The Palm Oil Case

Beware, though: not all seed oils are created equal. Refined, bleached, and deodorized, just because an oil claims to be of a seed originally doesn’t mean it bears any resemblance to the husk-enclosed nugget of nutrition from which it came. We are, of course, talking about vegetable oils (otherwise known as industrial seed oils).

High-temperature heating means that the unsaturated fatty acids within become oxidized, by-products of which have been found to be harmful to human health. Then, the seeds are processed with a petroleum-based solvent (most often hexane) in order to maximise the amount of oil that can be extracted. Next, chemicals are added to deodorize the stench of those extracted oils, resulting in trans fats. Finally, more chemicals are added to improve the colour of the product. If that doesn’t sound awful enough, three further reasons you might want to step away from the bottle of industrial seed oil include:

1. That adulterated oil is an evolutionary mismatch. We must eat in adherence to our species’ specific needs. The modern environment we’ve crafted isn’t compatible for the most part with our genes, and that is why there is the proliferation of chronic disease today, increased by consumption of industrial seed oils ever since the 1900s, as well as of refined sugar and excessive calories. Between only 1970 and the millennium, in fact, median consumption of soybean oil and other such industrial seed oils rose from just 4lb per annum per person to a stomachchurning 26lb per annum per person.

2. Those oils are generally from genetically modified crops. Certainly in the United States, where 88% of corn, 93% of soy, 94% of cotton, and 93% of rapeseed crops are GM.

3. Industrial seed oils are imbalanced in their Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acid ratio. Linoleic acid (the primary fatty acid in industrial seed oils) now forms 8% of total calorie intake; in hunter-gatherer societies, it was only 1%-3%. Yet, we humans cannot make fatty acids (polyunsaturated fats) ourselves and must eat them. Omega-3s (ALA, EPA, and DHA) are antiinflammatory, but Omega-6s are pro-inflammatory due to their increasing of arachidonic acid production – nonetheless, they’re necessary. Given that, ancestrally, the two were consumed at a ratio of 1:1, it is eye-opening that in the West that ratio is now between 10:1 to 20:1.

Craig Sams last year wrote on industrial agriculture over the decades, its “rallying cry” the as yet necessary “Feed the world”. After all, only a few years ago a diurnal death rate of 25,000 was from hunger, just under 50% of that figure solely children. Shockingly, the number has since then doubled.

Surplus doesn’t always go to waste in more affluent countries, of course. In Brussels back in the 1970s, looking for a way to avoid food shortages, the Common Agricultural Policy conceived of “renewable fuel”, farmers producing enough (the “butter mountains”, the “wine lakes”) to also provide for burnable food, in order to generate energy and transportation fuel if necessary (indeed, the EU Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation states that 10% minimum of fuel should be renewable). Coupled with the processed food industry, excess rapeseed oil became hydrogenated fat (liquid fat turned into a solid) – and the rest is a mightily (heart) unhealthy history.

For industrilised seed oils are relatively new to the human diet, in comparison with olive oil and coconut oil. Rapeseed, cottonseed, soybean, and corn oils are highly processed and – terrifyingly – cottonseed oil (originally deemed “toxic waste” in the States) was used in soapmaking before hydrogenation made it a viable butter alternative… Farmers do need rapeseed as a break crop, otherwise fungal diseases creep in when wheat and barley are planted without cessation year after year (and no-one wants to promote excessive use of fungicides, do they?)… As Sams writes, hydrogenated fat comes as a fine dust of plastic consisting of vegetable oil, rather than fossil fuel oil. It is, in other words, ethylated vegetable oil; the same process with fossil fuel oil results in plastic, or polyethylene. The reason hydrogenated vegetable oil has been such a hit with the processed food industry is because of the nearly incomparable benefit it has on the structure of their foods. Luckily for humans, however, in the 1980s the companies realised how deadly the stuff was – not so lucky for the environment, though.

As soybean oil and other industrialised seed oils were phased out, palm oil (and coconut oil) took their place – and not just in our diet. Just as rapeseed oil has been blended with diesel and wine has been distilled and mixed with ethanol and added to petrol, so two-thirds of the UK’s palm oil imports end up in diesel (yes, really). Further, when a supermarket claims that its products are “palm oil-free”, that doesn’t take into consideration that its vehicles are running on the stuff. Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil from the reddish pulp (or mesocarp) of the fruit of oil palms and in 2014 accounted for circa 33% of global edible oil production. Nonetheless, they have been used by humans for around 5,000 years, including in tombs in Ancient Egypt, as well as employed as a machinery lubricant during the Industrial Revolution and more recently forming the basis of soap products. However, since the mid-1990s cold-pressed oil from the fruit has been used as a cooking oil and blended into mayonnaises and vegetable oils. Not to be confused with palm kernel oil (which is not red), palm mesocarp oil is 49% saturated fat, whereas palm kernel oil is 81% saturated fat.

