The Worst Ingredient in the World: Interview with Dr. Chris Knobbe

Did you know about 30% of your calories come from seed oils? Check out this interview with Dr. Chris Knobbe about his fascinating research on seed oils.

today we have Dr Chris Kenobi he’s an opthalmologist and we are going to talk about some fascinating information relating to seed oils we have this trend of Omega 6 fatty acid seed oils and it’s been trending like crazy high can you tell us the relationship between the trend of the consumption of seed oils compared to Sugar because people think that no Sugar’s trending going up and that’s the culprit but I I don’t think that’s true first of all thanks for having me on Eric um and yes so this is the work that I’ve been that been been doing for the last uh about 13 years deeply investigating seed oil the industrial seed oils and their connection to O overweight obesity diabetes and almost all this chronic disease and this is uh what you just mentioned I’m so glad you brought this up first um I’m I’m looking here because I’m going to try to give you exact data uh on this to answer this question so people say yes they think sugar is the driver of all of this and I am entirely convinced of the that the opposite is true not that sugar is healthy it’s definitely a a nutrient deficient food but let me get right to this data so I don’t waste anybody’s time so I want to give you the most compelling evidence right off the bat is um so most of our sugar consumption and everything I will say or mention will be will come from published evidence so most all of our sugar consumption in the United States which we’ve published and Stefan Guan has published um the increase came before 1922 so by 1922 we were already at 473 calories worth of sugar and up to 1987 that barely changed it went up to 497 calories so right 24 calories difference I think that from 1920 to 19 1922 to 1987 yeah sugar consumption was a flat line and we’ll you’ll see the data if you bring this in in this graph that I’ll send you but during that time so we’ve we’ve looked at obesity and obesity was 1. 1% in men age 18 to 80 in the N late 19th century that’s Scott Allen Carson’s work so and then the next data was 1960 for obesity which was 13% 13. 4 basically and so we interpolate the data between those so that’s done through Excel anyway so the n in obesity was 2. 95% in 1922 but it increased to 18. 6% in 1987 so obesity increased over sixfold while the sugar changed virtually not at all it went up 5% um so that’s this is a 65 year period of time so if you’re going to say sugar is the driver of this how do you account for this because this is a 65y year period of time in history where we know sugar basically didn’t change um now it’s gone up on either end of those years some somewhat um we can get to into more detail about that so let’s talk about the vegetable oil so the vegetable oil introduced in the United States in 1866 has climbed all the way through 2010 so went from Z to 80 grams per person per day by 2010 um and in 1922 the the vegetable oil consumption was 78 calories per person per day and that increased but to 1987 to 497 calories so so just to kind of recap that data we’re talking about you know if you if you type in with chat GPT about seed oils it says oh yeah the average person has about 20 grams no it’s 80 grams which is basically about uh you know onethird of our calories isn’t it we’re almost like 20 25 onethird of our calories which is about a half of a cup no is it a third of a cup it’s it’s a lot of seed off yes it is it’s not this 20 grams between 1922 and 1987 sugar went up 5% vegetable oils went up 65% obesity increased 6.

3 fold or 532 per. this is a 65y year period And if you want I could mention the evidence on uh diabetes it’s even more compelling that the increase in diabetes during this period do you want me to mention that yeah because people uh I don’t think people realize the um how a fat an oil can cause diabetes because they’re always thinking blood sugars but right I’m sure you can tell us like what’s going on there right we can get to that um so the evidence on Diabetes so diabetes was um so it’s incredibly rare in 1890 this is p published by Sir William Osler diabetes affected 0. 28% of the population now it Rose all the way to 13% of the population by 2016 that is a 4,643 fold increase in diabetes but let’s just talk about let’s go back to 1922 to 1987 so we’re looking at the exact same time frame we were looking before diabetes increased from about 0. 09% in 1922 to 2. 6% in 1987 it’s gone up way you know a whole lot more since then how big of increase is this 2800% increase in diabetes a 29-fold increase during this 65e period so obesity went up six-fold diabetes went up 29 fold During the 65-year period when sugar did not change so you just th and I’ve got this evidence all over many other countries all over the world it is everywhere I look so far I’m seeing evidence like this where you’ve got sugar um and even carbohydrates flat or going down even and the data gets more interesting if you look more recently since 1999 that Sugar’s a bit on the decline while our obesity and diabetes rates have escalated exponentially it stay coincidence I mean when you analyze uh data you want a trend you want to look at comparison from one date to another and you um it’s a Smoking Gun and this is it wow yeah so um so basically um when someone consumes seed oils um and of course you know they call them vegetable oils they even have pictures of vegetables right so you have these wonderful vegetables but those are not in here and uh it’s heart they actually can put heart healthy we’ll get into that what’s the mechanism causing diabetes in a kind of a simple way how would you explain that yeah this the very simple simple one sentence answer is that they’re driving mitochondrial dysfunction okay so the way that if you know if we get to into a little bit more detail is that the seed oils that are rich in omega-6 fats um accumulate in our body fat and these omega-6 fats and omega-3 they’re they’re polyunsaturated so they’re they’re prone to oxidation and so when so when these fats they accumulate in your body fat then they’re they’re PR to oxidation which inside the body as you always say it’s very equivalent to rusting and um inside the mitochondria which is the PowerHouse of our cells um there is damage to what’s called a cardiol lipin molecule which ultimately is an important um part of the electron transport chain there’s something that it targets specifically in the mitochondria um as the this fat is being turned into energy and into you know the storage of ATP um are you saying that um so well first of all can can we use uh this oil as as energy yes absolutely we can we burn it yes okay so but in the process because it’s it is the way it is um it’s basically damages something in our mitochondria which then doesn’t allow us to make the final produ of energy well it’s not in the process of burning the the the omega-6’s it’s the fact that they’re incorporated into these structures these uh molecules okay and in the cardiolipin and then they become oxidized because they’re prone to be you know they’re subject to attack by R free radicals so do they go into the membrane yes and then that membrane becomes leaky and that that inner mitochondrial membrane and it leaks the the hydrogen protons which have to create a gradient in order let me just unpack that a little bit because that’s a little complex so if you take the membranes uh around uh I have a cell we have a membrane around the cell it’s this outer Co cutting and then on the inside the cell where there’s a mitochondria there are these uh little things right here and they have membranes around them little uh San wrap type things you know if you even stretched out I don’t know if you’ve ever calculated the surface area of just the cell membrane um if you take the number of cells and you stretch them ou