Is All Oil Bad For You When Trying To Losing Weight?

I'd always believed that things like coconut oil and olive oil were part of a healthy diet. I ate them regularly with just about every meal — I cooked with olive oil, spread coconut oil on my toast, and drizzled avocado oil on my hummus. 

A few months ago, though, I learned that oil is technically not part of a whole-foods, plant-based diet. I was shocked to learn that there was virtually no nutritional value to the oils that we're so used to eating on a daily basis.

Vegetable Oil? Could It Be The Cause Of An Obesity Crisis?

A new report suggests that 50 percent of the world isn’t at a healthy weight, and it may be in large part due to the huge increase in vegetable oil the world now consumes.

Tim Benton, a professor at the University of Leeds, told the BBC that while vegetable oil used to be a rare commodity, soybean and palm oil are now so ubiquitous that they’re considered two of the main eight food groups (along with wheat, rice, corn, sugar, barley, and potatoes) that provide 85 percent of the world’s calories.

Over the past three decades, trade agreements have made vegetable oil cheaper and easier to produce, export, and import. This has had some positive externalities, as Benton points out. Namely, it’s helped reduce famine in a big way, and has allowed the “poorest of poor access to cheap calories.”