Robert Kennedy Jr. has been appointed Trumps Minister of Health. What does that mean for the health of Americans? Kennedy wants to do something against thickening industrial food and that is good, even if the question is whether being approach works. Kennedy also wants to campaign cum. What are they and are they as bad as he claims?
‘Seed oils’ is not a scientific concept. It is a swear word of food gurus for vegetable oils such as sunflower, corn, soy and rapeseed oil. According to them, they would cause heart attacks, strokes, obesity, Alzheimer’s, rheumatism and cancer. And Parkinson’s, youth pimples, infertility, asthma and brain fog. In reality, no foods have been investigated as thoroughly as this type of oil, and it showed that they have the risk of cardiovascular disease reduce without harmful side effects.
Kennedy and his followers have no message to this scientific consensus. They see conspiracies everywhere. With seed oils, their mistrust towards the food industry, the government and university science. Yet in their fight against seed oils, nutrition gurus likes to use scientifically sounding arguments. They rely on the danger of oxidized substances in the body that would be formed by seed oils, on the lack of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids in some oils and on ‘chronic inflammation’ that would be stimulated by seed oils.
Years of experiments
The hypothesis that oxidized substances in the body cause cardiovascular disease and cancer seemed very attractive forty years ago; I did research myself. But in the end, after years of experiments in tens of thousands of people, it turned out that reducing oxidized substances through antioxidants no good. A second argument of food gurus is that harmful substances can be formed in frying in seed oils. However, those are minimal quantities that health do not influence. The argument that seed oils contain too few omega-3 fatty acids also does not cut wood; The effect of omega-3 fatty acids on cardiovascular disease turned out an illusion. A final argument against eating seed oils is that they lead to ‘chronic inflammation’. In addition, health preachers mainly point to the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid, the main component of many oils. In large controlled experiments, however, linoleic -rich oils appear to be in humans no effect to have on the occurrence of inflammation. The question is whether those inflammations matter, because suppressing inflammations hardly leads to Less diseases.
In their fight against seed oils, nutrition gurus therefore rely on outdated ideas. Kennedy and his followers apparently cannot imagine that hypotheses who were advocated for years by name and fame scientists turned out to be wrong. But that’s how it goes in science; Most theories do not end up in the end.
Seed oils such as corn oil and rapeseed oil are great for health. But because they like that be cheap Process manufacturers in cheap, ultra -edited foods such as chips and cookies, and those are thick makers. Likewise, fast food restaurants use seed oils to fry. Kennedy wants McDonald’s to fry in beefvet, according to him less thick by. That is nonsense, Americans will not eat any fries less and not lose weight. It will increase their cholesterol and therefore cause heart attacks and strokes.
But we now have medicines, statins, which greatly lower cholesterol? Those tablets only cost A euro per month; roomy a third She takes over the over-65s. They no longer have to break their heads about the cholesterol -increasing effect of beef fat. But with their risk of a heart attack, those five -sixty -five years of life with a blood circulation full of cholesterol also count. It is similar to smoking; Lung cancer is not caused by your last pack of cigarettes but by how much you have smoked in total in your life. Bee cholesterol Is that just like that. If your arteries were exposed to high concentrations of cholesterol as a result of unhealthy diet up to your sixty -five, you don’t just rinse it away with statins.
Larger social differences
A consequence of Kennedy’s views can be that the social differences in health in the US becomes greater. Poor, low -educated People have much less faith in science than highly educated people and they are therefore perhaps more receptive to Kennedy’s argument. You can see that in vaccination figures; people who didn’t let themselves vaccinate Against Covid, on average had a lower education and a lower income than vaccinates. We have to wait and see how many Americans will follow the advice of Robert Kennedy Jr., but anyway he will have a number of heart attacks on his conscience at the end of his ministry.
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