| Awful hit piece containing at least 2 exaggerations and lies: "Canola oil [aka rapeseed oil, present in many foods] is one of the worst fats one could put in their body because it contains erucic acid that damages the heart." Not sure about the "worst fats" part, but what about palm oil, lard, etc.? It is true that erucic acid has been shown to be harmful to animal hearts, but at high doses. According to Wikipedia, In Australia, the maximum recommended dose is 500 mg/day/kg, and that's a safety factor of 120 over what is considered safe. Also canola oil has a maximum of 2% erucic acid, so you would need to consume 1/2% * 70 kg (about 150 lbs) * 500 mg/day/kg = 1.75 kg of canola oil per day to get the maximum safe dose. I don't think people eating Soylent are getting anywhere close to 1.75 kg a day -- that's a lot of oil to be in a food. "Studies have shown that dl-alpha tocopherol (synthetic vitamin E) is linked to increased cancer rates." The cited study: There were no significant differences (all P>.15) in any other prespecified cancer end points. There were statistically nonsignificant increased risks of prostate cancer in the vitamin E group (P = .06) and type 2 diabetes mellitus in the selenium group (relative risk, 1.07; 99% CI, 0.94-1.22; P = .16) but not in the selenium + vitamin E group. Conclusion Selenium or vitamin E, alone or in combination at the doses and formulations used, did not prevent prostate cancer in this population of relatively healthy men. --
So basically cited study says that synthetic vitamin E did not PREVENT cancer -- quite different than causing it! Also, " In the same regard, Soylent 2.0 uses vitamin K1 instead of K2." Vitamin K1 and K2 have different functions in the human body. K1 (the plant form) helps with blood clotting. K2 is related to cardiavascular health, strong teeth, and healthy skin (not sure about the cancer prevention mentioned in the article). While it's true that K1 doesn't do these things, some does get converted into K2 by the gut. I haven't read that K2 can converted to K1, so using K2 alone would seem to be worse than just K1 (obviously though, it's not binary). That K2 might prevent cancer does seem to have some evidence, though not particularly good: --- We observed a nonsignificant inverse association between total prostate cancer and total menaquinone [the most studied form of vitamin K2] intake [multivariate relative risk (highest compared with lowest quartile): 0.65; 95% CI: 0.39, 1.06]. -- From http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/4/985.full Key words being "nonsignificant" and a pretty large confidence interval. I could probably go on, but basically, it's a bunch of lies and exaggerations wrapped in scientific mumbo-jumbo. I have never had Soylent and have no interest in it, and also have doubts about how wise/healthy it would be to rely on a single food source, but pieces like this just make legitimate critics look bad. My personal philosophy -- pretty much anything in high doses has been shown to cause cancer, so don't worry about it that much. Eat a lot of different things, and don't eat too much of anything, and especially cut down on the ramen (who knows that the hell they put in those spice packets, find another food to eat when you're poor) and processed sugar. |
FYI, reducing the erucic acid content in canola seeds it one of the main targets of canola breeding - you have to have less than 2% erucic acid and low contents of glucosinolates to qualify for the name of "canola" (it's a trademark: "Canada oil", or possibly "Can(ada)+o(il)+l(ow)+a(cid)").
Wild seeds have too much acid to be edible, cultivars have very low content of erucic acids, so I agree with you, it shouldn't be that much of a problem.