America’s most popular cooking oil linked to weight gain through newly identified metabolic pathway – NaturalNews.com

• Soybean oil may cause obesity through specific chemical byproducts, not just calories.
• A new mouse study shows these byproducts, called oxylipins, drive weight gain.
• Genetically altered mice producing fewer oxylipins gained less weight on the same diet.
• Researchers caution the study is in mice but highlights a concerning biochemical pathway.
• Soybean oil’s dominance in the food supply may have unintended health consequences.

A startling new scientific discovery is pulling back the curtain on a hidden culprit in America’s obesity epidemic, and it’s lurking in your pantry, your favorite restaurant’s fryer, and nearly every packaged snack on the shelf. Research published in the Journal of Lipid Research suggests soybean oil, the most widely consumed cooking oil in the United States, may promote obesity not merely through its calorie count, but through a specific biochemical reaction inside the body. The study, conducted on mice at the University of California, Riverside, points to molecules called oxylipins, produced when the body breaks down the oil’s linoleic acid, as a key driver of weight gain.

For decades, public health messaging has framed weight management as a simple equation of “calories in, calories out.” This new evidence challenges that oversimplified view, suggesting that the metabolic fate of those calories, particularly from ubiquitous industrial seed oils, may be just as critical. The findings offer a potential explanation for why obesity rates have soared in parallel with the dramatic rise in consumption of soybean and other vegetable oils over the past century.

The oxylipin connection

The research team, led by biomedical scientist Sonia Deol, fed mice a diet high in soybean oil and tracked the metabolic pathway of linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid that constitutes a large portion of the oil. The body converts this acid into oxylipins. “This may be the first step toward understanding why some people gain weight more easily than others on a diet high in soybean oil,” Deol said in a press release.

The scientists then posed a critical question: if the production of these oxylipins is reduced, would the weight gain still occur? To find out, they used genetically modified mice engineered to produce a different version of a liver regulatory gene, which lowered the activity of enzymes that create oxylipins from linoleic acid. These enzymes exist in all mammals, including humans, and their activity varies based on genetics and diet.

A striking difference in weight gain

The results were revealing. When both the genetically altered mice and normal mice were fed the same high-soybean-oil diet, the modified mice gained significantly less weight and had healthier livers. The researchers identified specific oxylipins derived from linoleic acid and another soybean oil fat, alpha-linolenic acid, that were present in higher amounts in the obese, normal mice.

This indicates the problem may not be the oil itself, but what the body manufactures from it. The work builds on earlier University of California, Riverside research from 2015 that found soybean oil to be more “obesogenic” than coconut oil.

Context and caution

Frances Sladek, a UCR professor of cell biology involved in the research, provided crucial context. “We’ve known since our 2015 study that soybean oil is more obesogenic than coconut oil,” Sladek said. “But now we have the clearest evidence yet that it’s not the oil itself, or even linoleic acid. It’s what the fat turns into inside the body.”

The researchers are careful to note that the study was conducted entirely in mice and that human metabolism is more complex. The genetically modified mice were engineered to have much lower levels of the relevant enzymes, which clarifies the mechanism but limits direct application to people. They emphasize the study does not prove soybean oil inevitably causes human obesity, but it does highlight a plausible biochemical pathway.

Nevertheless, the implications are substantial for a public health landscape saturated with this ingredient. Soybean oil dominates American kitchens and food manufacturing on account of its low cost and neutral flavor, making it a staple in fried foods, salad dressings, margarine, and ultra-processed snacks. Its consumption has risen from about 2% of total calories a century ago to nearly 10% today.

This research adds to a growing body of science questioning the health impact of high linoleic acid oils. It suggests that the decades-long push to replace saturated fats with polyunsaturated vegetable oils may have had unintended metabolic consequences, contributing to inflammation and dysfunctional weight regulation for many individuals.

The takeaway is not that soybean oil is singularly “evil,” as Sladek noted, but that the quantities consumed are “triggering pathways our bodies didn’t evolve to handle.” As the scientific case against excessive consumption of refined seed oils continues to build, it prompts a necessary and critical examination of the industrial food system that has made them inescapable, and a reconsideration of traditional, less-processed fats for everyday health.

Sources for this article include:

FoxNews.com

NYPost.com

ScienceDaily.com