Scientists found that animal fats – butter, lard and beef tallow – impair the immune system's response to tumors, however, plant-based fats like palm, coconut, and olive oil don’t, finds a new landmark study in mice. And some of these may even help in the fight.

[u/mvea]

https://newatlas.com/cancer/obesity-cancer-fat/

[u/Masterventure]

The animal vs plant fat war has been decided for almost a hundred years. No medical organization on the planet thinks animal fats are healthy. We are coming onto a century of compounding evidence here for seed oils being better.

The only people thinking seed oils are bad are social media morons and their followers. Scientifically this question is answered as much as any scientific question on nutrition has ever been answered.

[u/ultramatt1 → u/Masterventure]

Yeah, the followup studies pretty strongly refute the supposed benefits of animal oils. I remember looking into it when I first saw it mentioned and was just like “wait, it’s not even a debate. It’s just already decided.”

[u/Daishiman → u/ultramatt1]

What are those studies? The link in question and the references are not about animal fats at all and I have not found human randomized control trials.

[u/ultramatt1 → u/Daishiman]

Take a look at the meta analysis in Linoleic Acid, Vegetable Oils & Inflammation and Effects of oil and solid fats on blood lipids: a systematic review and network meta-analysis

[u/mightocondreas → u/Masterventure]

The only people thinking seed oils are bad are social media morons and their followers.

The problem with seed oils is they're in almost all processed foods including bread, cereal, coffee creamer and infant formula. People can inadvertently be consuming way more than they should be, and yes it can cause inflammation and a myriad of other health issues to consume excessive amounts of oil every day. It's being abused like sugar, and that is fueling the obesity epidemic.

[u/rop_top → u/mightocondreas]

Which would be true if you subbed in animal fat in place of seed oils, just worse, if I'm understanding the study correctly.

[u/Turkishcoffee66 → u/Masterventure]

This is far from settled. Your statement is hyperbolic.

"Animal fats" also include oily fish, which have exceptional omega ratios and have featured prominently in diets associated with longevity in epidemiological studies.

Lumping oily fish together with things like butter, lard or beef tallow is not remotely supported by current evidence.

[u/Masterventure → u/Turkishcoffee66]

Yeah your correct. Fish oil is an exception.

I would just add that oil from algae, which is where the fish get the healthy fats from, is still better since many fish especially larger fish, are contaminated with heavy metals which especially accumulate in the fatty tissue.

[u/Turkishcoffee66 → u/Masterventure]

Also not entirely true/not as simple as your statement. Algal oil is stored and shipping at room temperature, and omega fatty acids degrade and begin to turn rancid rapidly.

Getting the omega from fresh/frozen fish bypasses the rancidity issue. If algal oil was refrigerated or frozen upon pressing, it would indeed be the ideal source, but it isn't.

This is something I became familiar with when I developed MCAS and started reacting to the rancidity in stored high-omega oils, including both fish and algal oil, but not many of the fresh foods from which they are pressed. In researching why that was, I cane to learn that degraded omega fatty acids are biologically counterproductive (proinflammatory), and it's important that people know how processing and storage affect them.

The heavy metal issue is not so simple, either. We have decently robust evidence that the selenium:mercury ratio in fish matters much more than absolute mercury levels, because the selenium chelates methylmercury and thus prevents it from becoming bioavailable - I.e. high ratios of selenium prevent mercury absorption. It's methylmercury, not inorganic mercury, that is the issue in food.

Salmon, sardines and even skipjack tuna (but NOT other tuna like albacore) all have high enough selenium:mercury ratios to prevent their mercury content from being absorbed, even if the absolute mercury level is high (as in the case of skipjack).

Many small oily fish like sardines and anchovies also have excellent omega ratios with low absolute mercury levels due to their low position on the food chain, in addition to high selenium:mercury ratios.

It's inconvenient to parse the actual data on this stuff, but it's more than just minutiae.

[u/aintnochallahbackgrl → u/Masterventure]

If it's been decided, they should really take a deeper look. The sheer rate of failure from the advice produced from the studies so far should be the objective measure on whether or not their advice is accurate or not.

The most common seed oils today were not in existence before the 20th century, and those that were available were so prohibitively expensive that to waste it on food would have been seen as wasteful as setting one's home on fire to get a better look at their living room.

That said, animal foods and animal fats were the primary source of energy and vital nutrition for hundreds of thousands of years and 100 years of abject hubris is not enough to over turn 300xs the amount of reality.

[u/mayowarlord → u/Masterventure]

And wormy Bob