do not smoke but eat a SAD diet. May not kill them directly but could undermine their capacity for optimal health and vitality. I’m placing my bet on a Whole Foods and plant based diet without added fats and just enough walnuts, chia and flax (Whole Foods) to give me 14 grams of omega 6 which the Linus Pauling institute claims we need and one fish capsule daily for epa/dha even though I probably getting enough from the plant sources. This amounts to 20 grams of walnuts, 1/2 tb of chia and 1/2 tb of flax daily. 

Also I am further motivated to totally remove all animal source foods due to the TMAO concerns and it’s a feel good  

move due to the environmental negatives with animal sourced food and we ain’t always very humane which is really  sad and unfortunate.

Edited by mikeccolella
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What if our lipid panel is perfect? That is, we are in the low percentiles of total cholesterol, LDL, trygs and so on...

Why should we restrict our diet unnecessarily?

We might execute further analyses like coronary calcium to ascertain the lack of plaque

Edited by mccoy
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Another aspect of the issue: let's exhibit total skepticism and hypothize a state of statistical entropy, that is we posit that we really don't know if the vegan doctors are right  (EVOO detrimental) or the predimed study is right (EVOO beneficial) or if EVOO has no effects at all.

Then of course the most reasonable strategy would be an optimization based on ingesting the minimum amount of an EVOO with the maximum amount of total polyphenols.

We already discussed  that. One tablespoon daily of max-polyphenols EVOO is enough to provide potentially beneficial secoiridoids and not enough, arguably, to cause substantial detrimental effects, or little enough to minimize those effects.

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3 hours ago, mccoy said:

Then of course the most reasonable strategy would be an optimization based on ingesting the minimum amount of an EVOO with the maximum amount of total polyphenols.

I'd call that a reasonable strategy but not most reasonable.

If one believes Ornish's and Esselstyn's claims that heart disease is reversible, and I do, and if one has access to medical testing which can evaluate cardiovascular health one can trial periods of varying amounts of EVOO and see what happens.  If after 3 months of 2 tablespoons daily ones blood pressure skyrockets,  carotid intimal thickness increases,  the left ventricle balloons, arteries get choked with calcification and ones EKG goes crazy or flatlines then one could reasonably assume they have an issue with EVOO and back off the EVOO and reverse the mistake.  If on the other hand markers of health improve one might continue on with the same or increasing amounts of EVOO.  One could also practice their skills of evaluating their health using their senses to judge how they feel and perform physically and mentally and use these skills to judge what range of EVOO is their personal sweet spot for consumption.

Edited by Todd Allen
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