Consumption of processed oils harmful - Industrialist
Scientists in different countries have identified Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids as the root cause of many diseases and ailments, Dr Kaku Kyiamah, a scientist, has said.
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He mentioned some of the diseases and ailments as headaches/migraine, infertility, menstrual pain, hypertension, diabetes and cancer.
In a statement issued to the Ghana News Agency last Thursday, Dr Kyiamah advised Ghanaians to be cautious in their consumption of processed unsaturated vegetable oils such as soybean oil, corn oil, cotton seed oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, canola oil (grape seed oil), flax seed oil, cod liver oil and margarine.
Health concerns
Quoting several sources to buttress his assertion, he said: “The American Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA), in a 34-page document, has stated that poly-unsaturated Omega-3 fatty acids cause many health concerns.
“Edible oil has invariably become a part of food processed for the public, for example, bread and biscuits.”
Dr Kyiamah said it was, therefore, important that everyone became careful with what he or she consumed as food, “since the food we eat could also become the toxin that would give us the diseases which might not have a cure”.
“The real truth is that the oil in your food can keep you in good health or be the source of poor health,” he said.
He explained that edible oil was essential for the well-being of human beings, for which reason nature ensured that the cell could produce naturally the healthy oils from the food we ate.
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Fatty acids
“These healthy oils consist of eight saturated and two mono-unsaturated ‘oils’ and our global ancestors wisely processed their foods in such a way that they contained the raw materials for the production of the healthy oils.”
“The fatty acids, which can be produced naturally, are normally found in unfermented grains, saturated oils and the mono-unsaturated olive oil,” he added.
However, he explained that some of the current relatively new processed unsaturated vegetable oils contained high levels of long chain poly-unsaturated fatty acids such as Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids which the body could not produce naturally.
Dr Kyiamah, who is also an industrialist, said the processed unsaturated vegetable oils which were technologically produced became part of our diet during the 20th century, only 100 years ago, while the food items which provided the requisite raw materials for producing the suitable oils naturally in the body had been part of our global diet for more than 4,000 years.
The suitable raw materials included fermented or pickled foods, organic mammalian milk/butter/fat, tropical saturated fat and olive oil, he said.
“The festivals and foods of ancient social groups, like the people who lived in Africa, the Middle East, Indo-China, Europe and the ancient Americas, who survived for many millennia, are sufficient proof of the importance of organic mammalian milk/butter/fat, tropical saturated fat and olive oil in the diet,” he said.
Research studies
Dr Kyiamah quoted Dr Patricia C. Kane’s wide-ranging review of research studies which he said raised concern over the high levels of derivatives of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids in autism spectrum disorder.
Dr Kane suggested the need for medicine to acknowledge the crucial oil requirements of the brain in order to address neurological degeneration.
Researchers in Canada, Dr Kyiamah said, had also stated that pronounced high levels of derivatives of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids damaged the mitochondria and disrupted fat metabolism, thereby causing autism.
“In the same way, Dr Susan M. Fischer, in an extensive review of ‘Prostaglandins and Cancer’, concluded that high levels of derivatives of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids were involved in the pathogenesis and progression of cancer, DNA damage and cell mutations,” he said.
Additionally, he said a study on the composition of human atheromatous plaques carried out at the Department of Biochemistry & Chemistry, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Poland, and published in the European Journal of Nutrition in October 2004, stated that every plaque and adipose tissue sample examined contained Omega-3 fatty acids, which implied that obesity and high blood pressure were directly related to Omega-3 fatty acids.
Atheroma or atherosclerotic plaque was made up of low-level density lipoprotein (LDL), the bad cholesterol which consisted of proteins and poly-unsaturated Omega-3 fatty acids, Dr Kyiamah explained.
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