Introduction

We did exactly what they told us to do.

We crossed sugar off our lists. We cast fat into exile. We lifted weights, walked miles, and learned to love kale. We drastically reduced smoking - even in Eastern European countries - and filled our carts with low-fat yogurt and lean meats. We followed every guideline, memorized the food pyramid like scripture, and nodded along as experts drew their lines between "good" and "bad" foods.

And yet, as we revealed in Part I of the analysis—Europeans are getting sicker. Year after year, diagnosis by diagnosis.

This isn’t just a public health crisis. It’s a narrative crisis.

Because if we’ve done everything the experts told us to do… and the result is more disease, not less… then what exactly have we been eating all these years?

In my view, it comes down to three primary forces. Two of them are global—spreading across nearly every modern food system on the planet. But the third? The third is uniquely European. And that’s what makes it the most dangerous of all.

#1: Vegetable (Seed) Oils

Fats are foundational. They form our cells, insulate our nerves, fuel our brains, regulate our hormones.

For most of human history, those fats came from animals. Tallow, butter, lard, yolks, fatty fish. These were whole foods—dense in fat-soluble vitamins, stable under heat, and biologically familiar to the body.

Then came the “lipid hypothesis” in the 1950s—a theory that blamed saturated fat for heart disease. And with that, a new era began: the fat swap.

Out went butter…

In came margarine.

Out went tallow…

In came “vegetable oil.”

Don’t let them healthy-sounding term fool you. "Vegetable oil" is a deceptive label for liquids wrung from seeds—canola, soybean, corn, sunflower—in a jarring industrial ritual that would spook even a gore enthusiast.

First, they take seeds and blast them with high heat. Already, the delicate omega-6 fats are starting to degrade, to oxidize, to turn rancid.

But this is just the beginning.

Then comes the hexane. A petrochemical solvent that efficiently strips every drop of oil from the crushed seeds. The same hexane found in gasoline. The same hexane classified as a neurotoxin. The same hexane that workers are warned to avoid breathing—yet traces remain in the final product!

But the oil isn't ready yet. Not even close.

It's dark. It smells foul. It's full of impurities. So begins the "purification":

Degumming with phosphoric acid
Neutralization with sodium hydroxide
Bleaching with chemical filters
Deodorization under extreme heat and pressure

What emerges is something that never existed in nature: a clear, odorless, shelf-stable fat that's cheaper than water.

And we put it in everything.

In 1960, the average European consumed around 2 kg of seed oils per year.
Today, that number is closer to 24 kg per person. That’s a staggering 1,100% increase in just two generations!!

The consequences? They're written in our cells. These industrial fats:

Oxidize rapidly, especially when exposed to heat and light, producing harmful byproducts like aldehydes—reactive compounds that can mutate DNA, damage proteins, and accelerate aging.
Distort our natural omega-3 to omega-6 balance—which should be around 1:1, but in modern diets can reach 1:20 or even higher. This imbalance supercharges inflammation, destabilizes hormone production, and disrupts immune regulation.
Embed themselves into our cell membranes, replacing the stable fats our bodies evolved to use. The result? Membranes become less flexible, less responsive, and more prone to leakage, dysfunction, and impaired communication between cells.
Break down into toxic byproducts like 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) and malondialdehyde (MDA)—compounds strongly linked to cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, and reproductive issues.

Meanwhile, the fats we evolved with—stable, nutrient-rich animal fats and traditional oils—have been systematically removed from our food supply. Labeled as dangerous. Dismissed as primitive.

The greatest nutritional experiment in human history isn't just ongoing. It's accelerating. And we're all unwitting participants.

Common Misconceptions About Vegetable (Seed) Oils

1. “But aren’t vegetable oils heart healthy?”

That claim rests on “cholesterol = bad” metrics, not actual health outcomes. Several major clinical trials, like the Minnesota Coronary Experiment and the Sydney Diet Heart Study, showed that replacing saturated fat with seed oils lowered cholesterol—but increased mortality. In short, the numbers looked better, but the people didn’t.

2. “They’re only harmful when fried.”

