What Are PUFAs & Why You Should Avoid Them
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PUFAs are in many different types of foods and are really difficult to avoid. Consuming a diet high in PUFAs can slow your thyroid, cause chronic inflammation, decrease cellular energy, drive insulin resistance, and more.
Below you’ll discover the answer to what are PUFAs, why they are dangerous, and the many reasons why you should avoid them.
What Are PUFAs?
PUFA stands for polyunsaturated fatty acid. PUFAs are fatty acids with many double carbon bonds. They contain double bonds because they lack several hydrogen atoms.
Saturated fatty acids (butter,
Double bonds are more reactive to oxygen than single bonds which makes them very unstable.
The Problem With PUFAs
The main problem with PUFAs is that they are highly unstable and begin to oxidize when they are exposed to light, heat, and oxygen. So as you can imagine this is not good for the human body which is very warm and requires oxygen.
When PUFAs are exposed to oxygen, free radicals are generated. Reactive oxygen species are free radicals. A build-up of ROS in cells can cause damage to DNA, RNA, and proteins, and can cause cell death.
PUFAs also deplete vitamin E levels in the body and can increase your need for vitamin E by six times.
Importance of Vitamin E
Vitamin E is so important. Its main role is to act as an antioxidant and decrease free radicals in the body that can damage cells.
Vitamin E helps to improve mitochondrial respiration, improve circulation, protect against lipid peroxidation, protect against calcification and iron overload, and so much more!
It also helps to prevent the oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids. This is why vitamin E requirements increase greatly when consuming a high PUFA diet.
High PUFA diets take quite a bit of vitamin E out of the body.
Vitamin E deficiency can lead to heart disease, dementia, gallstones, liver and kidney problems, and so much more!
The body does not store vitamin E as well as it stores other fat-soluble vitamins. If you consume a diet high in PUFAs it is so important to replenish your vitamin E levels with foods rich in vitamin E and/or take a vitamin E supplement.
This is the vitamin E supplement I use and recommend. Use the code HAPPYHEART to get 15% off.
PUFA Related Health Issues
Consuming a diet high in PUFAs can lead to many different health issues over time.
Insulin Resistance
Contrary to popular belief, it is not carbs that drive insulin resistance but rather PUFAs. The oxidative stress that PUFAs cause inside the body hinders your cell’s ability to use sugar as fuel.
Excess PUFAs damage the beta cells of the pancreas, which produce insulin.
You can click here to learn more about the connection between insulin resistance and PUFAs.
Sun / Age Spots
Lipofuscin is also known as age pigments. An excessive amount of PUFAs and iron in your body can lead to lipofuscin poisoning. This can eventually lead to sun/age spots that are most often visible in areas that get the most sunlight.
Sun/age spots are not a normal part of aging. They are the result of a high PUFA diet and iron overload.
Weight Gain
PUFAs slow down your metabolic rate which decreases your body’s ability to burn calories efficiently which eventually leads to weight gain. This is why many farmers feed their livestock corn and soy (PUFAs). It fattens them up quickly and it’s cheap!
In the 1940s farmers attempted to feed their livestock
Sluggish Thyroid
Excess PUFAs inhibit various proteolytic enzymes that the body depends on to release stored thyroid hormones into the bloodstream.
PUFAs block the body’s ability to deliver thyroid hormone to the cells resulting in decreased cellular energy production.
And excess PUFAs inhibit the enzyme necessary to convert T4 to active T3.
You can click here to learn more about the thyroid and PUFAs.
Increased Stress & Estrogen
Overconsumption of PUFAs generates an onslaught of free radicals inside the body. This causes your body to require a higher amount of antioxidants to counteract the increase of free radicals which eventually depletes your vitamin E.
Vitamin E is essential for fertility, hormone production, and metabolic function. Low vitamin E levels can lead to estrogen dominance and increased stress hormones. I highly recommend this book to learn more about the importance of vitamin E.
Foods High in PUFAs
PUFAs are in almost everything and are pretty much unavoidable but there are some foods that are unnaturally high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Below are some of the worst offenders.