Health-wise, though, should we actually be eating this? Like all fats, palm oil is composed of fatty acids. Especially high in saturated fat (notably the 16-carbon saturated fatty acid, palmitic acid) and the monounsaturated oleic acid, unrefined palm oil also contains a sizeable quantity of tocotrienol, part of the vitamin E family. Further, a 2015 meta-analysis and 2017 advisory study by the American Heart Association included palm oil in foods to be wary of due to saturated fat increasing blood levels of LDL cholesterol. Unhydrogenated vegetable oils were recommended instead. Subsequently the WHO (World Health Organization) and the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute have suggested consumers limit or cut out palm oil and saturated fats.

Solid at room temperature like coconut oil (which is 86% saturated fat), in 2018 to 2019 73.5 million tonnes of palm oil were produced. The projection for 2050’s annual production is 240 million tonnes. This estimate allows for the fact that although only 5% of “vegetable oil farmland” is used for palm oil plantations, palm oil itself accounts for 38% of global vegetable oil supply. This is in no small way because palm produces 10 times the oil yield of soybeans, sunflowers, and rapeseed – due to the fact that both the fruit and the kernel provide usable oil. Numerically, this becomes even clearer when you consider that per hectare oil palms produce 4.17 metric tonnes of oil, in comparison to 0.56 metric tonnes from sunflowers, 0.39 metric tonnes from soybeans, and 0.16 metric tonnes of oil from peanuts per hectare. Only late last year The Independent reported on big name companies such as Heinz and Campbell using unsustainable palm oil in their products (meanwhile, Ferrero Rocher and Ikea were found to be leading the way along the sustainability path). Perhaps counterintuitively, in 2018 a study undertaken by the IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) found that “replacing palm oil with other vegetable oils would necessitate greater amounts of agricultural land, negatively affecting biodiversity”. In other words, it is about that old utilitarian ethic of the greater benefit for the greater number.

And that’s never to forget the orangutans…

How Would You Like Your Steak?

Plant-Based or Lab-Grown?

Steak: the meat that keeps people from the plant-based path. Similar to possessiveness over bacon (“I couldn’t possibly be without my bacon.”), asking omnivores to put down the serrated-edge knife and try a lovingly prepared Portobello mushroom instead is often like saying you’ve been on the phone to Rumpelstiltskin and he wants their firstborn child. Hyperbole aside, whether rare, medium-rare, or well-done (and served up avec frites, of course), steak is a very real hurdle to overcome in addressing climate change – as bizarre as that sounds – and it can arguably be described as environmental problem number one.

The issue is not so much (vegan ethics aside) with steak itself, but the ravenous appetite for it. This is no doubt as a result, in the first instance, of the sheer global mass of the human population (though we won’t further pursue Sir Attenborough’s thoughts on that particular topic here). It is also because of industrial farming practices that provide cheap meat. Steak was historically a status symbol, due to its cost. Yet, now? Now, there is steak, and then there is steak (and, in fact, the most nutritious part of the cow is the offal – but that’s a different matter). Factory farming permits those on a lower income the ability to purchase meat that would otherwise be outside their budget, which is socially positive, but if we move away from steak alone, the availability of “affordable” meat products in general comes from supply and demand: a large number of families are having meat at every meal, every day. This rate of consumption is environmentally absolutely unsustainable; it is also greatly detrimental to our health.

Red and processed meats have been linked with a number of chronic conditions, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes Type-II, and increased risk of cancer. And yet we continue to place ham between bread and call it a sandwich, we toss spaghetti with ground mince and label it in evocation of its Italian origins, we call our children to the table on a Sunday with a roasted body as gastronomic centrepiece… An infantile fear of vegetables and the old image of a vegetarian subsisting on lettuce leaves, thin soups, and nut roasts has been haunting the public psyche – until now. More recently, and definitely over the past couple of years, masterfully innovative companies have been changing perceptions and worked up the appetites of even the most die-hard beef fans. It all starts with a vision. While a San Francisco-residing design technologist has been creating coral skeletons via 3D printing methods in order to promote new natural oceanic coral growth – the Float Lab prototype successfully becoming home to crustaceans, algae, and microogranisms (bravo!) – on the culinary side of things, 3D printing has been proving effective, too. On the edible front, as Vegconomist reported last year, scientists at Osaka University created the “world’s first 3D-printed Wagyu beef” (that extortionately expensive meat). Taking “bovine satellite cells and adipose-derived stem cells” from Wagyu (literally, “Japanese cows”) cattle, the lab was able to create realistic steak – muscle, fat, blood vessels and all. And that fat, “intramuscular fat”, is what Wagyu beef is famous for. Also known as “marbling” (or Sashi), the fat – as any chef will tell you – is what provides the flavour and texture of a piece of meat.

