Sugar is the worst thing possible for you, right? At the very least, it's the worst common food you can put into your body.
Yeah, it’s pretty bad for you. But a new study is now showing that there may be an unexpected winner of the Worst Food For You, Ever—soybean oil.
This study did a comparison between three diets: one high in saturated fat from coconut oil, one high in unsaturated fat from soybean oil, and two modified versions of those diets, that contained significant amounts of fructose.
Of course, what they thought would happen is that the rats with fructose in their diets would gain the most weight.
But soybean oil was the surprising culprit.
This unsaturated fat, which usually is credited as healthier than its counterparts, made the mice gain 9 percent more weight than the rats with fructose (sugar) in their diets, and a whole 25 percent (!) more weight than those on the coconut oil diet.
Not only that, but these mice overall had a series of pre-diabetes symptoms, including fattier livers and higher insulin resistance!
Other vegetable oils may prove to be just as bad when it comes to weight gain and diabetes risk. Corn oil has already been found to be fattier than coconut oil.
This isn’t great news, since soybean oil is in basically everything. If something lists “vegetable oil” on its packaging, it’s most likely soybean oil.
The leading theory on why this is? It actually changes the way your liver metabolizes fat.
Of course, while mice are a surprisingly good parallel to human digestive systems, more research needs to be done on why soybean oil is so awful.
In the meantime, you can avoid processed vegetable oil as much as possible, but it’ll be pretty difficult. It’s in practically everything these days.
