America's Favorite Cooking Oil Shows Strong Link to Obesity

Story at-a-glance

• Soybean oil dominates the U.S. food supply. Americans’ intake has increased from about 2% to nearly 10% of calories over a century, alongside sharp rises in obesity and diabetes
• A recent study published in the Journal of Lipid Research found soybean oil drives obesity independent of calories by generating liver oxylipins that track with weight gain, revealing LA metabolism, not food intake, as the key driver of fat accumulation
• Soybean oil promotes oxidative stress, mitochondrial damage, gut permeability, and long-lasting inflammatory byproducts that continue to affect your metabolism for years due to LA’s extended half-life in body fat
• Soy contains additional disruptive compounds, including phytoestrogens, phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, lectins, saponins, and goitrogens, along with frequent glyphosate residues
• Reducing LA intake means eliminating sources of soybean and other vegetable oils from your diet, and replacing them with stable fats like ghee, tallow, butter, or coconut oil

From restaurant meals to packaged staples, soybean oil is almost everywhere in the modern diet. In the United States, it's the most widely consumed oil, with intake climbing from roughly 2% of total calories to nearly 10% over the last century.1 During this period, adult obesity has surged to more than 42%, while Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders have increased in parallel.

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola