Study: New GM Soybean Oil and Non-GMO Are Terrible Compared to This Oil

By Heather Callaghan

Unfortunately, many Americans simply skim headlines. They might even share information based solely on headlines. And it’s almost like both the media and research communities know this when they choose a headline. Especially when they choose headlines that have a deliberately opposite meaning than the content therein.

When this writer came across headlines that suggested a new genetically engineered soybean oil was healthier to humans than conventional soybean oil – she just had to bite and see what is the newest GMO claim.

“How healthy is genetically modified soybean oil?” one asks innocently. Another says GE soybean oils is slightly healthier than conventional implying that both are a part of a complete breakfast.

Truthfully, the researchers are saying that both soybean oil and a new oil from genetically engineered soybeans are unhealthy. This must be a scientific first – an ounce of truth after years of repetition that soy is healthy- even though it was wrapped in a misleading headline. Still, researchers continue to espouse the virtues of soy even though the natural health consumers have – for the most part – left it behind.

The following researchers, however, went a step beyond by comparing DuPont Pioneer’s new oil to both conventional soybean oil and coconut oil – a first time event.
The Endocrine Society recently presented the following information at their 97th annual meeting in San Diego:

The recently introduced high-oleic soybean oil (Plenish, from DuPont Pioneer) had not been tested for long-term metabolic effects until this study, said the senior investigator, Frances Sladek, PhD, a professor of cell biology at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).

In a previous study, Sladek’s postdoctoral fellow Dr. Poonamjot Deol found that mice fed soybean oil as part of a high-fat diet had higher rates of obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance (an inability to efficiently use the hormone insulin) and fatty liver than did mice on a diet high in saturated fat from coconut oil.

In the new study, the researchers gave four groups of mice (12 mice in each group) different diets for six months. The control group received a low-fat diet, in which 5 percent of daily calories were from fat. The other groups received a diet with 40 percent of daily calories from fat, which Sladek said is an amount common in the American diet. One diet was high in saturated fat from coconut oil, and one had 41 percent of the saturated fat replaced with regular soybean oil. The last group had 41 percent of the saturated fat replaced with the genetically modified high-oleic soybean oil.

Mice fed a diet with either of the soybean oils had worse fatty liver, glucose intolerance and obesity than the group that got all their fat from coconut oil, the investigators reported. However, the mice whose diet included the high-oleic soybean oil had less fat tissue than the animals that ingested regular soybean oil. These mice weighed about 30 percent more than the controls that ate a low-fat diet, while the group on the diet containing regular soybean oil weighed 38 percent more than controls. The mice on the diet that was primarily coconut oil weighed only about 13 percent more than controls. Unlike the diet with regular soybean oil, the diet with the new high-oleic soybean oil did not lead to insulin resistance, according to Sladek.