False. These oils are unstable by nature. They oxidize during extraction, in storage, and even in your bloodstream. Frying accelerates the damage, but it doesn’t create it. By the time they reach your plate, they’re already degraded—and they keep reacting inside your cells.

3. “But isn’t olive oil a vegetable oil? That one’s healthy.”

Olive oil comes from the fruit of the olive—not the seed. It’s pressed, not chemically extracted. It’s rich in monounsaturated fat and protective antioxidants. Lumping it together with industrial seed oils like canola or sunflower is nutritional sleight of hand.

#2: Additives

Remember when food went bad? When bread grew mold, milk soured, and meat spoiled? That natural decay told us something vital: This food is no longer safe to eat.

But modern food doesn't speak that language anymore.

Today's industrial products exist in a strange limbo—technically "food," but somehow immune to nature's laws. They sit on shelves for months, sometimes years, unchanging. Pristine. Perfect.

Since 1970, we've witnessed an unprecedented experiment in food preservation. What started as a few simple additives has exploded into a sprawling chemical empire:

The average European processed food in 1970: 3-4 additives
The same product today: 15-20 synthetic compounds

But these aren't just preservatives. They're architects of artificial experience:

Emulsifiers force oil and water to mix against their nature
Texture modifiers simulate the mouthfeel of real food
Flavor enhancers hijack our taste receptors
Color additives fool our eyes into seeing freshness
Anti-caking agents prevent powders from clumping
Stabilizers maintain artificial consistency

And our bodies are noticing.

Take emulsifiers—ingredients like polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose. They don't just keep your sauce from separating. According to research published in Nature, they're literally breaking down the walls of our gut, disrupting the delicate barrier between our digestive system and our bloodstream.

Or consider carrageenan, extracted from seaweed but processed into forms never found in nature. Studies in Cell show it triggering inflammation pathways that our ancestors never had to handle.

The evidence keeps mounting:

Sodium benzoate forming benzene under common conditions
Artificial sweeteners altering insulin response and gut flora
Synthetic preservatives accumulating in fatty tissues
Color additives linked to behavioral changes in children

Yet instead of addressing these root causes, we're sold:

Probiotics to repair gut damage
Digestive enzymes to handle unnatural foods
Anti-inflammatory supplements to fight chemical inflammation
"Gut healing" powders to patch the holes we're creating

It's a perfect circle of profit: Create the problem, sell the solution.

Meanwhile, traditional food preservation methods—fermentation, curing, natural smoking, sun-drying—are dismissed as primitive. Despite maintaining human health for millennia, they're deemed too slow, too inconsistent, too expensive for modern production.

The result? Our digestive systems are processing a stream of compounds that no human gut had to handle before 1950.

And we call the resulting epidemic of digestive issues "sensitive stomachs" and “intolerances.”

Common Misconceptions About Additives

1. “But everything is a chemical!”

Yes—everything is made of chemicals. Water is H₂O. Apples contain formaldehyde. You can turn any natural ingredient into a villain with the right chemical name.

But your body doesn’t process food the way a chemistry textbook does. It doesn’t read ingredient labels or decode molecular formulas. It responds to biological familiarity—substances it has encountered and adapted to over thousands of years of evolution.

There’s a massive difference between trace formaldehyde within an apple—and the synthetic, purified version produced in a lab, added to food as a preservative.

Why? Because when your body encounters a compound it hasn’t evolved to recognize, it may treat it as a foreign threat—triggering immune reactions, inflammation, or gut disruption.

Take emulsifiers like carboxymethylcellulose or polysorbate-80. These aren’t found in any natural food. When ingested, they can confuse the gut microbiome, thin the mucus layer that protects the intestinal wall, and open the door to leaky gut and immune overactivation.

Your body isn’t asking, “Is this chemical scary?”

It’s asking: “Do I know what this is? Have I seen it before?”

If the answer is no, it might react in ways that don’t show up immediately—but wear you down over time.

2. “But these additives are approved and tested.”

Approved by whom?

