Seed Oils Are Under Attack, but Are They Actually Bad for You?

In wellness-minded corners of the internet, seed oils (a.k.a. oils made from the seeds of plants) have been pariahs for several years, with folks of varying credentials calling them out as “toxic,” branding a set of them as “the hateful eight,” and even suggesting they’re the root cause of a swath of chronic diseases. But as of late, they’ve soared to mainstream infamy, as influencers on TikTok have taken to disparaging these oils and, notably, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (president-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services) has claimed that we’re being “unknowingly poisoned” by them. But should we really view seed oils as Public Enemy No. 1?
It turns out, the science isn’t nearly so definitive—and much of it actually points in the opposite direction, suggesting that seed oils may support your health, depending on how (and in what quantity) you eat them. Indeed, the American Heart Association (AHA) even released a presidential advisory in 2017 recommending that folks eat less saturated fat (found in things like butter, lard, and coconut and palm oils) in favor of consuming more unsaturated fat, like the kind in seed oils, to lower their risk of developing cardiovascular disease. It’s the reason why Christopher Gardner, MD, a professor of medicine and nutrition scientist at Stanford University, tells SELF he’s befuddled by the malignment of seed oils in the popular discourse: “The way [people are] talking about them is so bizarrely demonized.”
Concerns swirling around seed oils seem to have emerged from a confluence of unrelated concepts, including the negative connotation of processed foods and a misunderstanding of how certain fats affect the body, Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, a cardiologist, public health scientist, and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, tells SELF. Below, he and other nutrition researchers break down how this common cooking ingredient became an easy—if misguided—scapegoat for major health woes, and why the effects of seed oils are actually more good than bad for you. (Yes, really.)