[_carl_jung]

> All types of oils are not good for us, oil in general is not a health food, no even extra virgin olive oil.

I don't buy this. Omega 3 is the obvious counter example, but I don't even believe that olive oil is outright bad for you.

[vfc1]

It has to do with the processing, olive oil is a food extract. Olives are awesome, olive oil is not, it's not a health food unlike popular belief.

It's not a whole food, most of the nutrients and the whole fiber has been taken out by the processing.

Olive oil only contains modest amounts of some vitamins, that can be easily obtained elsewhere.

Otherwise, it's almost 100% liquid fat with little micro-nutrient content.

You mean fish oil? I think here people are talking about plant oils. Fish oil is not a health food either, AFIK it's no longer recommended by the American Heart Association https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/practice-manag...

For a pollutant free source of Omega 3, there is algae oil at very small amounts, or most people bodies just make their own Omega 3, just like any other animal.

How do herbivores get their Omega 3? Through diet, ground flax seeds is a great way to help your body produce Omega 3.

[_carl_jung]

I'm not sure that the above can be summarised as "oils are not good for us". If the oil was removed from olives, the resulting olives would not be healthier.

If the fish oil was removed from fish, the resulting fish would not be healthier.

I'm not sure how this became a debate about vegetarianism either.

[vfc1]

Eating the oil in its natural form, together with the whole olive, is not the same as eating the oil separately.

The effect that has in your digestive system is not the same. Another example is eating fructose extract instead of a whole fruit.

Eating the whole fruit does not spike your blood sugar, unlike eating the equivalent amount of fructose. Also, it does not satiate as much.

Compare the satiety of eating 10 olives to eating a tablespoon of olive oil or two.

It's this reductionistic approach to nutrition where we try to extract these single nutrients that is harmful, because our body has evolved to eat whole foods and not food extracts.

We humans have evolved to eat the whole foods, not highly processed food extracts.

There are thousands of compounds in whole foods that interact with each other and our bodies in a million different ways, and that we are only beginning to comprehend.

[cr1895]

>We humans have evolved to eat the whole foods, not highly processed food extracts

You picked olives, so...what exactly is great about eating a raw, unprocessed olive?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...

[vfc1]

Eating whole foods is not about eating raw, that is different.

I don't think the argument to eating raw makes much sense either, as we are the only animal on the planet that has evolved to eat cooked food and that has been the case for maybe a couple of millions of years, at least much longer than the human species (which goes back to aprox. 200k years).

The olives that we eat as appetizers are cured or sun-dried, because the raw olive tastes horribly indeed.

So there is some treatment of the food to make it edible, or some cooking involved.

But this is very different than extracting an oil and discarding the rest of the food, together with all of its fiber and most of its nutritional content.

It's like taking a fruit and only eating its sugar, one is healthy and the other is not.

[_carl_jung]

This was a fascinating read, thanks.

[_carl_jung]

That's true. I agree with this in general. From your initial statement I thought you were including those oils even in the context of their natural occurrence.

[Sawamara]

You should not buy this, olive oils are one of the healthiest sources of fat on this earth. Plenty of studies confirm it.

[vfc1]

AFIK extra virgin olive oil is at best neutral for human health, while other oils are detrimental. There are the chemical compounds formed with the eating of certain oils, besides olive oil has very little micro-nutrient content, it's almost 100% fat.

Whole olives are a great source of plant fat, but olive oil is not. Eating the whole food is crucial, instead of these highly processed extracts.

Of course, it's much better than other foods such as saturated fat, but still it's not a health food.

[frafra]

They are not, different oils have just different mix of different fats, determining consistence at different temperatures. Micro-nutrients are overestimated; you do not eat olives or drink olive oil because you want to get "micro-nutrients", like you would not prefer brown sugar to white sugar just because there is a very little amount of vitamins. Every substance to have a meaningful positive or negative effect has to be in a reasonable quantity.

I use olive oil everyday (I was born in Italy, were it is widely used), but it is dangerous to fry with it, especially the extra-virgin one, because it has not been purified, and you get the known smoke at a lower temperature. This is just to demonstrate that there are different oil for different usages, there is no black and white.

[vfc1]

I too used to use olive oil every day, but now I haven't used it for years. It's one of the main sources of hidden calories in food, it's very hard to lose weight without cutting it.

One tablespoon of olive oil is 120 empty calories, no fiber, no protein and no carbs, minimal volume, almost zero satiety. Yet it has the same caloric amount as a large banana.

I don't think micro-nutrients are over-estimated, they are essential for well-being according to science. The body only needs them in small amounts, but they are essential.

I know we have been marketed for a very long time that oil is a health food, and it's a very hard thing to let go, but it's just not true.

The Mediterranean diet is healthy despite the olive oil and not because of it (due to the high amount of fruits and vegetables).

[Sawamara]

Your body needs fat. Also, olive oil contains plenty of antioxidants, and Vitamin K and E - so the claim that it is just empty calories is pointless.

Also, just a thought game for you: if I were to claim that your carbs are just empty calories, and my fat covers those calories too, what would your response be? Because the body can create carbs from fat and fat from carbs, so that point is kinda moot. Just pointing out the calorie content of an oil is not a negative against it. An average man need ~2000 kcal daily, and an average women needs ~1500. Just by carbs and proteins alone, that would mean 400g+ of that intake. Why?

[vfc1]

This is a common myth, the amount of vitamins in olive oil is very modest compared to other foods.

Eating olive oil for vitamins is a bit like smoking for getting oxygen, there are plenty of other ways much healthier to cover those nutritional needs.

The body can create fats from carbs and vice-versa but those processes are not metabolically efficient. That is not the main way our body consumes calories.

Most commonly, carbs are broken down into sugar and fat is either burned as it is or is stored directly as it is, without further modification.

Olive oil and oils, in general, are some of the most calorically dense foods in existence, with very little volume and very little satiety associated with them.

So you get a lot of calories but your body does not register them because they have very little volume, so you stay hungry and keep eating more until you are full.

That is the problem with this very high caloric density, is that you will very easily overheat and not be able to lose weight while eating oils.

That caloric density simply does not exist in nature, and our bodies have not evolved to cope with it, we will constantly overeat which over time leads to obesity.

For example, greeks are some of the heavier people in Europe, a study did a tissue sample of a group of women to check what type of fat they had stored in their abdomen. About a third of it was the fat from olive oil, it sticks to you.

[eridan2]

Actually Omega 3 is bad if consumed in large quantities, AHA recommends a limit of 3 grams per day

[_carl_jung]

Sure, as are all consumable things.