Episode #2 - Robyn Chuter on why no oil or sugar

Ok, so we have all herd about or been exposed to the ‘health’ benefits of oil right? It’s trending and there is a lot of marketing and misleading information out there about it. How do you know who and what to believe? Is oil really healthy for you? If you want to learn some simple facts about oil then you need to hear Robyn’s perspective. She does not hold back on oil.

Robyn goes deep into why it is not considered a wholefood and why coconut oil has no real proven health benefits when ingested. Saturated fat found in coconut oil has been linked to high cholesterol and early onset of heart disease. Did you know that coconut oil is 92% saturated fat? Robyn also explains how sugar becomes sugar and why it is not considered a wholefood.

Why no Sugar?
Would it be fair to say that most people know that sugar is a junk food? If you were asked to categorise sugar as healthy or not, I think we can all say that refined processed sugar is definitely not healthy however, naturally occurring sugars in fruits and vegetables are. As Robyn explains, a lot of people actually can’t tell you why we classify sugar as a junk food. In order to produce sugar, it originally comes from a wholefood like sugar cane or in some parts of the world a sugar beet. Robyn states that this wholefood is comprised of protein, fat, fibre, lots of nutrients, vitamins, minerals- it actually has some really healthy stuff in there. If you were to eat a raw sugar cane stick it would be considered as a highly nutritious food. Now that makes sense.

So how do we produce sugar from sugar cane or sugar beet and why is it then classified as a ‘junk food?‘

Robyn states that it takes 11 feet of sugar cane to produce one teaspoon of processed sugar. What happens in the refining process is that all the nutrients are removed. All the good stuff. All the protein, fat, fibre, vitamins, minerals etc. We have manufactured sugar to take out all the good stuff that makes it a wholefood and nutritious for us. What we are then left with is the white crystals of really concentrated ‘sugar’ granules.

I think it is fair to say that sugars naturally occurring in fruits and vegetables when eaten directly from the fruit or the vegetable is how they are meant to be consumed. Any refined or processed sugars added to foods therefore have no nutritional benefit and may have many adverse health effects that are detrimental to our well-being.

According to health authorities the average amount of sugar recommended each day is about 7 teaspoons. Did you know that the average tub of flavoured yoghurt has up to 7 teaspoons of added sugar, some time even more? So one yoghurt a day and you can not have any more sugar… Just think about where else sugar is hiding in your pantry items. Sauces, marinades, milks etc.

What we can learn from this is to just stick to naturally derived sugars in the form of wholefoods. As Robyn shared, it takes 11 feet of sugar cane to produce one teaspoon of processed sugar. For you to eat your recommend amount of sugar each day, you would need to eat 77 feet of sugar cane, that’s a lot to consume in one day and would be very difficult to do.

Why no oil?
Oil originates from a wholefood, You start with a wholefood being a nut, seed, fruit like avocado or olive etc. These wholefoods in their natural state are made up of a complex mix of protein, fats, carbohydrates, fibre, vitamins, minerals ect. Again, all the good stuff that our bodies thrive off. What happens next is that we then remove most of that good stuff and we are left with a highly concentrated substance never found in nature.

Robyn states that oils are not found in nature. They are food fragments as opposed to wholefoods. From a scientific-evidence based approach to this topic, the current research around about reversing heart disease is that “there is only one diet that’s ever been shown to reverse advance coronary artery disease, to actually unblock peoples arteries, to take those little lumps of plaque, cholesterol laden plaque that are clogging up peoples arteries causing heart attacks, stroke, angina… and actually melt those plaque down. Only one diet has been shown to do that. It’s been published in peer reviewed med studies. It’s been confirmed with angiogram, (PET) scans and all the rest of it. And that’s a wholefood plant-based diet, very low in fat, less then 10% calories of fat with no oil”. You herd it, NO OIL!

Within the interview Benny questions oil and all the controversy around it being sold as a health food. Robyn explains that oil is a highly refined and highly processed substance. It most definitely is not a health food. Nor should it be consumed in such high amounts.

Robyn questions the principles behind a Paleo lifestyle that include the use of oil. She is yet to discover where our paleolithic ancestors might have been getting their oil from. Did they train an animal to sit on the coconut to extract the oil? It is very hard to extract oil from a coconut and is considered a modern process, not one from the paleolithic times. Calorie dense sources of fat were considered a great source of fat for our Paleo ancestors, but oil was not one of them. With oil being refined, what you are left with is a liquid substance that has been depleted of most nutrients making it an extremely unhealthy product.

Are all oils the same in regard to their nutrient profile and ‘health’ benefits?
Benny also asks Robyn to explain the difference between oils; Avocado oil, coconut oil, olive oil etc. Robyn explains that from an energy density point of view they are all the same.

They are all represented as 9 calories to the gram. Robyn believes that if you struggle to maintain a healthy body weight the simplest thing you can do is to get rid of all oil from your diet. She claims that this will make weigh loss a lot easier. 1 tablespoon of oil is roughly 180 calories, which is a lot.

Think about how many tablespoons of oil may be poured over a healthy salad as a dressing? This is just pure saturated fat. So are all oils equally damaging to artery health and gut health? Robyn says no. Saturated fats mostly from animal products but also from concentrated amounts found in coconut and palm oil, are extremely damaging to arteries and the gut.

Did you know that coconut oil is 92% saturated fat? Robyn uses the example of a lab technician. If your job is to work with animals in a lab to run an experiment on leaky gut, you would deliberately feed the animal a diet high in saturated fat to make their intestines permeable to then adequately run your tests and experiments. Robyn believes that within a couple of days of putting a rat on a diet high in saturated fat (most of the time they are fed coconut oil), its gut would be leaking like a sieve.

Robyn states that there is a direct link between saturated fat consumption, leaky gut or gut permeability and chronic inflammation.

In short, If you want to heal your gut, you should NOT eat coconut oil. Consuming coconut oil for health is just so far from the truth, its actually completely the opposite.

To learn more about oil and sugar or to visit Robyn Chuter, please go to her website; https://empowertotalhealth.com.au/