It’s not the first time that Wagyu beef has been on the petri dish, though. Back in 2018, Eat Just (creators of JUST Egg) teamed up with Japanese beef producer, Toriyama in a “clean meat partnership” to develop a cell-cultured version. Meanwhile, in 2020, V Meat was released in Australia, marketing itself as a “vegan Wagyu beef” (livestock farmers were outraged) and in Canada “Waygu” (sic.) vegan beef was so good it deceived the tastebuds of world-renowned Master Chef Hidekazu Tojo. As of last year, “Waygu” made its way into the US and Silicon Valley-based Orbillion Bio is currently working on not just Wagyu beef, but other heritage meats, too. These plant-based “beef” creations provide a case in point, however: companies want us not to have the black and white decision between a veggie option or the carnivorous, but the choice between land-raised meat, plant-based alternatives, and lab-grown meat.

Although there is the slight ick factor and mad scientist vibe to the concept of meat being lab-grown, its development has come about due to the unsustainability of livestock agriculture: the planet cannot withstand the current state of affairs, and it will crumble under any expansion to feed even more mouths, as the global population explodes to an estimated 9.8 billion by 2050. Cellular agriculture is also a speedier process than raising living animals and lab-grown dairy is just blossoming now. Precision fermentation, as it’s called, “programmes” bacteria and yeast to produce milk proteins without the requirement of impregnating a cow and separating her from her calf. Cellular products are already popular in Singapore and Israel and elsewhere looks to follow closely behind plant-based alternatives, which sector itself is widening into grains slowly but surely, of which barley has been notable. Using less water than almond milk, offering a bigger yield than oats (also because it’s simply easier to grow), barley milk is one trend to look out for this year.

But back to the lab: poultry, seafood, and eggs are being finessed within those four walls, too. Bluu Bioscience, for example, is aiming to release a whole fillet of lab-grown fish in 2023. Thus, it’s hoped that that near-10 billion figure will be provided for with animal protein, if they so wish (the ethical debate over still exploiting animals for their cells, even with slaughter removed, remains in the vegan mind); and thus, it’s sincerely hoped that we can go some way to arresting climate change and providing this planet and our children with a future. That vision of the horizon of “animal products without animals” is so far proving true. Even Leonardo di Caprio became a key investor in the company behind the first cultured hamburger, Mosa Meat, way back in 2014. Conversely to cheap meat, however, what “clean” (labgrown) meat needs for success in the home is for prices to reduce. According to a report by IDTechEx, the majority of global cultivated meat companies are in North America (40%), while Asia-Pacific and the Middle East together account for 30% of clean meat producers worldwide. Nonetheless, large-scale production is still cost-prohibitive and, until that is addressed, we’ll have to make do with clean meat as a restaurant-style luxury or be content with a plant-based alternative instead. Certainly, the latter scenario looks promising, with the ‘i’ reporting last year that the UK “could become a nation of diners who choose vegetarian by default”, according to Professor Mark Maslin, a climate change scientist at University College London. Professor Maslin noted that Britain “already has some of the highest rates of veganism in the developed world” and also predicted that there will be a ban on “poor quality meat imports”, resulting in people having “good quality meat rarely”. However, it would depend on getting “the incentives, the regulation, and the taxes right”. Currently, the food system alone in Britain accounts for 20% of the country’s carbon emissions.

Environmentally speaking, incentives are right in front of us, of course, and plant-based alt-meat companies Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are pretty well mainstream, thanks to their branching of the divide between persons vegetarian and omnivore, and promotion of flexitarianism as a stepping-stone or safe space for those not yet ready to ditch animal products entirely, nor ready to extend Veganuary’s pledge through the entirety of 2022 and – um – beyond. However, Nicolette Hahn Niman – an environmental lawyer and, until two years ago, a vegetarian of 33 years – recently questioned the cure-all qualities of “fake meat” and delved more deeply into the repeated persuasion of moving beyond “physiology and the brutal ways of our ancestors”. Her mission statement comes from her favourite slogan t-shirt from White Oak Pastures: “It’s not the cow, it’s the how”.

