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Next time you go to the supermarket, read the ingredients lists. In just about every aisle, from dairy to frozen foods and snacks, you will see vegetable oils making repeated appearances on many product labels, including salad dressings, canned fish, ready-to-eat foods, diet drinks and infant formulas. These oils, usually made from seeds, include sunflower, corn, rapeseed, soy, cottonseed and safflower oils.

Vegetable oil is a global industry. It generated more than £91 billion (almost AU$175 billion) in 2020, and that figure is forecast to increase to £127 billion (almost AU$244 billion) by 2027. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.



Roughly a third of the calories in your diet likely come from this substance, which has effects on our metabolism that medical science knows little about. The reason why human health is increasingly in crisis is right there on the label, hidden in plain sight. I’m a doctor with biochemistry training who specialises in family medicine, and I am convinced that these oils will make you sick (if they haven’t already).

The link between vegetable oil and poor health is firmly grounded and backed up with hard scientific research. Removing it from our diets can resolve fast-proliferating modern health plagues, such as cancers, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Vegetable oil is an industrial product that didn’t exist until a little more than 150 years ago.

In the millennia before industrial a.

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