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CNN
30 minutes ago
- Health
- CNN
Trump administration's guidance on emergency care law adds to ‘chaos,' not clarity, in states with strict abortion laws, some doctors say
Abortion rights Maternal health Women's healthFacebookTweetLink Follow Federal guidance that the Trump administration says is intended to offer clarity is instead leaving health care providers even more confused about whether they can provide an abortion in an emergency, particularly in states with strict abortion laws. This month, the Trump administration rescinded 2022 federal guidance specifying that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, people should be able to get an abortion if a medical emergency makes it necessary, even in states with laws that restrict such procedures. HHS and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said they would continue to enforce the federal law, specifying that the policy included emergency medical conditions that placed the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy. Then, in a letter to health care providers last week, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. emphasized that under EMTALA, stabilizing care should be given to a person who is pregnant and having a medical emergency – but it doesn't specify what that care might involve. In the June 13 letter, Kennedy says that it was the 2022 memo that 'created confusion. But that is no more.' Some doctors beg to differ. It's unclear exactly what the recision of the previous guidance meant for emergency care, particularly in states with highly restrictive abortion laws, some doctors said. The latest letter doesn't mention abortion at all — and the absence of specifics is creating more uncertainty. 'I do think this just contributes to all of the chaos that clinicians are having to deal with as they just attempt to take care of the patient in front of them and navigate state laws and federal guidance to provide care for patients,' said Dr. Nisha Verma, a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist and senior adviser for reproductive health policy and advocacy at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a professional organization that represents the majority of practitioners in the United States. 'It's not something you want to get wrong, because the consequences are so severe and it feels so scary.' Verma appreciates that the new letter from Kennedy clarifies that EMTALA is still the law of the land, even after the administration rescinded the 2022 guidance. But without a specific mention of abortion, she said, the nation's patchwork of laws makes it difficult for doctors to navigate emergency situations. Some of those state laws could even send doctors to jail if they make the wrong decision about when an emergency necessitates an abortion. 'I think it was helpful to specify abortion is covered under EMTALA' in the 2022 guidance, Verma said. 'I do think that having that language specifically in this really scary, chilling environment was helpful.' Dr. Alison Haddock, an emergency room doctor who is president of American College of Emergency Physicians, said she was happy that Kennedy's letter confirmed that pregnant patients need access to care and that it included examples of common problems like miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and premature rupture of membranes. 'Those are some of the situations that have been really challenging for our physicians. Noting that those can represent an obstetric emergency where EMTALA would apply is really good to see,' Haddock said. But she added that the Trump administration's guidance does not clear up everything. 'I think physicians are still going to have issues with conflicting state law where they are still going to be left in a gray area of uncertainty about how to balance adhering to EMTALA and adhering to state law, and that's going to leave patients in the same place,' Haddock said. Trips to the emergency room are common for pregnant people, studies show. The majority of emergency providers say they treat pregnant patients in virtually every shift, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and in some circumstances, treatment to protect a pregnant person's health or life may require an abortion. Pregnancy emergencies don't always happen during standard work hours, Haddock said, and the 'ability to convene the ethics committee at 2 a.m. is very limited, and then it can be a lot of layers to get through at the hospital.' Haddock said her association sent a letter to its members encouraging them to advocate for clearer guidance from their own hospitals. 'Achieving greater clarity on this is really important to make sure physicians feel like they have the protections they need to provide lifesaving medical care,' she added. Specifics have been important when it comes to EMTALA. When it became federal law in 1986, some hospitals refused to care for uninsured women in labor, so in 1989, Congress spelled out that pregnant people who were having contractions had to be given emergency care even if they couldn't pay for it. In 2021, guidance from the Biden administration added more specifics, saying it was a doctor's duty to provide stabilizing treatment that 'preempts any directly conflicting state law or mandate that might otherwise prohibit or prevent such treatment.' However, it wasn't until the 2022 guidance that it was spelled out that an abortion had to be provided when necessary. The Biden administration guidance was meant to eliminate confusion in states with anti-abortion laws that did not include an exception for the life or health of a pregnant person, and it stated that federal law preempted the state statutes in the case of such laws. That memo was issued just weeks after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that gave pregnant people a constitutional right to an abortion. A case before the court last year would have clarified whether federal law requires health care services to provide access to emergency care in every state, regardless of abortion laws, but the high court sent it back to the lower courts. In March, the Trump administration dropped the lawsuit. Some legal experts interpreted that as a signal that the administration would not enforce EMTALA. Even when the 2022 guidance was in place, provider surveys in states that criminalized abortion found that doctors were operating in 'chaos and confusion,' said Payal Shah, director of research, legal and advocacy with the Physicians for Human Rights a Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical and human rights organization. Providers were still having a hard time determining whether EMTALA really would protect them if they had to perform an abortion, even in an emergency situation. 'Criminalization causes fear, and then clinicians feel paralyzed,' Shah said. 'They don't feel like they have the authority to make decisions about reproductive health care in line with their medical judgment and medical ethics and pregnant patients' preferences. Instead, it becomes a legal decision.' After the Dobbs decision removed the federal right to an abortion in 2022, some women died after doctors told them it would be a 'crime' to intervene in a miscarriage or they couldn't access timely medical care. Idaho's strict abortion law has led some doctors to tell pregnant patients that they should consider buying 'life flight insurance' in case a local hospital wouldn't be able to take care of a pregnancy complication. Rescinding the 2022 guidance will probably make stories like these more common, several experts said. 'Rescinding this guidance serves no purpose other than to try to strengthen or deepen that confusion,' Shah said. 'This is an attempt to gaslight the American public and to say that criminalization of abortion is working. Criminalization is not working, and that is something the evidence really shows.' Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, interprets the new HHS letter to mean the law does require emergency abortion care, but she added that the administration's actions on the matter 'have been reckless at best and outright dangerous at worst.' 'The Trump administration is scrambling to clean up a mess entirely of its own making,' Kolbi-Molinas said in an email. 'The law has been clear for forty years: pregnant patients who go to a hospital in medical crisis must receive health- and lifesaving care, regardless of state law. If the administration had not rescinded the previous guidance reaffirming hospitals' obligations to provide this care earlier this month, there would have been no need to issue Friday's letter.' HHS did not respond to direct questions about what 'stabilizing care' meant and whether its interpretation of EMTALA included abortion as stabilizing care. Instead, a spokesperson for the agency sent a link to a June 4 message on X from Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 'Don't believe the spin and fearmongering of the fake news,' the post said. 'The Biden Administration created confusion, but EMTALA is clear and the law has not changed: women will receive care for miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and medical emergencies in all fifty states- this has not and will never change in the Trump Administration.' 'To me, this question remains: Why won't they use the word 'abortion' if they really believe that abortion is sometimes part of emergency medical care for pregnant people? They won't do it,' said Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now. 'If the Trump administration or Secretary Kennedy truly intended to reassure providers that abortion in the case of a medical emergency, is protected under EMTALA, they would have used those words explicitly as a qualifying example of emergency medical care,' Hart Holder added. 'I think it's a fair assumption to make that even more people are going to die when they're in emergency situations.' In the wake of Dobbs, the Kennedy letter presents another potential problem, said reproductive law expert Rolonda Donelson. 'In the letter, he mentions that EMTALA requires caring for the pregnant woman and their unborn child. Pre-Dobbs, that might not have meant much, but post-Dobbs, with the rise in fetal personhood in state abortion bans, it raises questions on whether the providers in these emergency departments have any duty to the unborn fetus and whether they can provide this emergency stabilizing care when it conflicts with their state abortion ban,' said Donelson, the Huber Reproductive Health Equity Legal Fellow at the National Partnership for Women & Families. 'This guidance does not provide any clarification. It increases chaos and confusion among patients, providers and everyone on whether they can go into an emergency department if they're experiencing a medical emergency and receive an abortion as necessary stabilizing care.' In March, concerned that even more clarity was needed, 88 lawmakers reintroduced a resolution that affirmed EMTALA protects access to emergency abortion care. But even if such a bill were to make its way through Congress, it's unclear whether Trump would sign it. In the absence of additional legislation, legal experts say, the confusion will continue placing an unfair burden on doctors and patients. 'It's unrealistic to have doctors who should be saving patient lives and doing all of those important things to try and also be lawyers and policy advocates and figure out the nitty gritty of what these things mean,' Donelson said. But it's important for patients to know, she said, that they should go to an emergency room if they are experiencing a medical emergency. 'The last thing I would want is a pregant person who is experiencing a medical emergency to think that they won't be able to get care at a hospital and forgo going and then something bad happen to them.'
The Guardian
35 minutes ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Pandemic preparedness ‘dramatically eroding' under Trump, experts say
Amid controversial dismissals for independent advisers and staff at health agencies, alongside lackluster responses to the bird flu and measles outbreaks, experts fear the US is now in worse shape to respond to a pandemic than before 2020. H5N1, which has received less attention under the Trump administration than from Biden's team, is not the only influenza virus or even the only variant of bird flu with the potential to spark a pandemic. But a subpar response to the ongoing US outbreak signals a larger issue: America is not ready for whatever pathogen will sweep through next. 'We have not even remotely maintained the level of pandemic preparedness – which needed a lot of work, as we saw from the Covid pandemic,' said Angela Rasmussen, an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. 'But now, we essentially have no pandemic preparedness.' 'I'm concerned on a number of fronts,' said Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health. Those concerns include a lack of quality information from officials, weakened virus monitoring systems, and public health reductions at the federal, state and local levels. 'The thing that I am most concerned about is the veracity of information coming out of the health agencies,' Nuzzo said. In the ongoing outbreaks of measles, for example, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of health and human services, has downplayed the severity of the disease, spread misinformation about the highly effective vaccine to prevent measles, and pushed unproven treatments. 'The communications on measles gives me deep worries about what would happen in a pandemic,' Nuzzo said. 'If a pandemic were to occur today, the only thing we would have to protect ourselves on day one would be information.' The H5N1 outbreak has been plagued by incomplete information, an issue that began in the Biden administration but has amplified under Trump. In Arizona, 6 million chickens were killed or culled at a Hickman's Family Farms location because of H5N1 in May. That's about 95% of the company's hen population in the state. Hundreds of workers, including inmate laborers, are now being dismissed as Arizona braces for egg shortages. Yet even as H5N1 outbreaks continue to spread on farms and wreak havoc on the food supply, no new bird flu cases have been reported in people for months. 'I am concerned that we may not be finding new infections in humans,' Nuzzo said – and a lack of testing may be the culprit. 'We're not testing – it's not that there are no new cases,' Rassmussen said. The last bird flu case in a person was listed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on 23 February. At that point, at least 830 people in the US had been tested after contact with sick animals. This kind of testing – monitoring the health of people who regularly work with H5N1-infected animals – is how the vast majority of cases (64 out of 70) have been found in this outbreak. But then, several CDC officials overseeing the bird flu response were fired on 1 April. Since then, only about 50 people in the US have been tested after exposure to sick animals – and no positive cases have been announced. It's also been difficult to understand the extent of the outbreak and how the virus spreads among animals. 'We still just don't have a good picture of the scope and scale of this outbreak – we never really have. And until we have that, we're not going to be able to contain it,' Rasmussen said. 'It's extremely bad,' she continued. 'We don't have any information about what's happening right now. The next pandemic could be starting, and we just don't know where that's happening, and we don't have any ability to find out.' Huge reductions in the public health workforce and resources has led to less monitoring of outbreaks, known as disease surveillance. 'Cutting back on that surveillance is leaving us more in the dark,' Nuzzo said. The CDC clawed back $11.4bn in Covid funding in March. This funding was used to monitor, test, vaccinate and otherwise respond to public health issues at the state, local, territorial and tribal level. 'We're seeing health departments scrambling,' Nuzzo said. 'That infrastructure is just dramatically eroding.' International monitoring programs to address outbreaks before they expand across borders have also been cancelled. 'We have taken for granted all of those protections, and I fear that we are poised to see the consequences,' Nuzzo said. Trump's crackdown on immigration also poses a major challenge in detecting cases and treating patients during outbreaks. 'A lot of the people who are most at risk are strongly disincentivized to report any cases, given that many of them are undocumented or are not US citizens,' Rasmussen said. 'Nobody wants to go get tested if they're going to end up in an Ice detention facility.' When cases are not detected, that means patients are not able to access care. Although it's rare for people to become sick with H5N1, for instance – the virus is still primarily an avian, not a human, influenza – this variant of bird flu has a 52% mortality rate globally among people with known infections. Allowing a deadly virus to spread and mutate under the radar has troubling implications for its ability to change into a human influenza without anyone knowing. And if such changes were detected, widening gaps in communication could be the next hurdle for preventing a pandemic, Nuzzo said. 'Communication is our most important public health intervention. People, in order to be able to know how to protect themselves, need to have access to facts, and they need to believe in the messengers. And the communication around the measles outbreaks are deeply eroding our standing with the American people.' Even stockpiled vaccines and other protective measures, like personal protective equipment, take time to distribute, Nuzzo added. 'And flu is a fast-moving disease that could cause a lot of damage in the months it would take to mount a vaccination campaign.' The US government's cancellation of its $766m contract with Moderna to research and develop an H5N1 vaccine also signals a concerning strategy from health officials, Nuzzo and Rasmussen said. Other restrictions on vaccine development, like a new plan to test all vaccines against saline placebos, is 'going to make it extremely difficult to approve any new vaccine' and would 'have a devastating impact on our ability to respond to a potential pandemic', Rasmussen said – especially in a rapidly moving pandemic where speed matters. 'You don't have time for that if this virus causes a human-to–human outbreak,' Rasmussen said. All of these policies mean the US is less prepared for a pandemic than it was in 2020, she said. And it also means there will be preventable suffering now, even before the next big one strikes. 'We are actively making people less safe, less healthy and more dead,' Rasmussen said.
Times
6 hours ago
- Health
- Times
Which cooking oil is the healthiest — olive, avocado or coconut?
If you're not sure which are the healthiest oils and fats to use in your cooking, you are not alone. With conflicting studies being published as to which is best, along with heated debate on social media, it's no surprise that we're confused. So which should you opt for? Seed oils such as sunflower, safflower and corn oil have recently come in for particular criticism, with influencers using the hashtags seedoils and seedoilfree branding them as unhealthy, even toxic, and blaming them for driving up rates of obesity and disease. Donald Trump's health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has suggested that Americans are being 'unknowingly poisoned' by seed oils. But experts aren't convinced. This criticism of seed oils rests on theirhigh content of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, including one called linoleic acid. In theory, larger amounts of omega-6 fatty acids compared to lower levels of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids contribute to inflammation in the body that is linked to disease. However, according to Philip Calder, a professor in nutritional immunology at the University of Southampton, 'it is a hypothetical argument' without scientific backing. 'People have talked [online] about the fact that seed oils can be pro-inflammatory but there isn't any evidence in humans that it is the case,' Calder says. • Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing That's not all. Last month a study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggested that a daily intake of 5g of butter was associated with lower levels of type 2 diabetes, a risk factor for heart disease. But a larger recent investigation involving over 200,000 participants and published in the Jama Internal Medicine journal suggested that butter is the baddie, and a higher intake is linked to a 15 per cent increased risk of premature death. In that paper a consumption of plant oils such as olive, canola and soybean was associated with a 16 per cent lower risk of early death, particularly from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Last month a study of almost 2500 people in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggested that a daily intake of 5g of butter was associated with lower levels of type 2 diabetes, a risk factor for heart disease. But a larger recent investigation involving over 200,000 participants and published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal suggested that butter is the baddie, a higher intake of it linked to a 15 increased risk of premature that paper a consumption of plant oils such as olive, canola and soybean oil was associated with a 16 per cent lower risk of early death, particularly from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Even olive oil, often hailed as the healthiest of all oils, is not without its critics. This week scientists at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine announced in the journal Cell Reports that a high-fat diet containing relatively large amounts of oleic acid — a fatty acid found in olive, sunflower and many other plant-based oils — could spur the body into making more fat cells. Michael Rudolph, an author of the paper and assistant professor of biochemistry and physiology at Oklahoma, said the take-home message from his study is to aim for moderation and variety of fats in the diet. 'Relatively balanced levels of oleic acid seem to be beneficial, but higher and prolonged levels may be detrimental,' Rudolph says. So which to choose? We asked the experts for their advice. Healthy fats are an important part of a healthy diet, but you can still get too much of a good thing. The government recommends that total fat intake — including all plant oils — should not make up more than 35 per cent of our total daily calories. 'Oils, even the healthy ones, are energy dense, meaning they provide a lot of calories in a small amount,' says Bahee Van de Bor, a dietician and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association. 'Cooking with a small splash is good and that can help the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins from vegetables, but there's no need to pour a lot of oils into or onto food.' Just two tablespoons of oil provides about 28g of fat and 238 calories which, if consumed in addition to your regular energy intake, won't be kind to the waistline in the longer term. 'Maintaining a healthy weight is important for reducing the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and promoting healthy ageing,' Van de Bor says. 'So keep an eye on overall fat intake.' Seed oils are a sub-group of plant oils extracted from the seed rather than the fruit of a plant. They are rich in unsaturated fats — including both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats — which are beneficial for heart health when used in place of saturated fats. They also contain the omega-6 fat linoleic acid, an essential fatty acid, meaning our bodies need it but can't make it on their own, so we need to get it in the diet. • Is your heart at risk from fatty muscles? 'Some concerns raised about seed oils relate to the potential for high omega-6 intake which may promote inflammation,especially if intake of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids in the diet is low,' Van de Bor says. 'However, large reviews and well-conducted studies haven't found any consistent evidence of harmful effects of seed oils.' In fact, using seed oils as part of a balanced diet is a healthy move. 'Linoleic acid is actually very important for the skin and for controlling cholesterol,' Calder says. 'Seed oils also contain tocopherols, which are antioxidants, and other phytochemicals such as phytosterols that can also help to lower blood fats.' Of more concern is not the oils themselves, but how they're used. Calder says the polyunsaturated fatty acids in seed oils are very prone to damage from high heat and seed oils shouldn't be used for frying or reused for cooking. Likewise, when seed oils are incorporated into ultra-processed foods, their health impact can shift. 'Seed oils are not the enemy,' Calder says. 'Balance in any diet is important.' Nut oils, such as walnut, macadamia and almond, share some similarities with seed oils — both are sources of unsaturated fats, which support heart health. However, their fatty acid profiles differ. For example, almond and hazelnut oils are rich in monounsaturated fats, while flaxseed and sunflower oils are higher in polyunsaturated fats, including omega-3 and omega-6. Both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are considered heart-healthy, and Van de Bor says there's no need to favour one over the other. The British Heart Foundation recommends including a variety of unsaturated fats in a healthy diet. 'Nut oils offer a favourable balance of polyunsaturated fats, including both omega-6 and the plant-based omega-3 fat alpha-linolenic acid (ALA),' Van de Bor says. 'This balance may help support the body's ability to convert ALA into eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), the longer-chain omega-3s involved in reducing inflammation and supporting brain and heart health.' Rhiannon Lambert, a registered nutritionist and the author of The Science of Nutrition, says unrefined peanut oil is good for adding to sauces or as a dressing, whereas the refined version can be cooked at high temperatures and used for frying. All types of olive oil are relatively high in beneficial monounsaturated fatty acids — about 75 per cent by volume — which has been shown to help lower your 'bad' low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol when substituted for saturated fats. But with extra virgin olive oil — the purest, most antioxidant-packed variety — you get some further health benefits, although you do of course pay more. Cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil is considered the gold standard because it is pressed from ripe olives and processed without high heat or chemicals, preserving many of the polyphenol compounds found in the plant. Virgin olive oil is similar but mechanically extracted from the plant. 'Of the other types, olive oil or pure olive oil are typically a blend of refined olive oil with a small amount of virgin or extra virgin oil added back for flavour,' Lambert says. 'And the term 'light' olive oil, which refers to its mild taste and lighter colour, not to reduced calories or fat, is more refined and processed, but still has health benefits.' In theory, the higher concentrations of polyphenols in extra virgin olive oil may provide extra antioxidant and disease fighting benefits, although there is no clear evidence that it has greater disease-fighting effects than other types. All fats have a smoke, or burn, point, the temperature at which they begin to degrade and produce unwanted chemical byproducts that affect both the health profile and flavour of the oil. For decades it was thought that olive oil was best served cold, drizzled over salads, but Van de Bor says the idea that it shouldn't be heated is a misconception. 'In fact, extra virgin olive oil is stable enough for most everyday cooking methods like roasting, sautéing or pan-frying,' she says. 