“[I]n the two years I’d been working on agricultural issues as an environmental lawyer, I just scratched the surface in terms of understanding the real daily issues of agriculture.”

- Nicolette Hahn Niman

Hahn Niman takes issue with any health claims of alt-meat options, notably Beyond Meat, given its high saturated fat content, sodium content, and often GM ingredients (which is fair enough). In short, as laudable as “fake meat” innovation is, it is not “natural”. Plant-based living – whole food plant-based living – consists of fruits and vegetables, leaves and herbs, grains and nuts and seeds, as well as seaweeds. It none of it is processed; yet, processed is exactly what alt-meats are. In fact, nutritionists deem them “ultra-processed”, what the National Institute of Health considers a key obesity driver and what several European studies have found to be a cause of cardiovascular disease. Radio 4’s James Gallagher even presented an entire Inside Health episode on the subject, interviewee Dr Giles Yeo (an obesity expert at the University of Cambridge) noting the “very good PR” of such products, which have been made “hyperpalatable” due to the added salt, fat, and sugar (one starts to see a correlation with industrial seed oils; see our article “The Palm Oil Case”, p.20). Indeed, in the grand scheme of vegetarian and vegan alternatives, it was plantbased milks that came out “best” (if it can be called that), Professor Susan Lanham-New, Head of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Surrey, conceding that on the whole – despite the concerns over calcium and vitamin D fortification – such products “have their place” in a balanced diet.

Impossible Foods’ Pat Brown has admitted in interviews that he finds little pleasure in the act of eating, viewing food merely as fuel for the body. For Hahn Niman, that says everything. So it was that Hahn Niman found herself debating the veracity of the documentary Cowspiracy’s claims with the film’s director, Kip Andersen, at a conference in San Francisco, realising that she’d “never sat next to someone who knew less about agriculture in my life”, as reported in The Guardian. So, too, was it that Hahn Niman did a little research into “clean meat” in addition to plantbased alternatives and was horrified by what she found, labgrown meat’s entire smoke-and-mirrors premise. An article in Wired magazine in 2018 uncovered the growthinducing serum used to grow the meat: in most cases, it is FBS (foetal bovine serum). So necessary is FBS to cellular agriculture that slaughterhouses in the United States were found to be offering incentives to farmers to bring in pregnant heifers for slaughter. Not such an ethical choice, then.

At 50, Hahn Niman was diagnosed with the precursor to osteoporosis, osteopenia (there have been studies that link a lower bone mineral density to long-term vegetarianism in post-menopausal women). The lawyer-turned-rancher (thanks to marrying a farmer) now falls into the camp of ethical omnivorism, which Just Natural Health & Beauty covered briefly last issue: grass-fed, pasture-raised and roaming livestock, often heritage breeds; organic eggs home-reared or from a local farm; fish only seasonally, locally sourced. And, in addition to the duty of care in tending the animals, noise-to-tail eating being engaged in to save on waste, not just of the animal’s body, but of its life too. If animals are “allowed to roam and eat diverse natural grasses and shrubs as their wild ancestors did, they can restore soils, enhance natural diversity and help capture carbon”.

In other words, regenerative biodynamic organic farming; a naturalistic method which does not mean that meat would be the reserve of the rich. Rather, as Hahn Niman sensibly notes, “many poor people graze livestock this way already”. Impossible Foods might have coldly dubbed regenerative biodynamic methods as the “clean coal of meat” (back to Brown’s fuel perception of food, then…), but ethical omnivorism is eating with awareness of provenance and with respect to the life taken. “Respect”: that golden word which we should ever hold in our mind and heart, for our neighbour and our planetary home, Earth, in harmony (Aretha Franklin melodiousness optional).

Reading the Signs:

Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies

As The Times reported last year, Nice (the National Institute for Clinical Excellence) has been advising doctors to prescribe “exercise and acupuncture” instead of painkillers or antidepressants since Spring 2021. A “move away from pharmacological options to a focus on physical and psychological therapies”, it seems an apt shift in healthcare for the modern age – and it also seems a suitable frame of mind for looking at our health overall, finding within our diet the potential causes for vitamin and mineral deficiencies and correcting our consumption habits, rather than simply relying on a bottle of supplements.

However, if you’re wanting to make an impact and try plant-based eating for a while, it is important in this pandemic day and age to be mindful in your menu planning. Iron-deficiency is a primary concern, as it can negatively affect the immune system and our very brains; worse, anaemia in pregnancy can even affect the baby. Nonetheless, though you’ll soon become adept at allowing for sufficient quantity of beans and legumes and lentils, nuts and seeds and quinoa, as well as oats and tofu, in your diet, there are other nutritional deficiencies to be aware of.

