17 syllables to transform your health:
Avoiding LA … Blocks cancer and heart disease… And boosts energy.
The haiku above is short, unlike the long article in the journal Nutrients, which takes 21 pages to say the same thing. Here’s the non-haiku summary:
Ever since Crisco first came out, Americans have been eating waaaaaay too much linoleic acid (LA), which causes inflammation, which leads to chronic diseases and also interferes with energy production.
Feel free to attempt reading the scientific Abstract. I understood a lot of the words, such as “the,” “is,” and “may harm human health.” Give it a try!
Linoleic Acid: A Narrative Review of the Effects of Increased Intake in the Standard American Diet and Associations with Chronic Disease
Joseph Mercola and Christopher R. D’Adamo
Nutrients, 19 April 2023Abstract:
The intake of linoleic acid (LA) has increased dramatically in the standard American diet. LA is generally promoted as supporting human health, but there exists controversy regarding whether the amount of LA currently consumed in the standard American diet supports human health. The goal of this narrative review is to explore the mechanisms that underlie the hypothesis that excessive LA intake may harm human health. While LA is considered to be an essential fatty acid and support health when consumed in modest amounts, an excessive intake of LA leads to the formation of oxidized linoleic acid metabolites (OXLAMs), impairments in mitochondrial function through suboptimal cardiolipin composition, and likely contributes to many chronic diseases that became an epidemic in the 20th century, and whose prevalence continues to increase. The standard American diet comprises 14 to 25 times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids, with the majority of omega-6 intake coming from LA. As LA consumption increases, the potential for OXLAM formation also increases. OXLAMs have been associated with various illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease, among others. Lowering dietary LA intake can help reduce the production and accumulation of OXLAMs implicated in chronic diseases. While there are other problematic components in the standard American diet, the half-life of LA is approximately two years, which means the damage can be far more persistent than other dietary factors, and the impact of reducing excessive LA intake takes time. Therefore, additional research-evaluating approaches to reduce OXLAM formation and cardiolipin derangements following LA consumption are warranted.
But now, to really comprehend this very important concept, here are key points I’ve pulled from the layperson’s version of that incomprehensible scientific journal article. This “ordinary English” translation was written by one of the article’s authors, Dr. Joseph Mercola. You can go directly to his clear and profound article here: (globalresearch.ca/linoleic-acid-most-destructive-ingredient-your-diet/5818645)
“Wait!” you might say, “Isn’t Dr. Mercola one of the Disinformation Dozen who told us lies about Covid-19?!”
Sigh. Here we go again with character assassination. Actually, millions see right through the attacks on Dr. Mercola because, like me, for decades they have put his information to work for their health and healing. It’s the media who claim that people don’t read him, even though his articles reach more people than any newspaper does.
What, you may ask, is media’s motivation for disparaging Dr. Mercola? Since their key advertisers are Pharma and Big Junk Food, what would happen to their revenue stream if they dared to cover this story honestly?
Another haiku explains the newscasters’ dilemma:
Doctor Mercola
Tells the truth about food, but
Profiteers hate facts.
The Power of Money
Pharma and Big Junk Food have also conned 2 out of the 3 branches of government (and, regarding government, we can add in Big Ag):
The White House needs dough,
From Pharma and Big Junk Food.
Same deal for Congress.
Local Public Health Departments— Not Bought. But Very Gullible.
Over the past 3 years of attending at least 25 meetings under the auspices of the Yolo County Public Health Department, it’s obvious that they think Pharma is the best path to health. (One beam of light is the department’s whole hearted support for new mothers to breastfeed their babies, but that is a relatively small program.)
Yolo county staff believed the Federal government hook, line, and sinker— until the trauma of January 28, 2025, started to change everything. For at least a year I’ve sent county staff various well-annotated articles by Dr. Mercola and others, but it’s clear they delete them without reading, and justify it because they he’s “antivax.” (More correctly, he’s for safety in all medical procedures, which the mRNA shots never had to prove because they got an “Emergency Use Authorization” from the formerly Pharma-affiliated panels at the CDC.)
Read all about this famous “quack” at Wikipedia. It’s hilarious, particularly Wikipedia’s list of Mercola’s “Other Views,” about which I independently arrived at the same conclusions after reading thoroughly substantiated articles in the alternative media.
