Live data from Hacker News

Palm oil favors tumor expansion

irbbarcelona.org

101–110 of 120 posts

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#101

Take one look at the modern production process for vegetable oil and this sort of effect is starting you right in the face. Palm, Canola, Rapeseed, Soybean, etc, they're all terrible. I avoid this shit like the plague.

Fortunately there's olive oil. Approximately 0.5 liters/month per person at $10/liter for organic extra virgin from Tunisia. Heard it too causes cancer if you fry it though...

> Heard it too causes cancer if you fry it though...

Frying at low temperatures with olive oil is one of the "healthier" ways to fry, though. Less volatile aromatic hydrocarbons are produced when frying with olive oil compared to other fats, and some of the compounds in non-extra virgin olive oil reduce the production of free radicals.

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#102
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancer cells can consume multiple energy sources, not exactly news here. Concluding that dietary palmitic acid is a problem is questionable. Palmitate is produced endogenously and dietary palmitic acid does not even influence tissue concentration [1]. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5682332/#B81

> Palmitate is produced endogenously and dietary palmitic acid does not even influence tissue concentration [1]. If there's no uptake by tissue, then wouldn't the tumor have a plentiful energy source once it vascularizes? (Assuming they can metabolize palmitic acid)

Yes, in addition to other free fatty acids, glucose and ketones.

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#103
post #47

For everyone spooked by this. Cancer thrives on many things. And there’s little survival advantage for people who can effectively fight cancer after their reproductive age. All novel carcinogens aside(radiation, air pollution, baby powder), humans often are just not equipped to fight cancer. Certain diets probably can make it a bit better or worse, but they might not be the game changer. Our best bet is technology, l…

> And there’s little survival advantage for people who can effectively fight cancer after their reproductive age. I don't know how to quantify it, but having healthy grandparents in the picture is a survival advantage.

Having old grandparents who can’t hunt or forage and need to be fed is a big handicap. I’d like to see a cost/benefit analysis if there’s any.

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#104
post #47

For everyone spooked by this. Cancer thrives on many things. And there’s little survival advantage for people who can effectively fight cancer after their reproductive age. All novel carcinogens aside(radiation, air pollution, baby powder), humans often are just not equipped to fight cancer. Certain diets probably can make it a bit better or worse, but they might not be the game changer. Our best bet is technology, l…

> humans often are just not equipped to fight cancer But we are? The immune system is constantly at work killing malignant (or otherwise dysfunctional) cells. Cells themselves have mechanisms to commit suicide (apoptosis) if they are not working properly. It's only when the several mechanisms we have get defeated at the same time (often due to mutations) that cancer can even develop. If you mean, we are not as equipp…

I’m not disputing that, just stating that there’s no evolutionary pressure on keeping adults cancer-free. There is a big pressure at eliminating child cancers from the population.

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#105
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What effect are you talking about? And what does the production process for vegetable oils have to do with anything? This article is about palmitic acid which apart from obviously palm oil, is most abundant in animal fats like butter (~30%), tallow (26%) etc. since its a saturated fatty acid. Most vegetable oils like canola and soybean have much less palmitic acid.

Palm oil is a vegetable oil. The production of vegetable oil (read: palm oil) creates an end product that looks and feels like oil, but has all kinds of other bad shit in it. It gets refined, heated, bleached, heated, deoderized, etc... The same thing happens to flour. We process the living shit out of it, then bleach it, then we have to add-in all the stuff we removed so that it still has some semblance of nutrition…

The palmitic acid content of palm oil (or anything else) has nothing to do with what you're describing here. Like, absolutely nothing.

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, those "good old days", might describe "natural selection". You can't be certain that some of the survival benefits of your ancestors are NOT an adherence to traditions that give them a survival or reproductive advantage.

You can't possibly be comparing the wisdom of our ancestors with the agricultural-industrial complex? They do everything in their power to produce the lowest-cost version of "food" (some could argue it is not food) that people will pay for.

I'm not sure you parsed my post correctly. My post argues in favor of your post.

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#107
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What effect are you talking about? And what does the production process for vegetable oils have to do with anything? This article is about palmitic acid which apart from obviously palm oil, is most abundant in animal fats like butter (~30%), tallow (26%) etc. since its a saturated fatty acid. Most vegetable oils like canola and soybean have much less palmitic acid.

Palm oil is a vegetable oil. The production of vegetable oil (read: palm oil) creates an end product that looks and feels like oil, but has all kinds of other bad shit in it. It gets refined, heated, bleached, heated, deoderized, etc... The same thing happens to flour. We process the living shit out of it, then bleach it, then we have to add-in all the stuff we removed so that it still has some semblance of nutrition…

Palm oil isn't really in the same category as the vegetable oils that have had concern raised about them recently. It's not from a seed, so doesn't need a highly involved process to get meaningful amounts of it. Cold pressed palm oil has been in use for thousands of years. It's more like olive oil in this regard. (Of course, you can still refine it, and it often is refined. But it's not as easily oxidized as oils with a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids, so less concerning in that regard.)

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#108
post #72
post #7

Interesting article. One thing to note is that this study seemed to (correct me if I'm wrong) focus on palmitic acid, which can be found primarily in palm oil, but can also be found in meat, cheese, and butter, to name a few other sources.

It's the most common saturated fatty acid. So this isn't just about palm oil, this is about saturated fats causing cancer.

more reason to limit saturated fat intake.

i say that as i consume primarily meat and cheese on a daily basis.

Re: Palm oil favors tumor expansion

#110
post #7

Interesting article. One thing to note is that this study seemed to (correct me if I'm wrong) focus on palmitic acid, which can be found primarily in palm oil, but can also be found in meat, cheese, and butter, to name a few other sources.

To clarify - you're not saying that meat, cheese, and butter include palm oil , but rather just one particular naturally-occurring chemical component of palm oil which occurs naturally in many sources. Palmitic acid is just a long-chain fat molecule.

The study is primarily about palmitic acid, claiming that it promotes a prometastatic memory via Schwann cells. Palmitic acid is found in many foods, oils, lotions and occurs naturally in the body. That fact and also the artificial environment required to get the mouth and skin cancer cells grafted into the fragile mice makes it difficult to form any meaningful conclusions regarding diet.

What is interesting about the study is it adds to a growing body of work on how tumors hijack nerve pathways to promote metastasis. The claim of this work is that the presence of palmitic acid potentiates a robust cancer partly by stable epigenetic changes in the tumors, recruiting a type of glia and promoting a regenerative environment via the neural network which forms about the tumor cells, even after changes in the availability of the fatty acid.

Post reply on HN