Fabric ≠ Food
I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t go around eating cotton. Cotton is grown to produce fabric, not as a food. How it made its way into the food world is something I just don’t understand. It’s one of those barely-edible substances I don’t consider food that cotton producers (read “Monsanto”) have managed to inject into just about every processed food on our shelves. This is a huge part of the reason those of us living a Paleo lifestyle try to avoid processed foods.
Unstable Fats
Cottonseed oil is only partially hydrogenated for shelf stability, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. It’s still a rancid seed oil that can wreak havoc on our bodies. It consists mostly of polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) which are extremely inflammatory and unstable. This means they tend to oxidize when exposed to heat and light and consuming oxidized fat increases our risk for oxidized LDL cholesterol in our blood. It’s the oxidized cholesterol that likes to latch onto the insides of our arteries, causing inflammation and plaque build-up.
Mark Sisson also considered cottonseed oil to be a questionable food source.