By the same institutions that allowed:

Trans fats in food for 50 years, leading to countless heart attacks
Aspartame to flood soft drinks despite decades of controversy
Glyphosate, a weedkiller, to appear in your breakfast oats

Most food additives are evaluated using short-term, industry-funded studies that focus on acute toxicity—how much you’d need to ingest in a single dose to cause obvious harm.

But what about:

Chronic, low-level exposure over decades?
Disruption of the gut lining?
Long-term metabolic effects or hormonal interference?

Those are rarely tested.

We’re now seeing evidence that compounds once deemed “safe” may cause major issues:

Emulsifiers like polysorbate-80 disrupt the gut microbiome
Sucralose may impair insulin sensitivity and glucose regulation
“Natural flavorings” can be chemically identical to synthetic ones, just extracted differently—but no less risky

In short, yes, they’ve got the “approved” label, but safe? That’s another story entirely.

3. “But the U.S. allows 10,000 additives and Europe only 300—so things are much better here.”

That’s one of the most misleading comparisons out there.

Let’s break it down:

The 10,000 number in the U.S. includes everything:

Preservatives
Colorants
Sweeteners
Emulsifiers
Processing aids (not listed on labels)
Flavorings (protected as “trade secrets”)
Enzymes, solvents, binders, and packaging-related substances
Plus thousands of ingredients declared “safe” under the GRAS loophole (without FDA review)

In contrast, the “300 to 400” figure often cited for Europe refers only to E-numbers—the official list of approved food additives.

But that list does not include flavorings, processing aids, enzymes, or chemicals used in packaging and preparation!

The real number of allowed substances in Europe?

Closer to 4,000.

So yes, Europe bans some of the worst additives—like certain artificial dyes and preservatives—but the difference isn’t as massive as the marketing suggests.

The U.S. system is more reckless. Europe is more cautious.

But neither is perfect.

#3: The Illusion of Tradition

“The most deceptive ingredient isn’t a chemical—it’s the story we’re sold.”

Across the continent, we romanticize our food culture but in reality, most of what we eat today is not the food of our ancestors. It’s a modern replica—chemically engineered, industrially processed, and nutritionally hollow.

Let’s look at some real examples. Since I’m Greek, my partner is Italian, and Leonessa is proudly Italian as well, we’re picking four products from brands we grew up with—staples in homes across the Mediterranean. Products that sell the image of tradition but when flipped over, tell a very different story.

1. Popular Bread in Greece

Front design

Old village sketches, a field of golden wheat, and a name that literally means “country-style.” Words like “with natural sourdough,” “rich in plant fiber,” and “source of protein” all reinforce the idea that this bread could’ve come straight from a stone oven in a rural Greek village.

Actual Ingredients

WHEAT flour 45%, water, SESAME seeds 9%, sunflower seeds 2.5%, yeast, sourdough 2.5% (water, WHEAT flour), sugar, vegetable oil (sunflower oil), flaxseed 1%, salt, vinegar, maltodextrin, flavoring, WHEAT fermentation flour (WHEAT flour, water, yeast), BLACK SESAME 0.6%, WHEAT GLUTEN, WHEAT semolina, acerola cherry extract, fava flour.

The product may contain SOY, LUPIN, MUSTARD.

The deception

Yes, there’s wheat flour, sesame, water, and yeast—but they’re swimming in a stew of sunflower oil, maltodextrin, wheat gluten, fermentation flour, “flavoring,” and acerola cherry extract (*in case your bread needs a fruity antioxidant boost?*🤔).
The “sourdough” listed at 2.5% is not doing the heavy lifting—it’s doing the marketing.
This isn’t grandma’s recipe. It’s a shelf-stable Franken loaf engineered for efficiency, not nourishment.

2. Popular biscuits in Italy

Front Design

Cream-colored wrapping, a honey dipper in motion, and promises like “con latte fresco della Valtellina”—with fresh milk from Valtellina. There’s even a daisy nestled in the design, hinting at purity, farms, sunshine

Actual Ingredients

Water, rice flour (24%), corn starch, potato starch, vegetable fibers, extra virgin olive oil (2.5%), sunflower oil (2.5%), buckwheat flour (2%), dextrose, emulsifiers: mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, salt, tapioca starch, thickener: carboxymethylcellulose, raising agents: disodium diphosphate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, corn starch, rice vinegar, emulsifier: sunflower lecithin, preservative: potassium sorbate, acidifier: tartaric acid, thickener: guar gum, flavoring.

