I was living in California this spring and had the opportunity to take a very interesting two month course on nutrition at Stanford University. The program was called Food Facts and Fads (“Food: Facts and Myths”) and, as the name suggests, was supposed to teach students to understand the huge flow of scientific and pseudoscientific information about nutrition.
I want to tell you about some of the topics that we discussed.
This article deals with the problem of oxidation, which our teacher, Dr. Clyde Wilson, raised in literally every class. What is oxidation? From a chemical point of view, this is a process during which a donor molecule donates an electron to an oxidizing molecule. That is, the donor loses an electron, thereby oxidizing. In principle, in the human body, this process should be balanced by the system of protecting cells from damage, but often this system is not able to withstand a huge number of aggressive forms of oxygen, such as free radicals, which oxidize (that is, damage) important components of our cells. As a result, the body experiences oxidative stress, and this is one of the causes of many diseases. Antioxidants are a powerful force that can neutralize aggressive free radicals. My teacher tells more about them. Below is the text of his article.
I see a deep irony in the fact that oxygen, which is critical for survival, can at the same time be the cause of aging. Oxygen attacks molecules in our body to take electrons from them. This is cool if you need to light a fire: in your oven or in the mitochondria of your cells (and mitochondria are the “energy stations” of cells, their main function is to oxidize organic compounds and then use the energy released during their decay). But you have to pay for the fire. Outside of your body, oxygen destroys food molecules, and inside your body, the oxygen that you do not use for energy begins to harm you, accelerating the aging of mitochondria and, as a result, the aging of the body as a whole.
How to protect your cells from oxidation?
To protect ourselves from this, we should cook less often at high temperatures, eat more fresh vegetables and greens, as they contain antioxidants, and also prevent oxidation of these antioxidants before eating foods. Let me remind you that antioxidants “sacrifice themselves” to oxygen so that it does not attack the molecules of your cells. High temperatures and prolonged exposure to oxygen cause antioxidants to oxidize before they even enter your body. And in an oxidized state, they are not only useless, but become hazardous to health.
Unsaturated fats fall into the same category as antioxidants because they have double bonds that are easily attacked by oxygen. The less saturated the fat, the stronger and faster it is oxidized. The most unsaturated fats are omega-3 and omega-6. This is why chia and flax seeds (they are rich in omega-3s) go rancid so quickly.
For the same reason, due to oxidation, vegetable oil is much healthier if it is not heated during preparation or preparation. Unfortunately, more often than not, vegetable oils are not only produced under the influence of high temperature, but also subjected to thermal treatment after production in order to remove the odors that appeared during the initial processing. Therefore, it is so important to buy unprocessed cold-pressed oil that is stored in an airtight container.
Again, due to oxidation, it is completely useless to consume antioxidant powders, shakes, bars and supplements with omega-3 fatty acids. All of their nutrients after processing (read: oxidation) do not provide any benefit, unlike omega-3s and antioxidants consumed with regular unprocessed foods.
To protect natural sources of antioxidants and unsaturated fats from oxidation, they must be properly stored and cooked. For example, do not cook for a long time and at very high temperatures, and in the latter case, use saturated fats for cooking, eat more fresh vegetables and greens (and discard darkened ones), store vegetable oils in a dark place in an airtight container, and chia and flax seeds in refrigerator in sealed packaging.