As for Covid, the death rate in the US was higher than practically any other nation, and our total Covid deaths were the highest of any nation, which doesn’t support the media’s claim we have the best medical care on Earth. That’s the same media who have promoted polyunsaturated vegetable oils for the past 70 years, so we’re back where this post started.
American media made money off us in both instances— selling junk oils and selling untested mRNA shots. And, unlike Dr. Mercola, public health professionals and the New York Times cannot admit their mistakes (Dr. Mercola promoted the keto diet for a while, but, when further research showed him the flaws of that program over the long term, he recanted).
See the Light or Feel the Heat
Until he was fired last month, Dr. Peter Marks oversaw the FDA division responsible for gene therapies and vaccines. He admitted, “We know that the first generation of Covid-19 vaccines … had 40 to 50% reduction in transmission. But subsequently that fell off practically to zero.”
There is one big reason many people lost confidence in the mRNA shots: they, or someone near and dear to them, suffered severe disabilities or death from the mRNA shots, and/or caught Covid anyway. That’s why each new Covid booster had a lower uptake than the prior one. Now, only 10% of Republican Americans from 18 to 49 got the latest booster. (Compliance is higher for Democrats, of course— even though once upon a time they Questioned Authority. Now, however, Democrats are cheerleaders for the biggest profiteers of the Fortune 500, i.e. vaccine manufacturers and junk food processors.)
Any public health department who unequivocally believes the CDC about vaccines will also believe the FDA about the “risks” of butter and full fat milk, so they’ll resist the fact that natural saturated fats in milk products are good for us, as anthropologists have long known from studying herding cultures’ skeletons, which have uncrowded, decay-free teeth.
Public health officials cover their ears any time another member of the Disinformation Dozen, the one with the creaky voice, calmly tries to provide citations for his “crazy” ideas for making America healthy again. “What do lawyers know about nutrition?!” Well, this lawyer sues people lying about nutrition and will be a good broom to sweep HHS clean of decades of industry propaganda about PUFAs being nutritious, fluoridation being safe, and wireless tech being hazard-free.
The Problem with Never Questioning One’s Assumptions
These well-meaning but unconsciously biased professionals refuse to read the evidence and will probably never admit they were conned about the “health benefits” of PUFAs. Proof: I have been pointing out for over a year that WIC provides families with skim or low-fat milk, which harms children by depriving them of the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K2). But inertia and bias are endemic to the health department. Despite the horrendous health of today’s children, they think vaccines can solve everything.
Back to Lipid Facts
Here are key bullet points for readers who don’t have time for the whole article:
● Linoleic acid, a polyUNsaturated fatty acid (PUFA), was never prevalent in human food until 1866, when Proctor and Gamble unveiled Crisco, an artificially saturated fat made from “vegetable oil” (Does anyone really think of seeds and beans as “vegetables”?)
● Before that, for hundreds of thousands of years, humans evolved on animal fats, or, in many parts of Asia, on coconut oil and palm oil (both are also saturated fats, but from plants).
● Saturated fats were once the primary building block of your cell membranes. Today, at the most fundamental level, our health has been undermined by humanity’s wide adoption of PUFAs— remember, the U stands for unsaturated, i.e. highly reactive, i.e. quick to oxidize.
● A quick review of Biology 101: there are two basic types of fatty acids, depending on how many of their carbon bonds are paired with hydrogen: saturated fats and unsaturated fats.
● Saturated fats are fully loaded with hydrogen atoms forming straight chains, and are typically solid at room temperature (examples include butter and coconut oil). Unsaturated fats have lost at least one of the pairs of hydrogen atoms from their carbon chain and come in two varieties:
— Monounsaturated fats are missing one pair of hydrogen atoms
— Polyunsaturated Fats (PUFAs) are missing more than one pair of hydrogen atoms, hence the name “poly”
● The loss of hydrogen atoms results in molecules that kink or bend at each double bond. The more hydrogen pairs that are missing, the more bent the molecules, which causes the molecules to occupy more space. This is what makes the fat a liquid oil at room temperature.
● Butter, tallow, lard, suet, and coconut oil have been wrongly (but oh so convincingly) portrayed as dangerous to health since the 1950s.
