S2E23 Oils and Overcoming MS: Separating facts from fiction with Jack McNulty

Geoff Allix  00:00

Hi everyone, Geoff Allix here, your host of the Living Well with MS podcast. To all our listeners. I hope you and your families are staying safe and healthy during this COVID 19 crisis. While social distancing and other restrictions may seem like a drag, in the long run it will prove critical to stemming the tide of this epidemic and returning to a sense of normality. I have faith we will come out of this stronger, smarter and a bit more enlightened as a result. In the meantime, we at Overcoming MS and the whole team behind this podcast are here for you, to keep you informed and help you keep on track with your personal journey to a healthier you. Now, on with the show. Jack McNulty has been involved in food and cooking most of his life. He’s walked many paths during his culinary journey that include transforming himself from an interested amateur foodie, to professional chef with classical training. Throughout his life and career, he’s explored different food cultures, grown his own vegetables and fruit and eaten a lot of meat and fish along the way. He’s been a vegetarian, carnivore, omnivore, and fish eating vegan before landing on his current lifestyle as a vegan. Jack has worked for some talented and knowledgeable chefs in high end restaurants in Switzerland, Italy and France. He’s operated his own catering business and cooking school, while finding enough time to write about cooking. Jack is currently operating his own subscription based website, myfreshattitude.com providing instruction and recipes supporting a vegan life. Jack has followed the OMS lifestyle since 2009. He has actively worked on providing recipes and information to the OMS website, and was a contributing editor to the OMS cookbook. So welcome to the podcast Jack McNulty. To start off, a lot of people say about the OMS diet, that it’s a low fat diet. But it’s, having read the book and talked to people, it’s more complex than that I know. So I wanted to go into the first question of saying, Well, when we say fats and oils aren’t taking the same thing, you know, oils are a liquid form of fats and so on. So fat or oil? Are all oils or fats bad? Or are some of them neutral or potentially some of them beneficial to people following the OMS protocol.

 

Jack McNulty  02:23

Well, first of all, thank you, Geoff, for organizing this important discussion. I feel really honoured and grateful for being able to address this particular topic, something close to my heart. So hopefully we’ll have a good long discussion. And I think that first question that you asked is an excellent question to get us started on this discussion. Let me just do this. Let me just parse it a little bit, or separate that question out a little bit, just for a general understanding of fats and oils. And I’m like you, when I refer to fats or oils, I’m referring to really kind of the same thing. Humans really haven’t worked with expelled oils very long, it’s a relatively new thing, I’d say maybe 200 years of use in expelled oils, maybe about half of that about 100 years for culinary use. So really, in the grand scope, the idea of using an oil for culinary purposes is relatively new. Now I know that there’s evidence of extra virgin olive oil or olive oil being used for 1000s of years, as there’s evidence for coconut oil, and even soyabean oil in China. But most of those early uses were non culinary, whether it’s lighting a candle of some kind for light, or in some particular cases, I know the Italians early on would cover some certain things like a fish sauce or something that’s going to be shipped across the Mediterranean on its way to Egypt or something of that nature, that oil really just served as a function to block off any oxygen from coming into the fish oil as it’s being shipped. So it wasn’t ingested, let’s say that. So more on the modern day thinking in terms of oils. It’s a good point to start when you’re asking top line questions as to whether we should be ingesting oils or not. And there’s a number of different camps or theories on that particular question, that there’s one camp, mostly from from doctors primarily from America, that say that we should be eating as a diet, a whole food, plant based diet, very low in fat consumption, which would mean the elimination of nuts and avocado. So it’s very restrictive. There’s a second camp that says basically the same thing as camp one, but makes allowance for higher fat foods derived naturally from whole foods, then there would be a third camp that allows for the same as the first two, but includes so called healthy expelled oil. So there’s really not a definition as to what a healthy expelled oil is. But maybe we’ll come back to that particular point here in the discussion. And then there’s a fourth camp, a fourth thought that says the same as all three but allows for fish. Now this is exactly where the overcoming multiple sclerosis baseline is, this is the guide, but it leaves open a lot of room for opinion or preferences based on personal situations. All four approaches are healthy, I would say that, but it’s all relative. And I don’t know if you can really just say that there’s a single best approach. Certainly, if you have other underlying conditions like cardiovascular disease, the theory from camp one would be by far the best approach and the most, and actually the only proven approach scientifically that it can offer some kind of benefit to that situation. Beyond that, things get a little bit more questionable, because it involves a lot of other relative items such as what’s your exercise, stress level, genetic history, those sorts of things. And I think it’s really important for people to understand, especially on the OMS protocol, what is the actual point? What is the the bottom line point for people following the OMS diet with respect to oils, and that would be really just it’s, it’s to reduce inflammation, and it’s to avoid cell oxidation. And that’s obviously done through avoiding saturated fats, as well as other things, which I’m sure we’ll get into today.

