All about seed oils!
Here are some videos and articles that will help you understand why I crusade against seed oils!
You might be here because you scanned my QR code! If so, welcome! (Note: I set up this post to have a place to refer people who ask me why I’m against seed oils.)
TL;DR? Avoid canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and rice bran oil, and use traditional oils and fats like butter and olive oil. It might be easier said than done, so check out the below resources for more information.
A 25-minute primer on what I mean by “seed oils,” how ubiquitous they are, and why they’re unnatural and unhealthy:
Video from Dr. Cate Shanahan, referenced in the above video:
Lecture from Dr. Chris Knobbe, also referenced in the above video:
Here is a 2023 article by the above-mentioned Dr. Knobbe, essentially summarizing his findings on seed oils and other ultra-processed, mass-produced foods, if you’d rather read it than listen to it!
The article appears at the Weston A. Price Foundation website, which is a good resource overall on traditional health and vitality.
A post about which oils to use and which to avoid. And a long list of links to the actual studies on the myriad ways seed oils are bad for you, with summaries of their findings. Check out the author’s substack for a lot more advice on how to detoxify your life in general!
Here is Dr. Shanahan’s really long Q&A list with a table of contents for all the inevitable “But what about…?” questions.
Get the SeedOilScout app, a great resource for finding restaurants in your area that don’t use seed oils at all or that can serve seed oil-free meals! Follow them on instagram: @seedoilscout
A few examples of seed oil-free snacks:
MASA Chips (tallow)
Siete chips (avocado oil)
Lesser Evil (various healthy oils)
Rustic Bakery sourdough crackers (olive oil)
For breakfast bars, I like these simple Target-brand date bars, though those aren’t the only ones that are seed oil-free. Watch out for Kind bars, because though they sound friendly and taste good, some of them do contain seed oils.
I’ve also had some good fun buying tortillas and frying my own chips in olive oil. Nuts are often roasted in seed oils - buy them “raw” or “dry roasted” and add your own salt, or soak and dehydrate them yourself!
It’s also a good idea to always read the label when you’re buying pre-packaged meals, frozen foods, sauces and dips, protein bars, bakery items and desserts, and all kinds of snacks, even if you’re buying local, organic, or at an upscale store.
Why am I so interested in this?
I knew nothing about “seed oils” or what they were until early 2023, when I started hearing about their dangers from some instagram accounts I followed! That led me to following more people in the health and fitness field, which led me to learning more about seed oils, which led me to cutting them out of my life as much as possible. Yeah, I got influenced, and I’m glad I did! But it wasn’t totally out of the blue. I had already started buying raw milk, trying to understand more about the problems with modern farming and our modern environment, and developing an interest in baking and cooking, and going seed oil-free fit into those interests.
But why do I obsess over it? Why do I try to talk to people about this topic as much as I can? Personally, I don’t know how you can listen to the videos I posted above and not want to share this information as far and wide as possible. It’s just too sad to think about how many people are needlessly suffering from poor health and ultimately dying because of our modern food supply. I’ve just gotten to the point where I’m sick of it, honestly. I’m sick of the explosion in chronic disease, chronic pain, food allergies and sensitivities, everyone feeling like crap all the time, etc., etc., etc., and the total denial that our modern lifestyles are responsible. I’m sick of our society trying to normalize problems that we’re actively causing and can actually do something about. I could rant for an hour, but long story short, I’m trying to do my part.
If you look into this more, you’ll notice that the anti-seed oil crowd is typically very in favor of consuming large amounts of saturated fat. And you might wonder, What about all the new documentaries about the dangers of animal products and the benefits of veganism?
They’re not entirely wrong. Factory farms produce meat, dairy products, and eggs that are a lot less nutritious than they should be. Bad for animals, bad for the environment, and bad for humans goes hand in hand! But vegans should beware; a lot of alternative foods contain ingredients (such as seed oils) that are more harmful than just eating the animal products to begin with. You also can’t get away from the problems caused by factory farming by solely avoiding animal products; bad soil and nasty pesticide use leads to grains and vegetables also being less nutritious than they should be.
See also Dr. Shanahan’s article on why cholesterol is necessary, why dietary cholesterol isn’t bad for you, and how seed oils can give you heart disease by oxidizing your cholesterol (i.e., you are not going to give yourself a heart attack by consuming cholesterol and/or saturated fat). Check out this podcast & transcript about visiting with people living traditional lifestyles in Mongolia to see how cultures thrive on animal product-based diets. I also suggest the new Regenaissance podcast, about regenerative farming, which frequently touches on why there’s a night-and-day difference between food that is produced traditionally and food that is factory-farmed.
