Are there benefits to reducing your oil intake?
On the spectrum of harmful to health-promoting foods, vegetable and seed oils are not the worst we can do. But are they health promoting, or is that marketing?
I’ve shared my approach to oils in previous posts. I don’t use it for cooking. I don’t add it to my food. I look for oil-free recipes online.
I found this oil-free caesar dressing at Happier Grocery. A recipe like this is easy to make at home with a high-speed blender (Vitamix, Nutri-Bullet, whatever you have). In addition to salads, it makes a great dip for raw veggies. Ingredients: tahini, garlic, capers, nutritional yeast, dijon mustard, lemon, black pepper
3 reasons I don’t use oil:
It’s nutrient-light.
Olives, avocados, nuts and seeds all contain fiber.
Processing of olives to produce olive oil strips the fruit of all of its fiber.
It’s calorie-dense.
1 tablespoon of olive oil is 119 calories.
I don’t count calories, but I do get full. I won’t bore you with a list of foods I enjoy eating more than oil, but that list is long.
My digestion is better.
Maybe that’s the fiber in the foods I replace it with. Maybe that’s because the body has a harder time digesting processed and calorie-dense foods. I’m not sure of the cause, but I can feel it.
1 tablespoon of olive oil or 26 medium olives? Both have the same number of calories.
Source: Cronometer
These raw, sundried Sevillano olives are heavenly, but hard to find. I've had these from Sunfood before. Also delicious.
What does the science show?
Plant-based doctors I’ve been following since I changed my diet almost 9 years ago recommend no or low-oil diets.
A recent study backs up their recommendation.
A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) compared a low-oil whole food plant-based diet with a higher-oil whole food plant-based diet.
The findings?
The low-oil diet was better at reducing cardiovascular disease risk factors, compared to the higher oil diet. Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) was used in both diets.
Although both inclusion and exclusion of extra virgin olive oil within a whole food, plant‐based vegan diet support cardiometabolic disease risk reduction compared with a standard omnivorous pattern, decreased intake of extra virgin olive oil may yield increased lipid lowering than relatively greater consumption.
Addition of extra virgin olive oil after consuming low amounts within a whole food, plant‐based diet may impede risk reduction.
The study also reminds us that oil aside, all whole food plant-based diets reduce cardiometabolic disease risk, whereas omnivorous diets do not.
Cardiometabolic conditions include:
Insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes
Higher oil consumption led to:
Increased glucose
Increased total cholesterol
Increased low‐density lipoprotein (LDL-C) cholesterol
What quantities of oil were used in the study?
<1 teaspoon of oil per day on the low oil diet
4 tablespoons of oil per day on the higher oil diet
Swiss chard and garbanzo beans with peanut sauce
Other benefits of cooking without oil?
Easier clean-up.
Avocados, my favorite dressing for salads.
Summary
There are many worse dietary choices we can make compared to vegetable oils. But are they health promoting?
Or are the primary benefits of oils:
Fillers in packaged foods, flavoring, cooking tools to change the texture of other foods?
If you want to shift your health, there are many changes you can make, and some are undoubtedly more impactful than others.
Removing oil may be further down the list, but according to this study, it’s on the list.
Lentil stew with red cabbage, radish and nutritional yeast
Thanks for reading!
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Eat plants. 🥦 Hydrate.🚰 Move.🤸 Prioritize sleep. 🛌
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