 

Geoff Allix  07:36

So if people have other, so what we’re advising today is purely for people with MS, but no other underlying health conditions, if they have diabetes, if they have heart condition, then they should consider that as well. And it may well be that they, they don’t consume some of the oils we’re talking about because of that other condition. So it’s worth them bearing that in mind. Is that what you’re saying?

 

Jack McNulty  08:08

That’s right, I think that that’s a fair point. I think that, and again, it may involve other things, it may involve ethical decisions. For instance, I don’t want to eat fish, because I don’t think that it’s ethically right for me to consume fish. So there are those aspects also that should be brought into the conversation.

 

Geoff Allix  08:29

Okay, and I had read a book by someone called Udo Erasmus, who’s talking a lot about this, that there are good and bad oils. And so yeah, there is a lot of science behind this isn’t there? Apart from the OMS approach.

 

Jack McNulty  08:46

Absolutely. And the book that you referenced, for those that don’t know the ‘Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill’ it’s certainly a book that should be read.

 

Geoff Allix  08:58

So in a broad way, then what are we looking for with oils which are certainly not bad for us, potentially beneficial for us in terms of MS.

 

Jack McNulty  09:15

Hmm. That would be a very difficult, difficult question to answer based on how it was presented.

 

Geoff Allix  09:26

Okay. So, well, more to the point would be that I know there’s a recommendation that we have flaxseed oil or linseed oil in some countries. So why is that something which is actually prescribed that we should have, whereas a typical vegetable oil used for cooking is listed as something we shouldn’t have.

 

Jack McNulty  09:51

Yeah, I think this kind of really gets really right into the nutritional aspects of the importance of fats in our diet. And it has a lot to do with essential fatty acids. So flaxseed oil, of course, is a source with relatively high amounts of Omega three, probably as high as any of the oils that are out there. And as well as low amounts of saturated fats and monounsaturated fats, and so you’re looking at the structure of the fat itself, in terms of what it’s doing inside your body. So assuming everything being good and stable, that the oil was produced well, that they are not heating it, it wasn’t exposed to oxygen, not exposed to undue amounts of light, then in theory, the omega threes that you are ingesting can promote a sort of anti inflammatory response within your body. Whereas some of the other oils that are lower in those essential fatty acids would not have that same effect and in some cases actually promote inflammation as opposed to prevent it.

 

Geoff Allix  11:11

So if there’s oils like, say flaxseed oil, flaxseed oil and linseed oil, if anyone’s unaware are the same thing, they’re just two names for the same thing. In the UK where we play cricket, linseed oil is used to treat cricket bats and flaxseed oil is used for consumption. But they’re exactly the same thing. So when I say one, take it to mean either, they’re exactly the same. So and it’s actually great in the UK, because it when we’re now having to have flaxseed it reminds people of playing cricket when they were kids, which I know that doesn’t work for people in the US and other countries. But if you’re in the UK or Australia or somewhere like that it reminds you of school time sports. So if we’re saying that that was not too bad, is it okay then to cook using flaxseed oil? Could I heat the oil, could I fry with flaxseed oil? If it’s an oil, it could be beneficial?

 

Jack McNulty  12:13

That’s an excellent question. I think most people are aware that you probably shouldn’t heat flaxseed oil. So let me just back up with that a little bit and just kind of give a general overview of what’s harmful to oils and fats. And until I think I mentioned it just touched on it briefly, but all fats will begin to turn rancid by exposure to one of four elements, or in some cases, all four at the same time, heat is one of them. So all of them start to break down at around 120 degrees centigrade, which is around 250 degrees fahrenheit. Air or exposure to oxygen will also create problems with all oils and fats, as does light and then the time of exposure to all three of those other issues. So, this creates free radicals within the oils, but also within your body if you ingest any of those particular types of oils. So heat, air, light and time. With respect to the polyunsaturated oils such as omega three or flaxseed oil. These are more susceptible or more unstable, with all four elements, the heat, air, light and time, which is why flaxseed oil will go bad relatively fast, if not kept out of the heat or avoiding exposure to air and certainly with light. They will turn rancid rather rapidly and you can taste that certainly, it will have a very significant bitter flavour to it and not taste at all fresh. Certain oils will be a little bit more stable with respect to heat, air, light, mono unsaturated fats are a little bit more and certainly saturated fats would be even more stable, although those have other issues of course, when you ingest them in your body. So the important marker is the 120 degrees centigrade, that’s when you know prolonged exposure at that temperature rate will begin to break down that oil rapidly. And the same is true though for air. The minute you open up a bottle of flaxseed oil or extra virgin olive oil the production of free radicals, which is basically just unbound electrons floating around looking for a pair, that chain reaction is created immediately. And that creates the rancidity within the oil, which creates problems when we ingest it. So yeah, heating oils can create a problem. But then again, there, it’s variable, depending on the type of oil, and the other aspects of exposure, the air, light, and certainly the time coming into play.

