Fed a Lie: The Truth About Seed Oils

Skip ultraprocessed foods and restaurant meals — Many restaurant meals are loaded with seed oils, as they're used in sauces, dressings, marinades, and other ingredients across nearly every item on the menu. Even meals that appear healthy often contain multiple sources of LA. Cooking at home gives you full control over your ingredients and makes it ... See more

Clean out your cooking oils — Many homes still stock common seed oils like canola, sunflower, and safflower. Toss them out and replace them with traditional fats such as butter, ghee, and coconut oil for cooking. They're stable, naturally rich in fat-soluble vitamins, and don't contribute to oxidative stress the way seed oils do.

Shop the perimeter, skip the processed center — Avoid the central aisles of the grocery store where most processed and ultraprocessed products are shelved. Items like crackers, cookies, chips, salad dressings, and plant-based milks often contain soybean, canola, sunflower, or safflower oil, even when marketed as "heart-healthy." Instead, focus on u... See more

LA levels in body fat have changed dramatically — The average level of LA in human adipose tissue was around 2.8% in people eating natural diets. But in the U.S., levels rose sharply to 9.1% in 1959 and climbed to 21.5% by 2008. These changes reflect how deeply industrial seed oils have altered the makeup of human tissue over just a few generations... See more

Ancestral diets were rich in saturated fat, yet people were free of chronic disease — The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania were documented in the 1970s as consuming a diet of milk, meat, and blood, with two-thirds of their calories coming from animal fat. In the South Pacific, the Tokelau population lived on a diet based heavily on coconut and fish, wi... See more

Lessons We Can Learn from Ancestral Diets Traditional societies consumed diets that were high in saturated animal fats yet showed no signs of chronic illness. The featured documentary emphasizes that populations around the world thrived on widely different diets, as long as the ingredients were traditional, minimally processed, and free from modern... See more

Cardiovascular damage is amplified by LA oxidation — The oxidation of LA in LDL particles is a key step in the formation of atherosclerotic plaque. The byproduct 4-HNE, for instance, is not only a mutagen and mitochondrial toxin but also a direct contributor to foam cell formation and endothelial dysfunction.

Excess LA fuels chronic inflammation — Once oxidized, LA and its metabolites act like molecular triggers for inflammation. My papers detail how these compounds damage cell membranes and trigger inflammatory cascades that affect the liver, cardiovascular system, and nervous system. Animal models show that dietary seed oils rich in LA promote liver i... See more

Stored LA contributes to mitochondrial injury — Mitochondria use a special fat called cardiolipin to help generate energy. As LA dominates the diet, it becomes a major building block of cardiolipin, making it fragile and prone to oxidation. The result is impaired energy production, increased oxidative stress, and higher vulnerability to chronic dis... See more