- Sunflower oil
- Corn oil
- Canola oil
- Fish oil
- Safflower oil
- Soybean oil
- Walnut oil
- Nut milk
- Nut butter
- Nuts & seeds
The Problem with Vegetable & Seed Oils
Vegetable and seed oils typically contain 3-10 times more polyunsaturated fats than saturated fats. This is an example of a food that contains an unnaturally high amount of PUFAs.
And although vegetable oils contain vitamin E, the vitamin E gets degraded during the refining process.
Most foods that you find in nature contain more saturated fat than polyunsaturated fat. For example eggs, chicken, and pork contain more saturated fat than polyunsaturated.
It is important to note that beef, milk, cheese, eggs, and chicken can contain an unnaturally high amount of PUFAs if the animals are fed a diet high in grains rather than their natural diet.
In nature, cows eat grass and chickens are omnivores that consume a diet of plants and bugs.
And don’t be deceived vegetable and seed oils are far from natural. These are highly processed oils.
When vegetable and seed oils are processed they are heated to extremely high temperatures which causes oxidation. Next, they are extracted with hexane. Hexane is a chemical made from crude oil.
The third step of the refining process is deodorizing the oil to get rid of the rancid odor and remove the color pigments.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, most of the vegetables and seeds used to make these oils are derived from GMO plants and have glyphosate residue on them as well.
History of Vegetable & Seed Oils
The history/origin of many vegetable and seed oils that are used today is a little shady if you ask me. You can read a few of their origin stories below.
The Origin Of Crisco
In the early 1900s large amounts of cottonseed were leftover from harvesting cotton. This was a nuisance to the farmers because they had no use for the cottonseeds.
They tried to mill the seeds but that resulted in oil that was dark, stinky, and extremely unappealing. So the farmers would often just leave the cottonseed in piles to rot.
Eventually, industrial bleaching and deodorizing techniques were developed. Thanks to those techniques cottonseeds were able to be processed into an oil that was tasteless and odorless.
In 1911, Proctor & Gamble began selling Crisco which is crystallized cottonseed oil.
Since it looked a lot like lard which is what most people cooked with at the time, they began marketing Crisco as a superior cooking fat.
It’s important to note that many people were unaware of what Crisco was actually made from due to their misleading advertising. They would often state Crisco was made from “100% shortening” or that it was “purely vegetable”
They purposely tried to deter their customers from the fact that Crisco was made from cottonseed oil because people overwhelmingly associated cotton with clothing and linens, not food.
Proctor & Gamble spent a ton of money to market and promote their product to the masses and they were very successful.
The story of Crisco is really the story of how deceptive marketing trumped nutrition and the health of the consumers and unfortunately, that story is still true for many of the products on our grocery store shelves today.
The Origin Of Canola Oil
Canola oil also has a very interesting origin story.
Canola oil (originally called rapeseed oil because it’s derived from rapeseed) was originally used as a lubricant for ships and steam engines.
During World War II there was a huge demand for this oil and the rapeseed oil industry exploded.
But once the war was over the demand for rapeseed oil began to plummet fast and that was when the rapeseed industry plotted/planned to figure out a way to market the oil for human consumption.
Because rapeseed oil contains high amounts of erucic acid and glucosinolates scientists used breeding techniques to get rid of these undesirable qualities. In 1978 the final product was developed and they renamed the final product canola oil.
The Problem With Nuts & Seeds
Nuts and seeds are nowhere near as bad as vegetable and seed oils. Unlike vegetable and seed oils they are found in nature.
The main problem with nuts and seeds is a lot of people tend to overconsume. Nuts and seeds are being pushed on us like never before in the form of milk, butter, and bars so it’s easy to overconsume without even realizing it.
Nuts and seeds as a snack here and there is no big deal. Major health issues can start to occur when your diet consists of an overabundance of nuts and seeds.
Think about bears and squirrels when they hibernate in the winter – they eat a diet high in nuts and seeds prior to hibernation.
The high amount of PUFAs in these foods helps to slow down their metabolic rate which allows them to sleep through the winter.
And not all nuts and seeds are created equal. For example, walnuts contain around 9.5 grams of PUFAs per serving and macadamias only contain .5 grams.
So it’s just something to be mindful of. I experienced major health improvements once I ditched the almond milk, almond butter, and nut and seed bars.
