Melanoma has tripled since 1975. The sun has not changed once in that time. Something in the skin has.
There is no dermatology clinic in the records of Georgian London. No Victorian warning to fieldworkers about ultraviolet. Not one document, in the entire written medical record of Britain before the twentieth century, telling the population that the thing they had stood under all their lives was going to kill them.
Because it wasn't.
The farm labourer of 1850 did 14-hour days in a July field with his sleeves rolled up and a face like a saddle by 30. He did it for 40 years. What killed him was a cart, a cough or the gin.
The North Sea fisherman of 1890 stood on a deck with the sun coming off the water at him from every angle, ate herring, oats and butter, and died of the sea.
Every human being on your family tree for a quarter of a million years lived outdoors under that sun without a tube of anything between them and it.
Then, in 1911, a soap company started selling cottonseed oil as food.
Before Crisco, the fat in the British and American diet was butter, lard, tallow, suet and cream. Saturated. Stable. It sits under ultraviolet light and does nothing.
After Crisco, the fat was soybean, corn, sunflower, rapeseed. Polyunsaturated. It goes rancid on the shelf, in the pan, and in you.
The fat you eat is the fat your skin is built from. It goes into every cell membrane and stays there for months.
Put saturated fat under the sun and nothing happens. That was the peasant.
Put polyunsaturated fat under the sun and it oxidises on the spot. Free radicals, inflammation, redness, peeling, and the cell damage that a dermatologist, looking at the wreckage, quite reasonably calls dangerous. That is you.
Feed an animal seed oil in the lab and the same sun does more damage to it. Feed it saturated fat and the damage drops. This has been known since the 1980s and it has never once appeared on a bottle.
Linoleic acid in the western diet has more than tripled since 1960. Melanoma has tripled alongside it. Sunscreen sales went up the whole time, and the rate did not turn.
The sun did not become dangerous. The skin did.
The medieval peasant stood in a field all day because his skin was made of butter. Yours is made of soybean oil. They behave very differently under ultraviolet.
Nobody in a white coat will tell you this, because the alternative to a tube of factor 50 is telling you to change what you fry in, and there is no lobby for lard.
The sun has been there the whole time.
The seed oil hasn't.
Stop ingesting it. Eat butter. Go outside.
Mike
There is no dermatology clinic in the records of Georgian London. No Victorian warning to fieldworkers about ultraviolet. Not one document, in the entire written medical record of Britain before the twentieth century, telling the population that the thing they had stood under all their lives was going to kill them.
Because it wasn't.
The farm labourer of 1850 did 14-hour days in a July field with his sleeves rolled up and a face like a saddle by 30. He did it for 40 years. What killed him was a cart, a cough or the gin.
The North Sea fisherman of 1890 stood on a deck with the sun coming off the water at him from every angle, ate herring, oats and butter, and died of the sea.
Every human being on your family tree for a quarter of a million years lived outdoors under that sun without a tube of anything between them and it.
Then, in 1911, a soap company started selling cottonseed oil as food.
Before Crisco, the fat in the British and American diet was butter, lard, tallow, suet and cream. Saturated. Stable. It sits under ultraviolet light and does nothing.
After Crisco, the fat was soybean, corn, sunflower, rapeseed. Polyunsaturated. It goes rancid on the shelf, in the pan, and in you.
The fat you eat is the fat your skin is built from. It goes into every cell membrane and stays there for months.
Put saturated fat under the sun and nothing happens. That was the peasant.
Put polyunsaturated fat under the sun and it oxidises on the spot. Free radicals, inflammation, redness, peeling, and the cell damage that a dermatologist, looking at the wreckage, quite reasonably calls dangerous. That is you.
Feed an animal seed oil in the lab and the same sun does more damage to it. Feed it saturated fat and the damage drops. This has been known since the 1980s and it has never once appeared on a bottle.
Linoleic acid in the western diet has more than tripled since 1960. Melanoma has tripled alongside it. Sunscreen sales went up the whole time, and the rate did not turn.
The sun did not become dangerous. The skin did.
The medieval peasant stood in a field all day because his skin was made of butter. Yours is made of soybean oil. They behave very differently under ultraviolet.
Nobody in a white coat will tell you this, because the alternative to a tube of factor 50 is telling you to change what you fry in, and there is no lobby for lard.
The sun has been there the whole time.
The seed oil hasn't.
Stop ingesting it. Eat butter. Go outside.
Mike
