Really? I don't know exactly how long people have been eating oil from olive, flax seed, sesame, coconut or palm nut, but I believe not under 6000–7000 years. But yeah, not the stuff we eat today.
When people are talking about seed oils they rarely mean olive oil, usually it's "canola oil" (considering what "canola" stands for it's insulting not just to one's digestive system but intellect too).
Yes, I wasn't talking about unrefined olive, flax, sesame, or coconut. I don't think most people concerned about "seed oils" are concerned about those.
It's the refined soybean oil, canola/rapeseed oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, sunflower seed oil, corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil - these are the modern refined oils I'm referring to that were never eaten until very recently. I'd be dubious of refined / ultra processed olive and avocado oil too, which is a different thing from fresh cold pressed olive or avocado oil.
loading story #48258647
~10,000 years is also evolutionary recent. It's enough time for fast evolution to weed out stuff that is very directly maladaptive, but not enough time to weed out more subtle effects. And given that a bad diet tends to kill people well past their prime childbearing years, evolution might consider a bad diet a good thing.
Good point, there are a lot of diseases of civilization that have been with us since large scale agriculture, that did not afflict most hunter gatherers.
To add, sunflower seed use predated maíz in some parts of North America, and mustard oil goes back to the Indus Valley Civilization.
Yes, the extraction of these oils is "novel" just like factory farms are novel. As the article explains, it is the ultra-processed food products that are the problem, not the seed oil ingredients.
loading story #48259238