Should We Be Worried About Seed Oils?

There was a time when I thought all fats were created equal. I didn’t question the golden bottles of vegetable oil lining supermarket shelves, the crispiness of fried foods, or the so-called “heart-healthy” margarines promoted by health authorities. But when my own health began unraveling—when I felt sluggish, inflamed, and mentally drained—I started asking deeper questions. What I discovered about seed oils changed everything.

The Real Story Behind Seed Oils

Seed oils, also known as vegetable oils, have only been part of the human diet for a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Before industrialization, people cooked with animal fats—lard, tallow, butter, and coconut oil. Then came the rise of food processing, and with it, the extraction of oils from seeds that were never meant to yield oil naturally. Corn, soybeans, safflower, canola, sunflower—these crops became the backbone of modern cooking oils, chemically refined and deodorized to resemble something edible.

For decades, we were told that these oils were healthier alternatives to saturated fats. The problem? That advice was built on shaky, outdated science. And now, we’re paying the price.

How Seed Oils Wreak Havoc on Your Body

The core issue with seed oils is their high concentration of omega-6 fatty acids, specifically linoleic acid. While our bodies need some omega-6s, the modern diet has thrown the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 completely out of balance. Instead of the ancestral 1:1 ratio, many people today are consuming 20:1 or worse. This imbalance is a silent trigger for chronic inflammation, the root cause of many modern diseases.