 

Geoff Allix  15:37

Okay, that’s interesting, because I spoke to, there’s a company called Flax Farm who produce a lot of flaxseed oil in the UK. And I spoke to them about it and they said, in terms of storage, a lot of people freeze the oil, they said, there’s nothing wrong with that, it actually would be good to preserve it. But the reason is, there’s nothing wrong with room temperature. The great thing they said about fridges and freezers is they are completely pitch black, there is absolutely no light. So they said as long as you keep it in zero light, then actually room temperature, zero light is fine. And sorry, a bit of a spoiler here, actually, when you shut the fridge, refrigerator door, the light does turn off. So they said there is no light in there. And, and that’s why more than anything is is the reason why it’s a good idea to put them in, in a refrigerator, because there isn’t any light. So yeah, I’ve because I couldn’t fit them in my freezer, and they just put them somewhere that actually has no light. It’s fine.

 

Jack McNulty  16:45

Yeah, I’ve actually heard the same thing. The problem, of course, is, is what does that look like? To most people? Where do you actually put something that’s not going to have any exposure whatsoever to light? You know, and I think that if you search around, you’re going to be a little bit hard pressed to find that kind of environment as well.

 

Geoff Allix  17:06

Yeah, well they ship the batches, they ship the bottles boxed up in a way that there’s no light in there. So as long as you keep them in their boxes, they’re okay. So, we’re saying that flaxseed oil is particularly unstable. So yes, we should take some flaxseed oil, because it gives us omega threes, which is useful, but completely unheated. And then I mean, personally, I put some into a smoothie in the morning, and I don’t find it unpleasant, other people put them into a porridge mix, I would, I would personally recommend mixing it was something it’s not the greatest tasting thing if you just have it straight out of the bottle. But then you were sort of saying that 120 degrees, which is a very low temperature. What about if I was baking, I mean, the other one that gets talked about a lot is extra virgin olive oil, which I’m sure we’ll talk a bit more about. But so that has a higher level of stability. But could we, for example, well personally something that we like to make at home is a vegan lasagna. And personally, I find if you’re making an Italian style sauce, it tastes a lot better with two particular ingredients. And that being garlic and olive oil, that gives it that Mediterranean flavor. So if I’m using that for my sauce, and what I tend to do is I don’t fry with the olive oil. But I would add it in once it’s a boiling liquid, essentially you’ve added a tomato and and it’s liquid, it’s boiling, okay, that’s not going to go much lower, it’s not going to go above 100 degrees, that’s fine. But if I put that then into the oven to make a lasagna, that’s then baking at higher than 120, probably 180 degrees. So am I okay there, something like extra virgin olive oil? Would that be okay to bake with?

 

