Oil in a Healthy Diet – Yes or No?

I promote a vegan high-carb low-fat dietary lifestyle.

I believe that a plant-based vegetarian diet is without a doubt is the best diet to follow if you want to develop optimal health.

If this is a low-fat diet you would want to know which foods have the highest concentration of fat? These would obviously be foods that you limit your consumption of or totally eliminate from your diet.

1) Oils

2) Dairy Products

3) Animal Products – Meats

Since I promote a vegan diet #2 and #3 are definitely outside of my dietary considerations since they are animal-based foods. There is no question, I will not eat them. But vegetable oils are vegetable-based so it could easily be considered OK on a Vegan or Vegetarian Diet. Being hispanic there is certainly no shortage of oil in our traditional diet. So even when I switched to a vegetarian diet I had no problem with using oils, I just used less and a better quality.

With so much news circulating about Omega-3’s and Essential Fatty Acids it seems that eating “oils and healthy fats” in your diet is in style.

Lets think about this!

First of all oil is a processed food. There is no oil tree or plant. We have to squeeze it out of something. So it is not a whole food. This process alone most of the time renders it unhealthy.

Oil is a delicate food that oxidizes when exposed to air, light and heat. Exposure to these can turn oils rancid quickly. So if it is not rancid by the time you purchase it, most are turned unhealthy once they are heated.

Oil clogs your system

What does a frying pan look like after you have used it for a while? You cannot scrub the oily residue from the pan no matter what you use. What makes you think the inside of your body is any different after a lifetime of oil consumption?

Even healthy oils have saturated fats and we all know that saturated fats contribute to cardio-vascular disease.

Oils make it harder for you to uptake oxygen.

Oils contribute to the blocking insulin receptors that make sugar metabolism more difficult and over time impossible.

Oils are 100% fat

Oil has the highest fat content of any food, it is 100% fat. They also have the highest caloric value per gram, double that of proteins or carbs. Fat is much easier to store as fat on the body than carbs. This makes them dangerous when weight is a concern.

Dr McDougall says “The fat you eat, is the fat your wear!”

For these reasons and more we suggest you limit or best of all cease the consumption of oils, all oils! I think Dr Caldwell Esselstyn states it simply and best…….”No Oils! No Oils! No Oils!”

But we need Fats!

You are absolutely right!

We need fats

….healthy fats

….from whole foods.

Just about every fruit and vegetable you eat has naturally occurring fat as part of its nutritional make-up. The naturally occurring fat in fruits and vegetables is normally between 3-10% of that foods caloric value….and that is the perfect amount for an optimally functioning body. Mother nature has taken care of us as long as we eat a sufficient amount of plant-based calories to fuel our energy requirements for an active daily lifestyle.

No added oils needed!

Dr Caldwell Esselstyn Jr, former President of Staff at the Cleveland Clinic and author of the book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease discusses this topic in the video below. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton adopted the Esselstyn recommended plant-based diet after undergoing cardiac surgery in 2010.