Do we need oil? Fats, vitamins, and nutrient absorption with Brian Clement, Ph.D, Steve Blake, Sc.D.

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]The two things that plants provide are the two fuels that through evolution the human cell requires. Essential fatty acids and glucose. It's in raw plant food. Once you cook it, it damages the molecular structure and can cause disorders. So, do you prefer if people need more to get filled up that they stay raw but use lots of seeds and nuts and oil or do you prefer they have don't use the seeds, nuts, and oils but they have the cooked sprouted but then cooked >> if you're sick.

[00:00:35]>> If you're sick, you know, we're on a tight rope with very sick people. It has to be 100% raw. So yes, I would prefer they take sprouted, ground up and made into something delectable rather than just ground up, you know, nuts uh into a burger. You put garlic or onions or some sauce on it than I would people eating cooked food because you'll learn tomorrow there's a disorder we've known about for 103 years called luccoytosis that we can't make that go away. It's a disease that lowers immune function, reduces the soldiers, the white blood count. So yes, but you and I I eat baked squash sometimes. I eat quinoa sometimes, >> but quinoa, >> but raw seeds and nuts is to you a better choice than cooked quinoa.

[00:01:21]>> Much much better, you know. And I I don't go along with the choir that oil's evil. I don't think oil is evil. The human body requires oil. I mean, and if you look at the real studies, and I I point this out, and I'm not here to to say anything against anyone. Everyone's at their own pace of development and understanding. But if you said, "What is the one diet that's studied way too much?" It's called the Mediterranean diet.

[00:01:50]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:50]>> I mean, you know why? Because it's the best common diet. And I agree with that.

[00:01:55]So, in a large part of the world, they eat this Mediterranean diet. And what do we know? They have less heart attacks.

[00:02:02]They have less strokes. They live commonly to their 90s and beyond. And you know, they they they seem to be perfectly health. So, how the heck can you possibly bad mouth oil when we have that evidence that is at a higher level than I've ever seen any diet? Now, in my book from three, four years ago, the self-healing diet, I talk about studies that show if you don't have any oil, more dementia, less energy.

[00:02:29]>> Uh, now Brian, you've also been emphatic not to cook oil. Is that a big deal?

[00:02:35]that we go back to 1952 when Dr. Blake and I were babies and 1952 by the way they showed us any cooked oil that means if you take uh spinach that has oil in it and cook it becomes a carcinogen.

[00:02:51]>> Okay. So are you saying um both of you asked Brian first then Dr. Blake, if someone said, "I am eating a perfect raw diet. I do not have any craving for oil." Are you saying, "No, go back and take hemp, flax, or olive oil. You need it for your health." Or are you saying only do that if you need it for your pleasure and taste?

[00:03:14]>> I'm saying that you could take the seeds. You don't need the oil. So beyond the fact that I take a little bit of olive oil, not a lot, I do take five seeds seeds on my salad, which has 10, 15, 20 different sprouts and probably 13 to 15 different vegetables on it. So I do think you need oil. Yes. Now, if you've just had a heart attack, Dr. Eselston and his contingency, uh, if you just had a heart attack, I'm going to be talking a different story temporarily.

[00:03:46]But you're saying that even if we don't need it, if we're eating seeds, you know, we're eating flax, chia, hemp, pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, poppy, we're happy. We're happy with our sprouts. We have no interest in oil. You're saying go back and >> No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying you don't need oil.

[00:04:03]>> You don't need oil.

[00:04:03]>> You don't need oil at that point.

[00:04:05]>> I happen to like olive oil. I grew up around a lot of Italians.

[00:04:09]>> I'm I'm going to agree here that we don't need oil. Um, humans have required two essential fatty acids. Linoleic acid, the omega6, we need about six grams per day and alpha linolenic acid, the omega-3 essential fatty acid, we need about three grams per day and those are going to be supplied. By the way, the Mediterranean diet is better than the Western diet or the American diet and no doubt about that. Is the Mediterranean diet the best diet we can eat for health? Nowhere near the best.

[00:04:41]So while a lot of people can transition from the American diet to the Mediterranean diet, that will be a benefit to them. Yes, lower heart attacks and so on, but I don't think that the olive oil in the Mediterranean diet is really that helpful. One of the studies done in France, they tried either nuts or olive oil with a Mediterranean diet and they found that the nuts were healthier. Big surprise.

[00:05:03]I also noticed that when I boy uh boy where to start here when I analyze the Mediterranean diet I looked at the saturated fats and you know they were about uh 10% of calories more than the 6% that we should have. Guess where they came from? The olive oil. Did you know olive oil is rich in saturated fat and you get too much if you eat the two tablespoons a day that they're eating?

[00:05:32]So like you say it has to be very little and if it's not the olive oil extra virgin is made from the olives but the other olive oil is made from the pits and it's not nearly as healthy. So humans need no oil outside of what we find in nuts and seeds especially as Stephen you mentioned the uh chia seeds or the hemp seeds or the flax seeds. We get plenty of that. Almost no one has ever been deficient in omega sixes. So, we don't have to worry about that too much at all.

[00:06:03]>> Okay. By by the way, everyone, if you're looking for olives, there's a company called Good Faith Farms that makes olives in a with water. They don't heat it. They claim they're the only ones in the country that do it with this water method where they don't disturb anything. They just use water and salt and there's no I I don't want to do it damage. It's called Good Faith. Good like Faith Farm. Okay.

[00:06:30]>> Good Faith Farms. And there's a very nice man who does it like as a hobby.

[00:06:35]Good Faith Farms. And they make it in just water with no vinegar, no none of the processing, none of the heating.

[00:06:43]Good Faith Farms.

[00:06:46]>> Well, I do want to you mentioned Dr. Eselen in the super lowfat diet after heart attacks. I do have a bit of a problem with that. Uh, as you mentioned earlier, real vitamin E from real plants is essential to protecting our LDL from oxidation so they don't stick to the artery, make foam cells and create aoscllerotic plaque, increasing strokes, vascular dementia, and heart attacks.

[00:07:08]So, we really do need to have vitamin E and that this it's an essential nutrient. And what I find on the very low-fat diets is the vitamin E runs about 3 to 5 milligrams a day. That's not any not even the minimum 15 that we need at the very very lowest. Another problem with the super lowfat diets, if they're really getting down to 10% of calories as fat, is that there's not enough fat to trigger choleaccytokin in order to trigger enough bile for us to absorb any of the beautiful carotenoids.

[00:07:39]And if we don't, we're missing fat soluble uh antioxidants that are extremely valuable. Go ahead, Dr. Clement. What what you said is incredibly important.

[00:07:49]So talk about the development of bile and what bile really is.

[00:07:54]>> Just do it in 10 seconds. I want to get to 40 more questions. So really fast.

[00:07:59]>> Go quick. Quick.

[00:08:02]>> Bile is necessary to micelize fatty substances so that they can be digested and absorbed into the intestine. If they're not micelized, they go through.

[00:08:11]They do you no good. That's less than 10 seconds.

[00:08:14]This is why he's basically saying with no oil at all, you can actually harm your ability to absorb oil.

[00:08:21]>> Yeah. Yes. Or carotenoids or vitamin E or vitamin K or any of the uh fat soluble nutrients. Yes.

[00:08:28]>> Exactly.

[00:08:28]>> Okay. So, let's move now to 10-second answers. So, I could get through a lot of stuff people just want to hear.