A symptom of vitamin D deficiency, the sunshine vitamin is also the one that helps us absorb calcium – that main building block for our bones. The soreness comes, potentially, from loss of bone density as a result. Omnivores can more easily re-establish equilibrium by including vitamin-D rich salmon and egg yolks in their diet, but otherwise supplementation is the quickest way to arrest any worsening of symptoms (especially in a country as sun-deprived as Britain).

A Twitchy Eye

A symptom of low magnesium levels (as well as stress and fatigue), it is happily simple to increase magnesium levels on a plant-based diet: reach hungrily for nuts and seeds (especially pumpkin seeds) and adorn bowls of cereal and rice (and even pasta and salads) with the nutritional powerhouses. No more embarrassing eye twitches (was that a wink?) to mask in the office or on that Zoom call.

You Bruise Like a Peach

Black and blue from a mere light bump to the end table? Random nosebleeds and bleeding gums when flossing (gingivitis aside)? You’re probably deficient in vitamin K, the body’s blood coagulator. Found bountifully in fermented food such as sauerkraut and aged cheese, also present in dark leafy greens, vitamin K is also found in chicken and eggs. However, this is one vitamin you might want to supplement as only circa 17% can be absorbed from food, whereas a supplement permits up to 80% absorption.

Brain Fog

Low vitamin B12 is your culprit if you’re feeling as if you haven’t slept for a week and perpetually wonder whether you’re coming down with a cold. As vital to our blood as iron, vitamin B12 also plays a crucial neuronal function. While whole grains and fortified breakfast cereals and alt-milks are all good and well, it is the omnivores who thrive in rebalancing levels of B12 in the body: from salmon and tuna to clams and trout, as well as – yes – offal.

Dry, Flaky, and Scaly Skin

Winter is the time for an onslaught to our skin in general, due to the cold and drier air, but when our face looks as if it’s more parched than a desert lizard, it could be a sign you’re low on fatty acids. This is because Omega-3s play a leading role in moisture retention, as well as UV protection and an even skin tone. Happily, the vegan diet offers walnuts and chia seeds, flaxseeds and myriad others such seeds and nuts, as well as avocados. Omnivores should dine on oily fish and it is recommended that food should be the source, rather than supplements.

When Life Gives You Lemons

Lemons being one of the eight key fruits of the Blue Zone Diet (due to their prevalence in the diet of long-lived Sardinians), it is worth pausing over the sun-bright yellow fruit the next time you’re shopping: a single lemon contains around 50% of the RDA of vitamin C, while just two tablespoons of lemon juice hold 20%. What’s more, studies have found that the antioxidant flavonoids provide heart health protection, too, by lowering cholesterol and aiding blood flow. Not so sour a fruit, after all.

“Citrus” as a category covers not just oranges and lemons (and maybe the bells of St Clement’s), but satsumas and tangerines, mandarins and Bergamot, too. And the pith and rind of a citrus fruit are where the truly medicinal properties are: from a mere 50p piece of peel added to a smoothie, say, you can maintain supple blood vessels and a lower blood pressure over time. With twice the vitamin C content of the flesh, pith and rind are thought to be anticarcinogenic, as well.

The fibre content, meanwhile, is beneficial for the gut microbiome. Pith is one of the highest sources of pectin available and maintains regular bowel movements: move over, coffee, marmalade is the new kid on the block! Indeed, made from the Seville orange (Citrus aurantium), available for only 6 weeks at the start of the year, proper marmalade is not a condiment to be sniffed at while sat at the breakfast table. It makes for a delicious option for on-the-fence vegans through Veganuary and beyond, particularly when coupled with a nut butter on wholegrain wheat or rye bread, or sourdough, as these options slow down the release of the sugars into our bloodstream.

Grated peel, of course, can adorn a wide variety of dishes, and is also appetising in tea (even Bergamotscented Earl Grey). So, what are you waiting for? Go grab some lemons, but don’t make lemonade (no, make lemon water and avoid the pitfalls of sugar). Instead, squeeze lemon juice over a meal to add the acidic element a dish needs to release all the flavours (vitamin C is also destroyed in the cooking process, so keeping it fresh and raw is where the benefit lies).

Life provides us with a lot of proverbial lemons: let’s grasp the real ones and reach for those citrusbenefit health heights of Blue Zone centenarians.

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