Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Since sea lions and human babies both have the same waxy coating, maybe our ancient ancestors spent time in water—like sea lions—before evolving into modern humans.
Descriptive
Adding fat to the chickens’ diet didn’t change their blood pressure — so high blood pressure probably isn’t why their arteries got damaged.
Correlational
The seeds of this desert plant might be a new, untapped source for making natural ingredients that keep oils from going bad.
Only a few animals—like sea lions, otters, and moles—that live in wet places have a special oil called squalene in their skin, which might help them survive in water.
In chickens, the lower part of the main artery has more cholesterol and more damage than the upper part — and how bad the damage is in each bird is linked to how much cholesterol is in that specific spot, not how much cholesterol is in the whole body.
Scientists found a new small protein piece from a desert plant’s seeds by filtering the broken-down proteins to find the ones that fight oxidation.
As baby sea lions grow in the womb, the special waxy coating on their skin builds up in a pattern that’s almost exactly like how it builds up in human babies—peaking near birth.
Quantitative
Hens fed animal fat died more often, had more cholesterol in their blood and arteries, but surprisingly had less visible artery damage than hens fed no extra fat — meaning more fat in the arteries doesn’t always mean worse damage.
This plant peptide doesn't just fight oxidation itself—it also seems to shield the oil's natural antioxidants and healthy fats from breaking down.
Baby sea lions have a lot of a special oil called squalene in their first poop—way more than in their blood—which might help protect their guts from damage or help good bacteria grow.
Feeding hens corn oil for three years seemed to reduce artery damage more than feeding them no extra fat, even though their blood cholesterol didn’t change much — maybe the type of fat matters more than how much cholesterol is in the blood.
A small protein fragment from a type of desert plant seed was shown in a lab test to neutralize harmful molecules that make oils go bad, and it slowed down the spoiling of walnut oil.
The special fats in baby sea lion vernix come from their skin—not from their mom’s milk—just like in human babies, which means this isn’t something they eat, but something their body makes.
Baby sea lions are born with a waxy coating on their skin that they swallow before birth, and this coating has special fats and oils that are also found in human babies—maybe to help their guts grow healthy bacteria.
The oil that replaced the bad trans fat (palm oil) is mostly saturated fat — which is also bad for your heart — so swapping one bad fat for another might not help much.
About one-third of companies that changed their recipes switched to healthier plant oils like sunflower or canola oil instead of palm oil.
Vitamin K1 helps protect fats in the blood of baby rats, but it doesn't help protect the fats inside their red blood cells — even though the blood has more antioxidants overall.
Even after removing the bad oil, nearly 4 out of 10 packaged foods still contained palm oil — which is also high in saturated fat — meaning the overall fat profile didn't get much healthier.
Adult rats don't get any antioxidant boost from vitamin K1, and their blood fats keep getting damaged — unlike baby rats, who do benefit.
About 4 in 10 of the foods that used to have the bad oil were just taken off the shelves entirely instead of being changed to use a different fat.
Even though baby rats have more antioxidants in their blood, their red blood cells break down fats more easily than adult rats' cells, meaning their blood cells are naturally more fragile.
When companies stopped using the bad oil (PHOs), more than half of them switched to palm oil — which is high in saturated fat, another type of fat linked to heart disease.
Even though vitamin K1 helps protect fats in baby rats' blood, it doesn't help protect the proteins in their red blood cells from damage.
After the law changed, not a single packaged food product in Poland had the harmful oil called partially hydrogenated oil on its label anymore.