A year or two ago, chances are you never gave much thought to the concept of “seed oils.” But in 2025, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore them.
On social media and popular podcasts, wellness influencers are warning about the dangers of consuming the “Hateful Eight”: canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, and bran oil. rice, safflower, soy and sunflower. Late last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services — repeated these claims about X, arguing that Americans were “unknowingly poisoned” by seed oils. (Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.)
It’s even become an online parody: In a recent TikTok post, a young person pretends to stir-fry a frying pan that appears to be filled with mini bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey, while intoning, “The most important thing about of this meal is to be avoided. seed oils.
Today, at least some players in the food industry are making changes. Sweetgreen’s CEO announced this month the introduction of the restaurant’s “first-ever seed-oil-free menu.” A Sweetgreen spokesperson told NBC News in a statement, “We pride ourselves on connecting people to real food and providing our customers with options we can be proud of.” »
But nutrition experts say concerns over seed oils are, in essence, a reheated and repackaged wellness fad.
“It’s been coming and going for 20 years,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. And according to Mozaffarian and other experts, the focus on seed oils ignores the bigger picture when it comes to improving Americans’ health.
What are the concerns about seed oils – and where do they come from?
When critics talk about seed oils, “I really think what they’re looking for is omega-6 and omega-3,” said Christopher Gardner, director of nutritional studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. (Gardner also served on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines advisory committee.)
The “omega-6, omega-3 thing” he’s referring to is a wellness idea that dates back at least to the 2000s, when discussions were circulating in nutrition circles about the supposed dangers of omega-6 fatty acids, which could increase inflammation and thus lead to chronic diseases like heart disease or diabetes, or so it was thought. Eventually, those expressing these claims became strong enough to prompt the American Heart Association to issue a scientific advisory outlining the evidence for the health benefits of omega-6, particularly as it relates to cardiovascular disease.
In this context, Gardner said, it becomes easier to begin to understand claims about the dangers of seed oils, which can sometimes seem to come out of nowhere.
Most claims about the dangers of seed oils tend to focus at least in part on inflammation—specifically, on the fact that seed oils contain high amounts of omega-6 compared to omega- 3. Current seed oil skeptics claim that this ratio is pro-inflammatory and can lead to chronic disease.
Omega-6 are fatty acids; omega-3s too. Most fat, Gardner explains, is converted to energy in the body. “A very small number of our fats — and those are those omega-6s and omega-3s — are actually converted into hormone-like substances,” Gardner explained. He added that these fatty acids play a role in regulating blood pressure, vasodilation, coagulation and triglyceride levels in the blood, all processes linked to the inflammatory response, he added.
“Omega-3s are a little less inflammatory than omega-6s,” Gardner said. “Some omega-6 byproducts might contribute to inflammation in some way, but the net impact is not pro-inflammatory.”
But omega-6 also has health benefits.
“Omega-6, in dozens and dozens of randomized controlled trials in humans, improves blood cholesterol levels – multiple aspects of blood cholesterol levels, from increasing good cholesterol, like HDL, reducing LDL cholesterol, reducing triglycerides to improving glucose and insulin levels,” Mozaffarian said. “And it’s ironic, because a lot of influencers are talking about diabetes – and there are well-established randomized trials showing that omega-6 fatty acids actually improve glucose, improve insulin resistance, and improve insulin secretion through the pancreas.
“They are in very good health,” he added.
Focusing on these fatty acids isn’t the best way to understand whether a food is healthy, Gardner said. “The big issue is: Is it saturated or unsaturated? » he said.
Both omega-3 and omega-6 are a type of unsaturated fat, particularly polyunsaturated fatty acids. Data shows that eating polyunsaturated fats rather than saturated fats may reduce the risk of heart disease. Most saturated fats come from animal products, such as meat and dairy. Foods that represent the largest sources of saturated fat in Americans’ diets include cheese, pizza, ice cream and eggs.
“Whether it’s omega-6 or omega-3, it’s pretty trivial,” Gardner said. “They’re both good for you.”
