It’s a pretty controversial topic in the field of nutrition. I was searching about it and couldn’t find enough powerful data to support the fact that we should avoid seed oils, like many people say. Can someone actually suggest any evidence that shows the opposite?
The observational data doesn’t tend to show seed oils to be harmful, though correlation does not imply causation.
The rodent data shows, very clearly, a carcinogenic effect. Things that are harmful to rodents are usually also harmful to humans, but the relevant dose can be wildly different.
Seed oils break down into known toxins, like acrolein.
The ultimate test would be a long term feeding trial of seed oils, with the control group receiving whatever you think is a fair control (presumably saturated fat). Unfortunately, most seed oil feeding trials were shorter and focused on people with cardiovascular disease, which would obscure a carcinogenic effect.
The seed oil feeding trials generally showed a null effect on mortality. Interpret all that how you will.
Data is inconclusive as most nutritional science is, hard to study enough people over a long enough period, and guarantee that they eat what they report and nothing else.
But one reason behind the movement which sort of makes sense, is that the smoke point of an oil is where you get toxic chemicals produced, and in the refining methods of seed oils and other oils that you need to refine really hard to get your oil out of the product, they use temperatures that surpass the smoke point by ALOT, most oils can handle up to 220C, but in refining seed oils the oil is heated up to 400+C to separate the oils from the husks and other unwanted products.
But it might be crazy talk, and it might not, we don’t know yet. Not the influencers, not the nutritionists, not the science
This shit is insane on social media channels and shared by one specific group of people. The “health influencers” who trade controversy for follows. Don’t buy into the hype. They’re not an issue like these people are saying.
Here is an article about a study done over a 5-year period with \~9400 participants in a prison (strict dietary control) 50 years ago: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-found-in-dusty-basement-undermine-decades-of-dietary-advice/
It doesn’t explicitly say (“seed oil bad”) - nothing will - but it does compare saturated fat intake with vegetable oil intake, noting differences in cholesterol outcome and linoleic acid content, as well as health and mortality differences in the participants.
“vegetable oils” and “seed oils” are largely the same thing, though I’m sure there are some vegetable oils not made from seeds, and seed oils not made from seeds of what you might consider a vegetable. Both are (very) low in saturated fat, but the exact breakdown of monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids varies wildly by oil. In this article you will find references to other studies suggesting a negative impact from polyunsaturated fats specifically.
I remember the USA pushing several Asian countries to use less coconut oil replacing it with rapeseed oil (marketed as canola oil) and soybean oil. Deaths and chronic illnesses surged and within 8 years, all of these Asian countries went back to recommending coconut oil, and deaths and chronic illnesses lessened but never reached their levels prior to the American intervention. Several books about the benefits of coconut oil reference this, but I did not buy those books…
You could check out Joe Rogan’s Podcast Ep# 1551 with Paul Saladino aka Carnivore MD. He has a lot of stuff in there on the seed oils topic