● The advent of “healthy, polyunsaturated vegetable oils” was merely a way to provide cheap satiation in processed foods (in other words, PUFAs in food tell the body, “You’re full, stop eating”), even as they wreck our health. The more PUFAs Americans ate, the more cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and other chronic illnesses we got.
● The role of sugar in disease is minor. Instead, a major reason our health declined since PUFAs were substituted for saturated fats is that we were deprived of the vitamins once provided by animal fat (A, D, E, and K2). (Asian cuisines relying on low-vitamin coconut oil were able to use eggs and seafood as sources for those vitamins.) But even more significant was the fact that our bodies had to use PUFAs to build cell membranes instead of saturated fats, the resulting higher rate of oxidation is explained below.
● This haiku explains why medical care sucks up a fifth of our GDP:
LA provides us
60 to 80 percent
Of fat calories.
● Here’s a Big Picture video (only 16 minutes) showing the scheming by Proctor and Gamble to convince the public that PUFAs were healthy while butter was “life-threatening.” For example, in 1948 they paid the American Heart Association $1.5 million to promote Crisco as a healthy alternative to animal fats.
● In 1961, the American Heart Association wrote the first official recommendations and to “reduce intake of total fat and cholesterol [and to] increase intake of polyunsaturated fat.” This advice was then used in the 1977 US Dietary Guidelines.
● The deception continues today: Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020 states: “Individuals should aim to shift food choices from those high in saturated fats to those high in polyunsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats”
● PUFAs are chemically unstable, which makes them highly susceptible to being damaged by oxygen species generated from the energy production in your cells (the ATP cycle performed by mitochondria). This damage causes advanced lipoxidation end products (ALEs), which in turn generate dangerous free radicals that damage your cell membranes, mitochondria, proteins and DNA.
● Worse, PUFAs are integrated into your cell membranes and can remain there for 5 to 7 years. The missing hydrogen atoms also make PUFAs highly susceptible to oxidation, which causes the fat to break down into harmful metabolites such as oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMs), which have a profoundly negative impact on your health.
● Seed and bean oil consumption was:
2 grams per day in 1865 (1/100 of total calories)
5 grams per day in 1909
18 grams a day in 1999
29 grams a day in 2008 (1/4 of total calories—a 25-fold increase!)
ALEs and OXLAMs cause mitochondrial dysfunction, the hallmark of most chronic disease.
● The good news is that dietary changes can improve the composition of fats in your cardiolipin in a matter of weeks, or even days. So, even though it will take years to lower your total body burden of LA, you will likely notice improvements well before then.
● Dr. Mercola’s table, below, provides a fairly comprehensive list of the most commonly consumed oils and their approximate LA content. In general, the lowest LA-containing fats — butter and beef tallow — are the best fats for health. These are not only the lowest in LA, but also provide the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E, and K2. (Coconut oil is also very low in LA but doesn’t provide the important fat-soluble vitamins that tallow and butter contain.)
https://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/Public/2023/February/cooking-oils.png
● Ruminant animals such as cows, buffalo, sheep, goats, deer, elk have a low LA content in their milk and meat because no matter what they eat, their fourth stomach contains bacteria which converts the high LA fat they eat into saturated and monounsaturated fats.
● Dr. Mercola explains that animals with a single stomach, like chickens and pigs, cannot make this conversion. Therefore, when they’re fed corn and soy, which are high in LA, their meat will also be high in LA (over 25% LA!). Surprisingly, chicken eggs are acceptable, because each egg has less than 1 gram of LA, even when fed commercial feeds loaded with high LA.
● Fatty, cold-water fish contain omega-3s: wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies, mackerel and herring.
● While your body will slowly eliminate stored LA over time, provided you reduce your intake, a peptide supplement called carnosine can help reduce the oxidative damage caused by LA. Eating meat raises a person’s carnosine levels. Carnosine is not found in any plant foods. (Even vegetarians, if they drink milk and eat milk products and eggs, will get some carnosine to help replace the LA in their cell membranes with the saturated fat our bodies crave.)
● Dr. Mercola’s article has many useful details you’ll be glad to learn. But I think everyone should memorize this final haiku about the 3 best ways to reduce inflammation: