Lipid Peroxides

Lipid peroxides begin forming from fats at approximately 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Aajonus called this threshold the "labile point," the temperature at which fats begin to transform in a toxic direction. He explained the concept by analogy: you do not have to cross a line fully to know the crossing has begun. You do not have to be dead to know you have been ill before death. The implication is that even moderate or gentle heating of fats initiates lipid peroxide formation, and the process intensifies as temperature rises.

Once you go above pasteurization temperature, which he placed at 141 degrees Fahrenheit, the alteration of fats becomes severe and the resulting toxicity pronounced. At and beyond that temperature, the creation of heterocyclic amines, lipid peroxides, and acrylamides accelerates into territory he described as generating a "very toxic manner" of chemical transformation throughout the food.

Aajonus consistently grouped lipid peroxides with heterocyclic amines and acrylamides as the three toxins from cooking that are most recognized even within conventional scientific and regulatory frameworks. He noted that these three are the ones "everybody acknowledges," and that they acknowledge them only because there is enough evidence that even institutional science cannot ignore it. He pointed to the Swedish acrylamide research as an example of how powerful the evidence base had become, noting that approximately 60 percent of laboratory animals fed chips, cereals, and similar foods developed cancer.

The combination of lipid peroxides with acrylamides is particularly dangerous in his view. When you fry a carbohydrate-dense food in fat or oil at high temperatures, you get both compounds simultaneously. This is what makes chips, french fries, and donuts the most toxic foods he identified. He stated: "If you take the acrylamides and put the lipid peroxides in it, you have some very potent toxic food." He specified that this category includes any high-carbohydrate food that has been fried, encompassing chips of all kinds, french fries (which he noted the British call chips), and donuts. He described almost all packaged cereals as "the most toxic food on this planet" because they involve both the acrylamide pathway from cooked carbohydrates and lipid peroxide formation from the fats used in their processing and frying.

Lipid peroxides are oxidized fats. Because they are in an oxidized state, Aajonus described them as inherently putrid, meaning they begin generating gases and reactive chemicals once inside the body. He explained that they cause over-oxidation, which is a fundamentally destabilizing condition for cellular and blood chemistry.

One specific and immediate consequence he described is that free lipid peroxides will "rip a lot of nutrients out of your blood and nervous system." This nutrient stripping effect is a serious physiological harm in his framework because it depletes the very substances the body needs to manage its ongoing detoxification workload and sustain cellular function. The nervous system, which he described elsewhere as being 60 to 80 percent fat at the cellular level, is particularly vulnerable to this kind of stripping.

Lipid peroxides also create a toxic environment in the intestines. He described this as producing "terribly stinky gas," which is a marker of intestinal toxicity and disruption of the microbial environment. This intestinal disruption is not cosmetic in his view; it signals that the digestive environment has been compromised in a way that affects nutrient absorption and microbial function throughout the gut.

Beyond the intestinal effects, lipid peroxides circulating in the blood demand enormous amounts of oxygen for the body to manage their toxicity. He noted that when oxidized fats from cooking are present in the blood as lipid peroxides, "it takes a lot more oxygen to deal with that toxicity." This is one reason he contrasted the effects of cooked fat with raw fat: raw fat consumed to gain weight does not create this oxygen demand problem in most people, whereas the lipid peroxides from cooked fats create a systemic burden. He observed that only about 2 percent of his patient population showed problems from eating raw fats to gain weight, and those were people who already had arteriosclerosis or existing heart disease.

Lipid peroxides are also classified in his framework as free radicals, or more precisely, they generate free radical chain reactions. He defined free radicals broadly as "altered nutrients that cause radical reactions resulting in damage inside and outside of cells," and he explicitly included the 32 known cooking toxins, with lipid peroxides among the most notorious, under this free radical category. These chain reactions destabilize other molecules, generating more free radicals in a cascading process that he linked to cancer, Crohn's disease, and approximately 2,000 other disease conditions.

Aajonus was direct about the cancer-causing nature of lipid peroxides. He stated that lipid peroxides are "very carcinogenic" and that they accumulate in the body over a long period of time. He attributed part of the reason cancer rates are as high as one in two for men and one in three for women to this long-term accumulation of cooking toxins, with lipid peroxides being among the primary contributors.

He cited existing scientific research and regulatory responses as confirmation of the problem, pointing to New York City's ban on trans fatty acids in restaurants as a step in the right direction, while arguing that it did not go far enough because it addressed only one category of harmful processed fat without confronting the full problem of all cooked fats and the lipid peroxides they generate.

The cancer risk from lipid peroxides is compounded when they combine with acrylamides in fried carbohydrate-dense foods. This pairing of two distinct carcinogenic pathways in a single food, such as a chip or a donut, is what led him to describe those foods as especially potent in their capacity to cause disease.

In a discussion about cheese making, Aajonus addressed lipid peroxide formation in the context of heated dairy. He noted that when cheese is heated to the point where it is no longer bioactive, lipid peroxides form within it. He described cheese that has been heated as a dry, non-bioactive food, and stated that eating such cheese means "you're going to start forming free lipid peroxides which are still toxic." The mechanism is the same as with other fats: heating transforms the lipids in a way that produces these oxidized, toxic compounds. The consequences he identified are the same as for other lipid peroxide sources: over-oxidation, nutrient stripping from the blood and nervous system, and intestinal disruption producing stinky gas.

He also noted that cheese makers he had spoken with confirmed the heating that occurred during their processes, reinforcing his position that much commercially available cheese, even when marketed as natural, may have been subjected to temperatures sufficient to produce lipid peroxides.

Aajonus extended his analysis of lipid peroxide-type damage to ozonated oils, which he treated as producing a comparable form of fat destruction. He described ozone therapy as causing the body's fats to become "putrefied oils," and explained that when you ozonate an oil like olive oil, the result smells rancid within 24 hours at room temperature, a sensory indicator that the fat has been oxidized into a toxic form. He stated that "all of the fats are damaged in the body, putrefied" when the whole body is treated with ozone, and that this would then cause a massive and destabilizing detoxification response.

He contrasted this with normally non-rancid oils: olive oil, he noted, does not normally turn rancid because it is a natural food, but once it is treated with ozone and oxidized, it undergoes a chemical transformation that produces the same kind of toxic, putrid fat as lipid peroxides from cooking. The cooling of ozonated oil in a refrigerator suppresses the bacterial odors temporarily, but the underlying chemical damage remains. He described ozonated oil as "very toxic stuff."

Because the nervous system is composed of 60 to 80 percent fat at the cellular level, it is especially sensitive to lipid peroxide toxicity. Aajonus described people who eat more cooked meat as having higher levels of heterocyclic amines and lipid peroxides in their systems, and he linked this to irritability in the nervous system. He stated that these toxins "will irritate the nervous system or the glands and cause them to be more irritable." He also observed that the nutrient-stripping effect of lipid peroxides on the blood and nervous system depletes the fatty substances that the nervous system depends on for stability and calm.

He connected fat quality to mood and mental state extensively, noting that approximately 92 to 95 percent of depression in his view comes from the brain and nervous system not being fed proper fat. While he did not always name lipid peroxides explicitly in that context, the framework links are direct: cooked fats generate lipid peroxides, lipid peroxides strip nutrients from the nervous system, and a fat-depleted nervous system produces depression, anxiety, and irritability.

In one workshop exchange, a participant raised the question of whether frying chips in duck fat rather than vegetable fat would be preferable. Aajonus confirmed that duck fat would be "not as bad" because it does not carry the plastic hydrogenated oil problem, but he stated that "you still have the lipid peroxides they're for" and described the result as "still very bad." This clarifies that the lipid peroxide problem is not exclusive to vegetable oils or hydrogenated fats; it arises from heating any fat above the labile point, including animal fats. The animal fat avoids the additional plastic oil toxicity, but cannot avoid producing lipid peroxides when subjected to high frying temperatures.

Aajonus positioned raw fat as the direct contrast to lipid peroxide-containing cooked fat. Raw fats consumed in their unheated, unprocessed form do not contain lipid peroxides and do not produce them in the body. Instead, they provide the body with the materials needed to produce 60 varieties of cholesterol, lubricate the system, feed the nervous system, protect cells, absorb poisons, and generate the solvents the body uses to dissolve and remove toxic accumulations, including accumulated cooked cholesterols and lipid peroxides stored in tissues.

He specifically noted that when a person eats raw fats, they accumulate less heterocyclic amines and fewer lipid peroxides in their system. In a conversation about someone who had been eating meat almost raw throughout their life, he confirmed they would have "less heterocyclic amines and less lipid peroxides in your system" as a direct result.

Foods he identified as helping neutralize or contain free radical toxins, including the lipid peroxide category, include unsalted raw butter, raw cheeses without added salt, raw milk and cream, raw coconut cream, raw berries, raw apple cider vinegar, raw coconut vinegar, raw cilantro juice, raw liquid whey, pineapple, and lime and lemon juices. He specified that a form of raw fat must accompany any of those non-fatty foods to ensure that the free radical toxins being mobilized are contained rather than left to cause additional damage on their way out of the body.

Long hot baths are an additional method he recommended to ensure that these eliminated toxins leave through perspiration via the skin rather than recirculating.

Aajonus placed lipid peroxides within a larger taxonomy of 32 identified toxic byproducts from cooking, all of which he listed in the final 50 pages of "The Recipe for Living Without Disease." He described three main subdivisions: lipid peroxides from cooked and processed fats, heterocyclic amines from cooked proteins, and acrylamides from cooked carbohydrates. He then noted that there are "29 other subdivisions of those three toxins," which he also named in the book for those interested in the full scientific detail.

He was careful to note that only the major three have been the focus of public and scientific attention, and that there has been no funding to investigate "all of the minute categories" that fall under those 32 identified toxins. The implication is that the known harm from lipid peroxides represents only the portion of cooking toxicity that researchers have bothered to study, not the full extent of the damage that cooked fats produce.