Jack McNulty  19:10

Another really interesting question. And it really gets at the heart of much of the confusion that I see in questions on various forums or on social media with respect to what is allowed versus what is not allowed. And this whole 180 degree centigrade issue where you should never bake above 180 degrees and that sort of thing. Let me let me just attempt to answer that question. And by doing so, I think I’ll answer your question at the same time. I think it’s really, really important to understand that temperatures for cooking, do not directly correlate to food temperature. And so that’s really a result of heat transfer in the cooking method. So there’s an easy experiment just to kind of get to what I’m talking about. And I’ll go into a little bit more detail. But you can easily take a look at the effects of heat transfer, just by simply bringing a pot of white water to boil on your stovetop and heating your oven to 100 degrees centigrade, essentially the same temperature. So go ahead and stick your finger in that pot of water. And my guess is it’s not going to stay in that water very long, it’s going to hurt, and hurt quickly. Whereas you can stick your whole arm in the oven at 100 degrees centigrade, and you can keep it in there for quite a long time before it starts to actually become uncomfortable. This, this has to do exactly with how heat gets transferred. So in moist heating, cooking environments, you’re relying on water or steam to transfer the heat to whatever you’re cooking. So that’s a highly efficient manner of heat transfer as your finger would tell you. But this caps out, let’s just for the sake of argument, this caps at 100 degrees centigrade, the boiling point. So this would include cooking methods like boiling, steaming, poaching, braising, even pressure cooking, which actually takes it up to about 120 degrees, but it caps there. So in this environment of cooking, all oils in this environment are more or less protected, they just cannot rise above that particular temperature of 100 degrees. So in most cases, even in pressure cooking, they’re really not getting to a point where it’s going to be dangerous for that oil relative to heat. And again, we’re just talking about heat at the moment. Now, the other end of that is dry heat types of transfer, so this is a direct contact with the heating source. So something like fire or saute pan versus hot air or heat radiation. So microwave would be one or inside an oven where it’s relying on air, whether it’s being circulated or not. And it also radiates off to the sides and top and bottom of the oven environment. So this is baking, broiling, grilling, frying sauteing, barbecuing, the open spit, if you will, those are all examples of dry heat transfer. So anything that’s going to be direct contact to the heat source, the temperatures are going to rise very fast indeed. So if you put something in a frying pan that’s been preheated, it’s going to get to, you know, 180 to 300 degrees centigrade rapidly. And that obviously is not a good environment for the oil because it will heat way too fast and begin to burn quickly. Indirect heat sources however, such as an oven, where you’re relying on the air, the temperatures are reduced and protected a little bit by moisture or surface moisture on whatever you’re cooking. So mostly everything that you put into an oven is going to have some degree of moisture, which will begin to evaporate and that evaporation will be on the surface of anything that you’re particularly cooking at that time. So those temperatures will not be the same as what you’re setting your thermometer for. So for instance, let’s take bread as a good example. I like to use this as an example. You can put bread into a 230 degree centigrade oven, so that’s around 450 degrees fahrenheit to bake that bread and keep it in there for about 40 to 45 minutes. What’s really fascinating and I’ve done this experiment many times at home with an instant read thermometer, is the surface temperature of the bread. The surface temperature of the bread rarely goes higher than 120 degrees centigrade. So the crust is formed by what’s called a maillard reaction, which is the carbohydrates just browning that’s what gives it that pleasant texture and that taste but that occurs at around 120 degrees. The inside or the interior of the bread is being protected by the crust of the bread, and in essence, the interior is no longer being baked, but rather steamed. That means it won’t rise above that magical 100 degree point of moisture. And in most cases, bread, I know specifically, will be finished when it reaches around 91 degrees , centigrade, something of that nature, depending on the size of the bread you’re baking, but the interior never gets to a point of danger, the exterior can just start to touch areas where oils are going to start to have a problem. This is actually improved, even when you bake bread with a pan of water at the bottom of the bread to create steam in the oven. This will actually even improve that situation, and really create a better crust for you anyway,

 

Geoff Allix  19:19

I was going to say the advice is actually do that anyway.

 

Jack McNulty  23:36

Yeah exactly, exactly. So the idea with heat transfer is something that’s often overlooked. And it gets it that that point of hey, the oven temperature doesn’t mean that’s what the temperature the food is going to be. So in your example, with your lasagna, if you start that with your tomato sauce and all of that on the stovetop, of course, you’re not going to reach a point where the olive oils that you’re using in that sauce are going to be harmed. But then you put it in the oven. So let’s say you’re baking it, whatever 180 or 200 degrees for a half hour, however long it takes to cook your lasagna. And because of the moisture content within that lasagna, even at that higher oven temperature, your lasagna will never get to the point of 100 degrees. I guarantee if you have an instant read thermometer, try it at home, just stick it in there and see what that temperature will be, I think you’ll be surprised and it cools rapidly as well. But it will peak at around 90 degrees.

 

Geoff Allix  27:11

So the key there is that these things contain a liquid in terms of water liquid, that’s what prevents it going higher, if you so another thing might be if you were to say, if I was trying to make homemade potato chips, and I took very thinly sliced potato, put oil on it, put it in the oven, then I might be when you’re getting to a real crisp potato chip, then you might be getting to a risky temperature because it’s removed the moisture, would that be accurate?

 

Jack McNulty  27:50

If you’re using oils, that would be accurate, I think what you said there would be a good assessment. Another way to look at that is, those air fryers you know, so you can fry something in an air fryer without oil, that will brown that chip pretty much the same way as if you deep fried it. And that has to do with really just what we talked about earlier, the maillard reaction, which is just the carbohydrates that are browning, and doesn’t have anything to do with any fat on there or not.

 

Geoff Allix  28:27

Okay, because an air fryer is a great tool actually, I think, for people following OMS. I just need a bigger one now. So there’s a lot of things that I’d say almost most recipes that I follow call for fried onions as a starting point almost. So in whether it’s Mediterranean cooking, whether it’s Indian cooking, Chinese cooking, loads of them, you start frying onions, and maybe frying garlic as a starting point at the beginning of the meal. So how can we make that process healthier? How can we, you know, because it’s quite core to everything, that sort of fried onion as a base for so many things.