'It contains natural antioxidants and polyphenols that help to protect it during heating, and its smoke point of around 190–210C is well above typical cooking temperatures used at home.' More refined olive oils, including those labelled 'light' or just 'olive oil', tend to have a higher smoke point because they contain fewer impurities. 'Although they have less of the flavour and antioxidants of extra virgin olive oil, it makes them a bit better suited for higher-heat cooking like stir-frying,' Lambert says. • How to pick the best olive oil: what the experts look for Taking daily shots of two tablespoons of olive oil is a wellness trend said to bring health benefits ranging from improved digestion to complexion. Beyoncé, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez are among those extolling its virtues on social media, with Goldie Hawn reportedly drinking olive oil before going to bed. If you can bear to drink it, is it worth it? 'Olive oil has health benefits, but taking shots of it rather than incorporating it into meals doesn't offer added benefits,' Lambert says. 'It's much better to add olive oil into meals where it can complement other foods, supporting absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and adding to overall nutrient diversity.' Avocado oil is considered an elixir for health, providing vitamin E, lutein for eye health and beneficial plant polyphenols and carotenoids,but it does come with a hefty price tag. A small 2017 study in the Journal of Functional Foods did show that swapping butter for avocado oil helped to lower blood fats and cholesterol levels, although it looked at people who were given the equivalent of a fry-up for breakfast and the removal of some saturated fat — the butter — in place of any plant oil might have provided the same benefits. Lambert says it's a good choice for cooking at temperatures of 200C or higher. 'Avocado oil has a higher smoke point at 250C than extra virgin olive oil so is useful for deep-frying, pan-frying and stir-frying,' she says. 'But in health terms it's probably no better for you than olive oil.' A few years ago coconut oil was on everyone's shopping list due to its unique flavour and list of purported health benefits. It contains high levels of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) which have a different chemical structure to other fats, and because they are quickly absorbed by the body are thought to promote satiety and, in turn, prevent the storage of body and belly fat. However, MCTs are also a form of saturated fat, the type linked in many studies to increased LDL cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease. In 2020, a review of 16 papers published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation concluded that regular 'consumption of coconut oil results in significantly higher LDL cholesterol' than other plant oils. As a consequence, it began to fall out of favour. So, should we avoid it? 'Current evidence suggests that coconut oil may have a neutral effect on blood cholesterol — not as harmful as butter, but not as beneficial as oils rich in unsaturated fats, such as olive or rapeseed oil,' Van de Bor says. 'This doesn't mean you need to avoid coconut oil entirely, and using it occasionally when baking or sautéing foods is fine.' The latest study suggesting we revert to 5g daily of butter to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease may have raised hope among butter-lovers, but Van de Bor says we should still eat it sparingly. 'Broader and more robust evidenceconsistently supports choosingunsaturated plant-based oilsover butter for long-term health,' she says. 'Larger and more robust studies such as the JAMA Internal Medicine paper earlier this year underpin this by showing that replacing butter with unsaturated plant oilscan reduce the risk of early death by around17 per cent.' Butter isn't off-limits then, but shouldn't be seen as a health food. 'Use it occasionally, but not in place of healthier plant oils,' she says. Calder says olive oil is his staple at home. 'But rapeseed or canola is not bad at all as it has a mix of healthy plant fatty acids and is quite a balanced provider of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids,' he says. Van de Bor also has rapeseed oil and olive oil on standby for everyday use. 'For salads, I sometimes reach for walnut oil, especially when making my own dressings,' she says. 'And I do use coconut oil occasionally, particularly if I'm making homemade granola, as I simply enjoy the flavour.' Lambert, who also favours olive oil, says variety is key. 'Flaxseed or linseed oil is one of the richest sources of ALA, a plant-based omega-3, although it's not recommended for cooking at high temperatures due to its low smoke point,' she says. 'And sunflower oil, rich in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, can also be part of a healthy balanced diet when minimally processed versions are used.'
CNN
13 hours ago
- Health
- CNN
Infectious disease expert explains why she resigned from the CDC
Former CDC infectious disease expert Dr. Fiona Havers tells CNN's Jake Tapper why she resigned her post as a senior vaccine adviser, citing concerns about changes to the agency's vaccine processes under US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
CNN
13 hours ago
- Health
- CNN
Infectious disease expert explains why she resigned from the CDC
Former CDC infectious disease expert Dr. Fiona Havers tells CNN's Jake Tapper why she resigned her post as a senior vaccine adviser, citing concerns about changes to the agency's vaccine processes under US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
