Editorial: Dietary Lipid Oxidation and Fried Food Toxicology

Mankind is facing some difficult challenges and decisions. Indeed, our recently evidenced vulnerability to emergent viruses and how they can best be defended against; whether or not it is wise to totally move to a “carbon-free” world economy; and should we switch from animal foods to plant-based “fake meats,” to name but a few. The human condition, as affected by diet, has been debated for more than a century. It is therefore crucial that decisions made on future human health prospects, and the global environment, are based on sound scientific principles, and not simply to impart an economic advantage of one particular industry or corporation over another. The historic view that saturated fat and cholesterol are linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD), has experienced a significant evolution. Cholesterol is now considered not to represent a serious dietary issue, according to the American Heart Association (1). Likewise, the extreme resistance of saturated fat to lipid oxidation, and the lack of hypercholesterolemic effects of some saturated fatty acids, has led to a less severe attitude being expressed by many researchers (1). These new conclusions raise the question of what dietary components are related to human CVD and other pathologies? One clearly valuable answer to this question is afforded by groups of publications focused on fried food toxicology. It is interesting and perhaps significant that a recent review has summarized intelligibly, the massive amount of evidence adversely implicating omega-6 rich vegetable oils in the development, progression and pathogenesis of human CVDs (2), citing the fact that the introduction of soybean oil in the USA coincides clearly with an increased incidence of this non communicable chronic disease (NCD). Animal fat consumption has been declining for more than a century, beginning at the same time period that vegetable oil intake began to significantly increase. Interestingly, the authors of Ref. (2) cite the oxidized linoleic acid hypothesis, naming compounds which they specify as causative agents, particularly linoleoylglycerol oxidation products. This hypothesis coincides with the primary focus of the following papers-namely, radical-induced lipid oxidation is a serious health issue for the world’s human population and this subject has been “flying under the radar” for far too long.