The deception

If a grandma tried decoding this ingredient list, she’d be dizzy before she got past the third starch.
These biscuits are engineered nostalgia—made to taste homemade, but built on emulsifiers, gums, raising agents, and a cocktail of industrial starches.
Olive oil plays the role of cover model (2.5%), while sunflower oil and lab-made additives do the heavy lifting behind the curtain.

3. Popular Traditional Dessert in Greece

Front Design

The packaging says “Από το 1949” (“Since 1949”) and proudly declares: “based on a traditional family recipe.” You see a wooden cutting board, a banana, and rich chocolate swirls. The implication? Handmade, authentic, wholesome.

Actual Ingredients

Tahini (ground SESAME), glucose-fructose syrup, 4% chocolate couverture (cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, emulsifier: SOY lecithin), flavoring: vanillin, may contain traces of MILK proteins), skimmed cocoa, palm oil, 2% banana powder, vegetable concentrate, flavoring, chuene extract.

May contain traces of PEANUTS (PEANUTS) and other NUTS.

The deception

The banana you see on the packaging? It’s ****2% banana powder—just enough to legally say “with banana” on the packaging, but not enough to taste it (thank god for artificial flavoring).
“Traditional family recipe since 1949”—apparently the family specialized in industrial flavoring and glucose syrup.
“Traditional” here is just costume. What you’re actually eating is a glucose brick held together with palm oil and synthetic flavor enhancers.

4. Popular Piadina (Traditional Flatbread) in Italy

Front Design

Minimalist cream-and-red packaging. The phrase “con olio extra vergine d’oliva” (with extra virgin olive oil) placed front and center, in bold. Below it: “gluten-free”, “palm oil-free”. It speaks directly to the health-conscious buyer.

Actual Ingredients

The deception

“With extra virgin olive oil” takes center stage but only at 2.5%. Right next to it, hidden in plain sight? ****Sunflower oil, mysteriously absent from the front label. Not a mistake—just good marketing.
The rest reads like a lab recipe: mono- and diglycerides, carboxymethylcellulose, potassium sorbate, tartaric acid, guar gum.
This flatbread is designed not to nourish, but to survive shipping, shelving, and whatever’s left of your trust.

The problem is, almost every commercial piadina on the shelf looks like this—dressed up in tradition, but running on chemicals and seed oils.

But not all of them.

That’s why we started Leonessa—to make real animal-based piadinas that actually honor tradition and invigorate the body.

More on that on Part III.

Why the “Illusion of Tradition” Is Particularly Dangerous

The real tragedy isn’t that we lost our food traditions. It’s that we still believe we haven’t!

That illusion is powerful—especially in Europe, where generations grew up with real food and now see “traditional” on a label and trust it without a second thought. Ironically, Americans—lacking the same depth of culinary heritage—might actually be more critical, more likely to see through the marketing.

And in my opinion, that false sense of cultural security? It’s the most dangerous ingredient of all.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

At this point, it’s tempting to throw your hands up.

If everything is compromised… if every aisle hides a deception… what’s left? What can you eat? Who can you trust?

This is where most people stop. But we don’t have to.

Because if something real has been lost—then it means something real can be recovered.

And in Part III—the final chapter of The Great European Poisoning—I’ll show you what that recovery might look like.

I’ve spent the last few years digging into the foods, practices, and rituals that sustained our ancestors—long before factories traded nourishment for profit.

And I believe we can use that wisdom—not as nostalgia, but as a blueprint for how to feel strong, clear, and truly nourished again.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re not just curious—you’re waking up.

Now let’s talk about how to rebuild.

Part II: The Poison

Introduction

#1: Vegetable (Seed) Oils

Common Misconceptions About Vegetable (Seed) Oils