Yeah, you can call me a nut. A nut for life’s pleasures, a nut for creativity, a nut for nuts. Almonds in my milk, hazelnuts in my chocolate, pine nuts on my carpaccio, pistachios in my kuku sabzi, and live sprouted walnuts on everything else. If months ago, someone’d told me I should eliminate nuts from my daily diet, I’da thought they were NUTS. I’da thought they knew nothing of what designates a healthy diet. 

Ever since I was a nutso kiddo, nuts and seeds have been a prominent and fundamentally pleasurable component of my diet. In all their varieties and forms, all day, throughout the day. As a diabetic, I’d always believed they were great for stabilizing glucose levels and providing essential fats. And while all that is true, too much of a good thing is, well, nut so good. 

Most don’t realize it, but nuts and seeds are high in Linoleic Acid (or LA). This type of omega-6 fatty acid makes up nearly 70% of the fat in the average American diet today and yet, to my devastating discovery only months ago, IS ONE OF THE MOST IN-SEED-IOUSLY DETRIMENTAL TOXINS there is. Surprised??? 

I was. Ok, yes, we need some LA. But we need so little. And given how ubiquitous it is in the modern diet (and beauty products), deficiency would be impossible. LA is called an “essential” fat. Yet, believe it or nut, this is essentially misleading.

Let’s first talk seed oils. Unfortu-nut-ly, they are everywhere. In 1911, Procter & Gamble introduced Crisco, a dietary oil produced through a new hydrogenation process which stabilized its main ingredient: cottonseed oil. Margarine, also made from seed oils, came soon after. And since then, canola, soy, palm, and sundry other industrial oils have come to be used nut only for Crisco production but for nearly ALL processed products and general cooking, at home and in restaurants.

It’s NUTS, but many if nut most of the foods we consume contain LA without us realizing it. Chicken, eggs, pork, and fish which were all once low in LA are now defi-NUT high LA sources IF (and they usually are) raised on grain-based diets. Fortu-NUT-ely, ruminant animals such as cow, sheep, lamb, and goat have low LA content in their milk and meat regardless of their diet. This is thanks to the bacteria in their multiple stomachs which convert high LA fat into saturated and monounsaturated fats. These ruminants are our best options, especially when dining out or when uncertain about the quality of fish, poultry, or pork. And let’s nut forget, apart from their high LA content, grain-fed poultry and farmed-fish are also treated with antibiotics and exposed to pesticides.

Healthy fats we can count on for cooking are tallow, butter, ghee, and coconut oil. For beauty, look for tallow, coconut oil or Aloe vera based products, not those with sunflower oil. And when eating out, try asking for dishes to be cooked with butter only and opt for raw and ruminant, as in beef carpaccio. 

It might nut be what you want to hear, but the LA in nuts and seeds (especially their derivatives) does nut behoove us. Excess LA causes disease. Its excess prevents our mitochondria from working well. Mitochondria are responsible for converting our cellular energy into ATP, without which our cells could nut function or repair themselves properly. We might also consider the fact that many of the nuts and seeds sold on the shelves of grocery stores (especially those sold in bulk) are sprayed with glyphosate, a carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting weed killer (something to keep in mind when at a bar or airplane serving nuts).

In addition to mitochondrial dysfunction, LA (especially in the form of processed seed oils) harms the body in all of the following ways:

-Damages the cells lining our blood vessels

-Causes memory impairment and increases our risk of Alzheimer’s disease (canola oil, in particular)

-Strips our liver of glutathione, lowering our antioxidant defenses

-Inhibits delta-6 desaturase (delta-6), an enzyme involved in the conversion of short-chain omega-3s to longer chained omega-3s in our liver

-Impairs our immune function and increases mortality

-Makes our fat cells more insulin sensitive, causing insulin resistance

-Inhibits cardiolipin, an important fat in the inner membrane of our mitochondria

-And (according to some research) is carcinogenic, by increasing estrogenic signaling, and by releasing toxic aldehydes when heated during cooking.

[For the PUFA-conscious, do check out The Lowdown on Linoleic Acid by Dr. Mercola]

Nuts are high in LA. Seeds and seed oils are high in LA. Processed foods, animal foods raised on grains, and most restaurant foods are high in LA. Most olive and avocado oils, due to likely adulteration, are also high in LA. Let’s nut go nuts here, my fellow health nuts.