Some claims about seed oils aren’t false, but they are misguided, experts say.
It is true, as Kennedy and other critics claim, that Americans consume more seed oils and fewer animal fats than a century ago. But we also eat more fast food and highly processed foods, which tend to contain high amounts of seed oil.
“If you look at the grocery store, let’s say 70 percent of the grocery store is packaged foods in the middle aisles,” said Lisa Young, a registered dietitian and assistant professor of nutrition at New York University. “We consume tons of waste. These seed oils are the basis of all this junk.
In other words, the problem is just as likely to be the excess refined carbohydrates, salt, and sugar that Americans consume along with seed oils.
It’s tempting to focus on one specific nutrient and blame it for America’s health problems, said Alice Lichtenstein, a professor of nutritional sciences at Tufts University. Carbohydrates, calories, and fat, for example, have all taken on the role of nutritional villains in recent decades. But it’s more helpful to consider overall eating habits, she said. Are the people who consume the most seed oils doing so because they sauté vegetables in safflower oil at home? Or are they eating more seed oils because they are eating more packaged foods?
“Certainly diets high in fish…are associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease,” Lichtenstein said. But, she added, diets high in fish also tend to be lower in saturated fat and higher in monounsaturated fat. “People (who also eat fish) tend to be more active, smoke less and have other factors associated with better health outcomes,” she said.
In other words, one good health habit tends to beget another, and the same goes for bad health habits. Focusing on a single nutritional component fails to achieve the broader picture, Lichtenstein said.
Is there any potential harm in avoiding seed oils?
That said, choosing to avoid seed oils poses no inherent danger to your health, according to experts. But there are downsides.
Avoiding seed oils completely would mean cooking all your food at home – and that means all your food, including things like salad dressing, sauces and even bread, said Julia Zumpano, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic. It takes more time than many busy Americans, she said.
Many weekends, Zumpano prepares a day’s worth of snacks for her three children during their long days of basketball games. It takes time and effort, but for Zumpano, it’s worth it to avoid feeding her kids the processed foods offered at the gym. (She doesn’t make the effort to specifically avoid seed oils, but by avoiding processed foods, she ends up avoiding seed oils as well.)
“All they have to eat is hot dogs, chips, a bowl of noodles,” she said. “There’s not a single fresh food product there.”
But, again, not all parents have time to prepare and pack an entire day’s worth of fresh food, Zumpano said. Additionally, seed oils are often less expensive than many alternatives, she added.
Those on a budget may not have the option to swap canola oil for relatively expensive containers of olive oil or avocado oil, both of which are monounsaturated fats. “These types of fats, compared to polyunsaturated omega-6s, are less susceptible to rancidity,” Young said.
For Gardner, it’s also a matter of taste. Sometimes you need a neutral oil, he pointed out. “If you’re cooking corn muffins, do you want to put olive oil in your corn muffin? No, I’m going to put corn oil in my corn muffins, because I don’t want the strong taste of olive oil in my corn muffins,” he said. “That would be really weird.”
But what replaces seed oils? This is the real potential health problem, experts say
In reality, the problem with avoiding seed oils lies in what people choose to use instead, experts say.
“I think the potential harm will be if enough consumers raise this concern and the industry stops using these oils or restaurants stop using the oil, they will use worse alternatives,” Mozaffarian said.
By “worse alternatives,” he means animal fats like butter, lard or beef tallow, all of which are higher in saturated fat than seed oils. Saturated fats are linked to cardiovascular disease and weight gain.
“Animal fats are healthier than white bread,” Mozaffarian said, “but they are not healthier than seed oils.”
Instead of focusing on avoiding seed oils, experts say, it would be better to devote that time and mental energy to avoiding fast, highly processed foods.
“For years we’ve been telling you to eat less sugar, salt, chips and junk food,” Gardner said. “If all of a sudden telling you that the seed oil in them is killing you (means) you stop eating all that crap for the wrong reason, I’d be thrilled.”
