Lab tests have shown that if you eat the typical American diet of foods cooked with soybean oil you run an increased risk of being overweight, suffering diabetes and having a fatty liver. But a new GMO soy oil is supposed to remedy that.
Don’t count on it.
The newly marketed oil from genetically modified soy is called Plenish and is produced by DuPont Pioneer. It is being touted as high in oleic acid (a fatty acid that is supposed to help keep blood sugar down) and lacking in harmful trans fats.
But according to researcher Frances Sladek, who teaches professor of cell biology at the University of California, Riverside, the soy oil has not been adequately tested for its long-term effects: “While genetic modification of crops can introduce new beneficial traits into existing crops, the resulting products need to be tested for long-term health effects before anyone makes assumptions about their impact on human health.”
Sladek notes that soy oil has become the most widely consumed oil in the American diet. Right now, globally, soybean oil is the world’s second biggest source of vegetable oil.
Sladek and his colleagues tested the new soy oil in lab animals, comparing its effects with other diets lower in fat or containing other types of oil
The animals who consumed conventional soybean oil or the new GMO oil suffered more frequently from fatty liver and gained more weight compared to animals being given coconut oil. However, the GMO oil did seem to stimulate the creation of a little less body fat on lab animals than conventional soy oil did. Plus, the animals fed the GMO oil did not develop insulin resistance.
“The genetically modified soybean oil does seem to have fewer negative metabolic consequences than regular soybean oil in mice, but it may not necessarily be as healthy as olive oil, as has been assumed by its fatty acid composition, and it is certainly less healthy than coconut oil which is primarily saturated fat,” Sladek says.
