What are seed oils? · Mind and Body Solutions

What are seed oils?

The term “seed oils” in recent times has become a negative term in the natural/organic food industry.

The term appears to have originated in 2018, and then became popular in 2020 after a Joe Rogan program with Paul Saladino.

This term became even more popular last year, in 2025, when HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy made it a part of his “Make America Healthy Again” slogan.

Until recently, most Americans had never heard the term “seed oils,” even though they’ve likely cooked with and consumed them for decades.

It’s the catchy description coined by internet influencers, wellness gurus, and some politicians to refer to common cooking oils — think canola, soybean, and corn oil — that have long been staples in many home kitchens.

Those fiery critics refer to the top refined vegetable oils as “the hateful eight” and claim that they’re fueling inflammation and high rates of chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new health secretary, has said Americans are being “unknowingly poisoned” by seed oils and has called for fast-food restaurants to return to using beef tallow, or rendered animal fat, in their fryers instead.

What Are Seed Oils?

Simply put, they are oils extracted from plant seeds. They include eight commonly targeted by critics: canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, soybean, sunflower, safflower, and rice bran

I totally agree with their “eight commonly targeted” seed oils of “canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, soybean, sunflower, safflower, and rice bran” as being highly toxic, and unhealthy.

These polyunsaturated oils have only been in the human food chain for a short time, since World War II when we developed expeller-pressed technology to extract oils from crops we never did before that time. They are not shelf stable, and need to be highly processed to make them so, which creates many health problems.

However, to state that these toxic oils should only be replaced with animal fats, such as beef tallow, is very short-sighted, because there are many seed oils that have been used to extract edible oils and that have nourished populations for thousands of years.

And while animal fats such as tallow and lard have also been used for thousands of years to nourish populations, the quality of those fats has to be considered based on how the animals have been raised.

If those fats are extracted from animals that are raised on CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), where the animals never graze on grass and only eat animal feed derived from the very same seeds that make up the “seed oils” in the “dirty eight” that are condemned and are primarily GMOs full of herbicides and pesticides (corn and soy are the main ingredients in most cattle feeds), how healthy is the fat from these animals?

A far better alternative to animal fats from the American agricultural system are the “super seed” oils, which are not only safer and have nourished populations for thousands of years, they also contribute to your health and help your immune system fight diseases, proving what the father of the Hippocratic Oath once said: “Let food be your medicine.”

Instead of seed oils, use coconut oil and virgin palm oil for cooking and baking. In addition, animal fats like tallow and bacon fat are traditionally very good to use as well.

3 comments