 

Jack McNulty  29:18

Yeah, let’s take a look at that, because you’re right, that does, that first step is common in many, many, not only recipes, but cultural type preparation. So the idea there is to, in the culinary term, if you were to be in cookery school, would be to sweat the vegetables, sweat the onions or sweat the mirepoix, something of this nature. And that’s actually a really interesting term, to ‘sweat’  something. So what it’s asking for, in that particular recipe, is for you to soften the vegetables and adding seasoning once the vegetables are softened, that will help you start to build the flavour base of whatever you’re making, whether it’s a soup or a stew or something of this nature. So if you’re working just with onions, for instance, the idea is to just soften the onions. And that usually takes a little bit more patience than people exhibit when they’re cooking, it usually will take about 10 minutes or so. That process is really important in building a tomato sauce for instance, once the onions are softened, you can add your dried oregano, salt and other seasoning elements, which would be carried now throughout that recipe, or the rest of the recipe and throughout the preparation and heighten the flavour. So if you didn’t take the time to soften that vegetable, that flavour element or the building of the flavours would be flatter, a little bit more disjointed. And the onions would remain crunchy, almost, which changes the texture of whatever you’re eating. So that’s the point of, of slowly cooking those vegetables, whether it’s onions, onions, carrot, celery, all of those sorts of things, all of which can be done without any oil whatsoever. So the oil in the presence of that oil, again, this is something that’s kind of been a traditional thing to do in recipes for maybe just the last 100 years. Prior to that there was no thought of “Oh, I got to add the oil once the vegetables are softened.” So think of it a little bit in those terms. Now what I like to do personally, is I will heat the pan and I think heating a pan first is really important. And you want to heat it to a point where just dropping a little bit of water into the pan won’t evaporate the water right away but it will make it sort of dance around like you were just dropping mercury in the pan, it forms a ball really quick and kind of moves around. That’s a properly heated pan. So once the pan is heated, I’ll go ahead and put my onions or my vegetables into the pan. But I always add just a pinch of salt to them as well. And the reason I do that is that salt will bring out the moisture of the onion or the vegetable. And in essence, what I’ve now done, instead of frying, and that’s really not a good term, because it’s not going to fry, it’s going to stew and it’s going to stew in its own juices. And as soon as that water evaporates, you can hear it, the tone will change and they’ll start to sizzle a little or maybe even stick on the bottom of the pan. At that point, you can add a tablespoon or two of additional water if the vegetable isn’t softened enough. And just keep doing that until the vegetables get to a point of being adequately soft. Now if you wanted to add oil for flavour or texture, the point in which you would do that is after the vegetables are completely softened. And with a tablespoon of water added to that, that will prevent now that oil from ever reaching a point of higher than 100 degrees.

 

Geoff Allix  33:46

Okay, so I think so we’ve established that so for cooking. Olive oil, as you said we can use that for cooking. And I think it is key to so many Mediterranean foods the flavour is dependent on that. Flaxseed oil is good for health benefits, but certainly not for cooking. So more specifically with olive oil, now I know the Overcoming MS guidelines are that you should only use extra virgin olive oil. So why? Because sometimes it’s some people say oh maybe a lighter oil and quite often those lighter oils are not extra virgin. Why do we need to go with extra virgin olive oil? Can we use any olive oil are they effectively the same thing?

 

Jack McNulty  34:33

No they’re not effectively the same. There’s a significant price difference I think. No extra virgin olive oil, so this gets into the complicated topic of labeling a little bit. Extra Virgin Olive Oil is really the only oil on the market that has regulations stipulating what extra virgin means. So if you come across any sort of other type of oil, extra virgin rapeseed oil, it’s a marketing term and there’s no guidelines out there that stipulates what that means. So it’s probably just something put on the label to get you to buy it, because it sounds good and healthy and that sort of thing. So extra virgin olive oil means that oil has to be processed a certain way, meaning cold pressed, no chemical solvents that are allowed to extract any of the oils, it’s all mechanical. And the oil at the end of that extraction has to have a certain acidity point or be below a certain acidity point, I think is 0.5%, or something like that in the EU regulations. So there are very specific guidelines that says what an extra virgin olive oil should be, and should look like. Now a virgin olive oil basically will take the leftover from the first extraction, and either through some sort of additional mechanical press or, or heat treatment or chemical solvents to extract even more oil out of whatever was left behind. So a virgin olive oil has to be between a certain level of acidity as well. And then pure olive oil, quite often is the third pressing. And then that is usually heavily refined, because it’s going to taste pretty bitter. So they’ll take a lot of elements out of that.

 

Geoff Allix  36:50

And they can use heat and chemicals, which you said.

 

Jack McNulty  36:53

It is much the same way as most of the other oils are extracted.

 

Geoff Allix  36:57

But you said about rapeseed oil, because when you look at the figures, the sort of nutritional figures on the back of oils or on the internet, there are other oils which are at least as good in terms of their Omega three, and the stats seem good for things like rapeseed oil, and hemp oil is another one. But you’re saying that even though they appear to be as good, we can’t necessarily trust them, because there’s no regulations that are protecting us.

 

Jack McNulty  37:32

Yeah you know, unfortunately, a job that I think that it really has come to the point where it’s very difficult to trust any labeling on any oil anywhere, which is a very unfortunate thing for me to say. And that would include extra virgin olive oils. There was a study recently done in Italy, and also through an organization in Switzerland that looked at extra virgin olive oils on supermarket shelves, and they chose various degrees of price points. And what they found was that 50% of those oils, that consumers were buying, thinking they were extra virgin olive oils, were no longer extra virgin olive oils. So that could mean a number of things that probably the majority of them were not stored correctly, and have been exposed to too much light or too much heat that sort of thing and storage or they’re a little bit old. And they’ve lost their characteristics of being an extra virgin olive oil. So even those oils would not necessarily be a good thing to purchase. So you mentioned rapeseed oil, I think in certain parts of the world, I know in Central Europe, it’s this particular rapeseed oil is produced quite a lot. You just have to go around the fields in May and look at all the beautiful yellow flowers. So rapeseed oil, most of it is heavily processed and used for other purposes, but there is a trend, a growing trend, of offering unprocessed rapeseed oil and generally those producers are going to say that on the label. But more importantly you can actually see it or smell it so the minute you smell an unprocessed rapeseed oil it will have a little bit of a cabbage smell to it and it will be a very rich golden colour as opposed to something without much colour at all in a refined rapeseed oil. So unprocessed oils can be okay. And hemp seed oil is another example of something that can be fine in terms of adding it to your particular diet for whatever particular reason and in some cases those oils might even be better than going with an extra virgin olive oil. If you’re not 100% sure that you’re getting one that’s reliable. Fortunately, where I live, I have access to Italian olive oils. And I know some producers, so I’m pretty careful with what I’m purchasing on the extra virgin olive oil front. I wouldn’t necessarily say that that’s the case in many places in America or Australia, where they don’t produce a lot of extra virgin olive oil.

 

Geoff Allix  40:34

No the same in the UK. We don’t produce an awful lot of olives. I mean, I’ve been to a producer in Spain, it was fantastic. They had the olives. And they had the very mechanical, the thing looked pre 100 years old, this press and then you could buy the olive oil right there, freshly extracted. Absolutely. Perfect. And you know, it’s fine. But yeah, I mean, if you live a lot further away from the equator where they don’t grow olives, it’s just a matter of trust. And you have to think, does this producer seem trustworthy?

 

Jack McNulty  41:11

Exactly in Europe, you know, there are opportunities to purchase directly from producers in Italy and rely on the shipping. And so there are chances to get decent olive oils directly from producers that will ship throughout the European Union. But again, you have to really think about that a little bit and ask some questions of that producer in terms of how are they going to ship and you know, those sorts of issues that come up.

 

Geoff Allix  41:45

And so if we did, so I’ve found with baking things, which are more of a sweet bread, the olive oil taste doesn’t quite work. And there something which doesn’t have that flavour, like rapeseed oil, or hemp or it yet again, you’re just thinking is this, does this appear to be a trustworthy supplier? And actually, as you said, with olive oil, a lot of those are not necessarily, we can’t 100% trust that. So it’s all on trust, we just, we just have to do the best we can.

 

Jack McNulty  42:14

I think that that’s the best way to look at it. And again, it gets right to the very first question that we asked is, you know, in your particular life is oil important? And so the way I always look at it is that’s the first question I asked when I’m looking at a recipe or looking to develop a recipe myself is, do I even need an oil in here? What is the function of this oil? If I added one, why would I be adding it. And mostly oils are added to recipes to provide additional moisture, to provide some degree of flavour, or in some particular cases to add texture. And by texture, I mean, you can do this experiment as well just bake some potatoes, you know, just like you’re making chips or something of that nature in the oven. Do one one tray with no oil whatsoever, and lightly coat the potato in oil on another tray and bake them both and then see which one you prefer eating. It’s a simple experiment, but it really gives you an idea as to what the function of oil is in a particular recipe and whether that’s something that you want to live with or prefer or something that you feel like well, I can just live without that.

 

Geoff Allix  43:38

So when something calls for butter, for example, which, well, that’s excluded for people following OMS for many reasons as the oil as dairy…

 

Jack McNulty  43:49

 Well, if you want to convert a recipe, I think is what you saying.

 

Geoff Allix  43:52

So what could you use as an alternative? You do see some, you know if it was, if it was for the moisture and the texture, what other things could we use?

 

Jack McNulty  44:01

Are we talking about baking something or are we talking in general terms?

 

Geoff Allix  44:08

Well, let’s start with baking and maybe move on to other things.

 

Jack McNulty  44:10

Okay, so the function in baking with a fat is a very interesting function. Fats work in conjunction with gluten. So we’re assuming that you’re baking something that has wheat flour, and by mixing flour with water, you’re going to create gluten. So those two proteins that sort of coalesce and capture moisture and that creates a particular structure. Pasta, for instance, is just really flour and water mixed together, and by kneading it you’re creating a structure that’s going to give an elasticity and strength, that’s basically what that’s going to do. What adding a fat to that equation will do is shorten the gluten straps. And that creates a textural change. So think of it in terms of a pie crust for instance, which is often called a short crust, or a biscuit or cookie like a shortbread, which is, in essence, just your flour and sugar with fat added to it. And what it’s doing is actually just shortening the gluten strands. And that’s why a lot of fats and recipes, especially older recipes, are called shortening, it’s all it’s doing is it’s telling you exactly what that found is supposed to do and shortening the gluten strap. And that creates a texture that’s going to be far more crumbly. Something like a shortbread cookie or something like a, a very flaky pie, tart crust, something of that nature, the same thing can be said for bread. So a high fat bread is going to have an interior structure that will be sort of cake like versus something like a baguette, which has no fat in it, and there’ll be much chewier and spongier inside. So that’s what a fat will do. So when you’re looking at a particular recipe, there’s many ways to get around that, you can just do a straight substitution. So if you’re just trying to convert, and let’s just say for the sake of argument, it’s asking for 100 grams of butter, this just makes arithmetic easy, you can then go ahead and just think in terms of butter is generally 82% fat. And so you can just do a straight correlation. And say I’m just going to use 82 grams of oil in replacement of that butter. Of course, you can use less if you want. And you can add other elements to that, all of which will change the structure. But that’s just a straight replacement, it’s basically just 82% or 80% oil for the amount of weight that butter is asked for. Now there are a lot of recipes out there that are using things like fruit puree, like a banana, crushed up banana or something of that nature, it’s important to recognize that in making a cake that you’re going to use something like that, it will work. There’s no question it’s going to work but it’s not going to have the same texture, it will be much more dense than what you may imagine in your head because there is no fat that’s going to be shortening those gluten strands. It’s basically just going to be a heavier item that’s going to come across as a little bit more stodgy if you will. So that’s one thing to keep in mind, another substitution that’s out there, that a lot of people use or like to use or recommend are nut butters for instance in making a pie dough to just use a nut butter in place of normal butter. It will work, nut butters are very high in fat. But the problem is the nut butter itself, which is often not the healthiest and quite rancid just to begin with. So there’s those considerations to take into account when you’re trying to decide what are you going to use.

 

Geoff Allix  44:10

Okay, that’s quite interesting. I never knew the science behind that. But actually, so we can and I actually find it quite fun to experiment in the kitchen. I know some people they need it to be as quick as possible. But it’s that process of thinking actually, what what is the fat doing? What’s it for, and I never realized this that that shortening and it’s why shortbreads called shortbread, that it’s actually shortening the gluten so that crispness is because of the fat. So when it says we could use avocado, well actually avocados are fairly high fat. But let’s say banana then.

 

Jack McNulty  49:09

You can go ahead and use avocado as an example because it is high in fat. But it has so many other elements in it, those fats are not going to work the same as an oil in terms of shortening the gluten, they will to some degree, better than a mashed up banana will, but not as well as if you were just using a pure fat.

 

Geoff Allix  49:33

Okay, so yeah, so we could say, we could replace butter with olive oil, for example. You’d still have that shortening. If it’s purely used for moisture, then we could replace it with banana.

 

Jack McNulty  49:48

Absolutely. Yeah, exactly.

 

Geoff Allix  49:49

 We don’t need the shortening.

 

Jack McNulty  49:50

Exactly. There’s just different ways to approach it, depending on what you’re using and then the whole equation changes again if you’re talking about something that’s gluten free, because the whole idea is using a wheat flour shortening the gluten strand. So if it’s a gluten free flour of course, that doesn’t come into play either, because there is no gluten in play. So that’s in fact, that’s one reason why gluten free products are often a little bit heavier or dense than non gluten free product.

Geoff Allix  50:25

Okay, so people, because there is an increased chance of being gluten intolerant for people who have MS. Which is, I mean, that’s not just an OMS thing that was my neurologist, he had me tested for that. Because he said, it’s, it’s not unlikely. And I was fine. So I can carry on with my baking. But what you’re saying is, if you are, so if you’re having a gluten free diet, then actually then, it may be that you don’t actually even need to replace butter directly with any form of oils as it wouldn’t actually do much anyway. And maybe there you could replace say directly with banana.

 

Jack McNulty  51:11

There’s other things that you can do exactly to help that. But there are some other things to think about in that particular equation. That’s probably a whole other podcast to talk about that.

 

Geoff Allix  51:22

Okay, I think I’ve certainly learned quite a lot from all this. I mean, some if I were to wrap up and say sort of takeaways, it’s certainly avoid direct heat to oils in terms of frying. But in the oven, we can be fairly relaxed on temperatures going way above 120 degrees, because actually, that form of heat isn’t actually heating the oil in the same way, when we have it in air. That it other things, it’s a good idea, flaxseed oil is a good thing to have. Other oils, extra virgin olive oil is the best if we’re adding it to food, or we’re baking with it. But we do have to still be cautious of where it comes from. Because there is certainly a counterfeit market. And equally there are other oils if we look at the statistics on the dietary guidelines on the back rapeseed oil and hemp oil, for example, can be just as good. But again, we are going on a trust basis. Is that a good sort of wrap up? Or is there anything else we should add?

 

Jack McNulty  52:38

I think that is. What I like to do. When I’m thinking about cooking something, of course after 10 years is a sort of automatic in my head at this point. But the way I like to just sort of break it down or if I was to recommend to someone is, the very first thing is you got to decide in your own personal life, if you’re going to use oils or not. Once you answer that question, if the answer is yes, I’d like to because I like the flavour. And I like texture and that sort of thing. And I’m reasonably comfortable with all of the other things I’m putting into my body in terms of lots of antioxidants, I get lots of exercise, I do my meditation, all of those other factors, and you’re relatively stable in your health and you want to then the next set of questions needs to be, first is adding an oil necessary in whatever you’re cooking? So in baking, it might be necessary for a textual purpose. But in baking potato fries in the oven, maybe it’s not for your own personal tastes. Or maybe when you’re cooking something on the stovetop, it’s not necessary, unless you want to drop a little bit in for pure flavour after the cooking process. The very next question I think people need to ask is, if you’ve made those decisions and the answer is yes, I’m going to use oil, then you have to get to the point of which oil you’re going to use and what’s going to be best for you. So you have to look at your own particular situation and say, what can I get a hold of, what’s grown locally? Can I talk to local producers? If not, and I’m reliant on my supermarket? Can I reasonably expect something as good? Can I look at labeling extra virgin olive oil, for instance, has a labeling law where it needs to have a date on the back which is 18 months to the day of bottling, that’s how long the shelf life is for extra virgin olive oil. So if it’s a year in you might ask yourself the question is that probably already going to be compromised or not? So many cases, you’re getting one that’s maybe only a couple months old, then you’re reasonably sure that that’s probably okay. So those are sort of things to look at. Once you get to the point of choosing an oil, then you have to look at what your, what’s your cooking method going to be, what can I do to prevent this oil from oxidizing in any way, that’s gonna create harmful elements for my particular situation or the food that I want to eat. And finally, I think it’s really, really important to just not stress about it so much, not worry so much that if the bread that you want to buy has a little bit of oil in it, because I think the stress that you are inducing is probably worse, or worse than the amount of oil that you’re actually going to ingest. Most bread recipes are going to have between two and 5% content for a fat if they’re using it at all. So that’s a very limited exposure already. And we already know that temperatures aren’t going to matter too much in that process. So it’s just not worth it to worry too much. If that’s the only bread that you can get your hands on. I would encourage you to make your own bread though.

 

Geoff Allix  56:13

Well, I think making your own bread is a good thing. It’s a very mindful activity. And actually, I sadly let my sourdough starter, it didn’t live through Christmas, I left it alone, unfortunately. I have to start another one. But anyway, I’d like to thank you for that Jack. I’ve learned a huge amount. And I think we’ve got some very good information about the oils and OMS. And how we can use them effectively. So thank you very much for joining us.

Jack McNulty  56:47

Oh, you’re welcome, Geoff. I really appreciate it. It was, it was great speaking to everybody about this topic. And just I guess a final word is this, people should just realize that ultimately, we’re all responsible ourselves for what we put into our body. So take the time to do the research and go out and look and don’t believe everything that you’re seeing on the internet these days.

Geoff Allix  57:09

Okay, thank you.

Jack McNulty  57:10

Okay Geoff.

Geoff Allix  57:14

With that, I would like to thank you all for listening to this episode of Living Well with MS. Remember, there is a wealth of information at overcomingms.org, including show notes and an archive of all Living Well with MS episodes. Once again, that’s overcomingms.org. There you can also find OMS friendly recipes and exercise tips. Connect with other OMSers in your local area through our OMS circles program, and learn about the latest research going on in the MS world generally and related to OMS specifically, I encourage you to register on the site, and stay informed about the latest news and updates. I also encourage you to subscribe to this podcast, so you never miss an episode. And please feel free to share it with others who might find it of value. Let us know what you think about the podcast by leaving a review. And if you have ideas for future episodes, we’d love to hear from you. So please contact us via our website overcomingms.org. Thanks again for listening, and for joining me on this journey to Overcoming MS and living well with multiple sclerosis. I’m Geoff Allix and I’ll see you next time.