Relax, you might say. It’s not like we’re swallowing spoonfuls of canola oil.
Well… Considering that most fast food places, restaurants, “foods” from the snack aisle like chips, crackers, cookies, and pretzels (yeah, even the “organic” ones) and a great deal of pre-made store-bought meals and bakery items (yeah, even from The Fresh Market, Trader Joe’s, Citarella’s, and Whole Foods) use seed oils… you kind of are. It’s actually really easy to eat these oils while trying to be “healthy.” A lot of breakfast bars contain them. Oat milk usually contains canola (rapeseed) oil (if you want one that doesn’t, check out this brand; otherwise use whole grassfed dairy, almond, or coconut milk). Snacks that brag about their “organic corn” and “sea salt” or “using the finest ingredients” or being small and “family-owned” almost always contain seed oils. Containers of nuts at grocery stores - yes, even “nice” grocery stores - often use sunflower or cottonseed oil. Popular salad chains are known to use them in their dressings! This crap (because it’s cheap and tastes like nothing) is EVERYWHERE.
I’ll give you a real example of how easy it is to consume seed oils all day long without thinking. Let’s say you stayed over at my house one weekend this summer. In one day, you might have eaten store-bought pound cake with seed oils, a granola bar with seed oils, a hot dog or hamburger on a bun containing seed oils, tortilla and/or potato chips with seed oils, corn-on-the-cob coated with “vegetable oil” i.e. seed oils, store-bought cupcakes with seed oils, frosting with seed oils, and/or store-bought cookies made with “vegetable shortening” i.e. seed oils. Yeah, you might as well be feeding yourself spoonfuls of canola or soybean oil!
Am I just sucking the fun out of life?
Absolutely not. I’m actually trying to make life more fun, by empowering people to make delicious food that they don’t have to feel bad about. A pretty normal Sunday for me will include a brunch of scrambled eggs (from pasture-raised hens), peppers (from the farmers’ market), rosemary, and bacon chunks (from pasture-raised pigs) fried in the same pan, a homemade waffle (whole organic spelt flour, banana, cinnamon, milk, egg, salt, baking powder, chocolate chips, vanilla extract), and a latte (raw milk from pastured cows), a big walk or hike, and a dinner of a mini-pizza (sourdough bread from the farmers’ market, cherry tomatoes, basil pesto sauce from the farmers’ market, raw milk mozzarella, raw milk parmesan, EVOO), chicken (pastured), and broccoli (farmers’ market!). I’m not depriving myself of anything my body needs or wants, my meals taste awesome, and I feel awesome. I bake a lot, and I bake with butter, eggs, pure peanut or almond butter, and/or unrefined coconut oil, and use pure maple syrup, raw honey, raw apple cider, bananas, and/or mesquite powder for sweetness.
Curious about why I keep mentioning “raw” milk?
Click here!
Maybe you’re interested, but this all seems overwhelming. How did I drop seed oils so easily and quickly?
a) I didn’t give any food group; I just increased the quality of my food a whole lot.
b) Humans have a primal fear of being poisoned. I heard that seed oils were “toxic” and “poison” enough times that it got into my head and stuck. Now I will read the label on a snack that looks appealing, see that it was made with seed oils, and immediately put it down, shaking my head. I don’t even feel “tempted,” or feel like “cheating” or “treating myself” by buying seed oil-filled snacks. Why would you treat yourself to poison? Once you get into that mentality, it’s super easy to steer clear of this frankenfood.
So are our problems just caused by seed oils?
No, though their prevalence is a huge contributing factor, and they play a big role in increasing our polyunsaturated fat intake in general, which is historically abnormal and very unhealthy for the reasons explained by Drs. Cate Shanahan and Chris Knobbe, above. If you really want to go down this rabbit hole, which I encourage you to do, you’ll find that we’re constantly exposing our bodies to unnatural stressors that lead to abnormal levels of pain and disease. It doesn’t have to be this way. Contrary to popular modern beliefs, humans aren’t poorly designed, our “genetics” don’t doom us, and no traditional food group is inherently bad for you. What we’ve been doing to our food, environment, and lifestyles over the past century and a half is what’s making us sick. And we can do something to stop it today.