Rapeseed oil is in every single grocery it seems like. Just recently read that it’s basically liquid cancer. Is this true?
Yes they are bad for you because they contain high levels of omega 6 and you want to balance out omega 3/ omega 6 ratio
For a small amount of seed oil you would require to eat like 5lbs of spinach to get the amount of omega 3s to balance it out
No need to have seed oil when there are so many better alternatives. Olive, coconut, avacado, walnut
They are highly processed, but there is not a lot of research to support that it’s actually bad for you. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to draw the conclusion that it contributes to obesity and disease, like this video shows: https://youtu.be/_D0phT5RBsc
What’s very obvious about seed oils, and doesn’t need “evidence” to back it up, is that all seed oils are high in calories and low in nutrition. Literally the only nutrition you get from seed oils are some Omegas and Vitamin E… and if you are wanting those, there are much better sources for them than processed oils.
Seed oils from natural sources like seeds and nuts aren’t bad; also “in moderation” is useless vague advice.
You should eat a good balance of 1:2 or 1:4 with Omega 3 sources, and you should avoid cooking with seed oils or eating seed oils as additives in prepared foods like fast food or processed snacks, because they are highly oxidized and no longer healthy due to aldehyde content.
So, eating sunflower seeds is fine, eating some soy is fine, but eating the Western diet where everything is drenched in sunflower, soybean, canola oil is not fine and is bad for cardiovascular health among other things.
No they are not bad for you.
Notice how people saying they are bad never cite a source?
Here is a very long, very detailed, heavily cited discussion which addresses - with data and sources - every bogus claim you will see on insta, YouTube and Reddit about the harms of seed oils:
https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-to-seed-oil-sophistry
Yes there are much better options for fats. They have been found in foods only since about the time of WW2. Its important to note that they are used in foods now because they are so inexpensive and not because they are healthy
Seed oils didn’t enter the human diet until about 1911, so as far as I’m concerned they’re an unnatural food. Also, they are unsaturated fats, which means they oxidize more readily. It just boggles my mind that people promote anti-oxidants and also consume seed oils.
“canola oil is a safe and healthy form of fat that will reduce blood LDL cholesterol levels and heart disease risk compared to carbohydrates or saturated fats such as found in beef tallow or butter”
It’s not bad, don’t trust people who try to demonise basic ingredients without any education.
Rapeseed oil is a good source of vitamin E, has nice ratio of omega 3:omega 6, has low amount of saturated fat and higher smoking point. It’s easily accessible and cheap.
It’s still recommended to keep your fats/oils sources as diverse as possible. And of course, consume them in moderation.
In general, yes, it is bad for you. Seed and vegetables under go an extreme process to become useful in home and commercial uses. Hence, the processed part in their name. Heat treatments, cleansing, dying, and other measures are implemented for them to be clean enough to consume.
The bad part comes in because they are highly unstable polyunsaturated fats. When used and heated for cooking its effects are worse. Consuming them creates a very high Omega 6 to omega 3 ratio in your body. These oils causes inflammation in all sorts of areas and contributes to obesity, heart disease, insulin resistance and a host of other problems.
No free oils exist in nature, so no, I don’t think of any of them as food. It’s kind of similar to how we broke down flour to make “white” bread. Extracting the oils from a grain/nut/plant is simply an artificially broken down single component and that component is 100% fat. Not great without the rest of the food item (canola/olives/peanuts/corn etc.)