Fed a Lie: The Truth About Seed Oils

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

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

Toxicity concerns from animal studies were dismissed — Teicholz shared that animal research linked seed oils to liver damage and the formation of toxic oxidation products. However, these findings, like the human data on cancer, were not integrated into official guidance. Instead, institutional decision-making prioritized cholesterol reduction above... See more

Seed oils are the single most processed food on the planet — "Seeds, nuts, [and] beans can only be made into an oil in a factory. It needs to go through so many industrial steps in order to create the oil," explains Nina Teicholz, Ph.D., the author of New York Times bestseller, "The Big Fat Surprise." Saladino adds that the process involves heating... See more

How Does Excess LA Impact Your Health? The shift toward industrial seed oils has caused a sharp increase in dietary LA, now the most abundant fat in the modern diet. Understanding what happens after LA enters the body reveals how this one ingredient quietly erodes your health over time

Ancestral populations thrived on diets rich in saturated fat but free from processed seed oils. This allowed them low rates of chronic disease, even with widely varying macronutrient profiles

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.

Clinical and epidemiological studies have linked seed oil consumption to increased oxidative stress, inflammation, mitochondrial damage, cancer risk, and cardiovascular dysfunction, despite being touted as “healthy” fats

Seed oils are industrial products by design — Cottonseed oil, which is the first of its kind, had originally been used as a lubricant for machinery during the Industrial Revolution. According to Teicholz: "After we had hunted all the whales out of the ocean — we hunted the whales mainly for their fat — when we lost that source of fat, it had to be ... See more