The Seed Oil Conversation Nobody Is Having

We spend a lot of time thinking about what we put on our skin.

Sunscreen. Moisturizers. Serums. After-sun products. Hats. Cover-ups.

But how often do we stop and think about what we're feeding our skin?

Because your skin isn't separate from the rest of your body. It's living tissue built from the nutrients—and the fats—you consume every single day.

And that brings us to one of the most controversial conversations happening in wellness right now:

Seed oils.

They're in restaurants. They're in salad dressing. They're in crackers, chips, bread, mayonnaise, protein bars, sauces and even foods marketed as "healthy."

And for the past five years, our family has intentionally kept them out of our home as much as possible.

That decision started as part of a much bigger shift in the way we ate. But over time, we noticed something we weren't necessarily expecting.

Our health changed.

And so did our skin.

Our family used to burn in the sun.

We don't anymore.

There wasn't one magical change responsible for that. We changed how we eat, how we approach sunlight, what we put on our skin and even how often we wear sunglasses.

So today we're going deep.

We're going to talk about what seed oils actually are, how they're made, why they're hiding in so many foods, why we've chosen not to use them, which fats we DO keep in our kitchen—and then we're going somewhere you may not expect.

Outside.

Because there is a fascinating conversation happening about dietary fats, oxidative stress, UV exposure and the way our skin responds to sunlight.

Let's start in the kitchen.

What Exactly Are Seed Oils?

Seed oils are oils extracted from the seeds of plants.

The group you'll hear discussed most often includes:

Canola oil
Corn oil
Cottonseed oil
Soybean oil
Sunflower oil
Safflower oil
Grapeseed oil
Rice bran oil

You may hear these referred to as the "Hateful Eight."

Unlike extra virgin olive oil, which comes from the fruit of an olive, or avocado oil, which comes from the flesh of an avocado, these oils are extracted from seeds and are commonly produced through industrial refining.

That process can involve high temperatures, pressure, chemical solvents, refining, bleaching and deodorizing. Want to watch how they are made? Warning- your grocery shopping list will be forever changed- check out this video. 

Why go through all that work?

Because the end result is cheap, neutral tasting and shelf stable.

In other words, it's perfect for the industrial food system.

And once you understand that, you start understanding why seed oils are everywhere.

Why Are Seed Oils in Almost Everything?

Pick up a bottle of conventional salad dressing.

Flip it over.

Grab the mayonnaise.

Flip it over.

Now try crackers.

Bread.

Tortillas.

Granola.

Protein bars.

Frozen meals.

Coffee creamer.

Sauces.

Chips.

One reason seed oils have become such a major conversation isn't simply that people occasionally cook with a teaspoon of them.

It's the sheer amount we're consuming without realizing it.

Dr. Mark Hyman points to research showing that U.S. linoleic acid consumption increased dramatically during the twentieth century alongside the increased use of industrial oils such as soybean and corn oil.

That means this isn't simply a conversation about the bottle sitting next to your stove.

It's about the entire modern food environment.

Try This Today

Go into your pantry and grab five packaged foods.

Don't look at the nutrition facts first.

Read the ingredients.

Look for:

• Soybean oil

• Canola oil

• Corn oil

• Cottonseed oil

• Sunflower oil

• Safflower oil

• Grapeseed oil

• Rice bran oil

• "Vegetable oil"

You may be surprised how quickly you find them.

Once you start reading labels, it's very difficult to stop noticing them.

What About Eating Out?

Restaurants are probably the hardest place to control seed oil exposure.

Many kitchens use inexpensive vegetable, soybean, canola or other refined oils for frying, cooking, dressings and sauces—and unless you ask, you may have no idea what they're using.

We don't obsess over this when we eat out. We make the best choices we can and focus primarily on what we control in our own home.

But if you really want to know, there's an app for that.

Seed Oil Scout is a community-driven restaurant map that lets you look up restaurants and see information about the fats and oils they use. It can also help you find restaurants cooking with alternatives such as tallow, avocado oil and olive oil.

If avoiding seed oils while eating out is important to you, it's an amazing resource to have on your phone.

So Why Do We Avoid Them?

This is where we need to go deeper than simply saying, "seed oils are bad."

There are several reasons we decided they weren't something we wanted regularly coming into our home.

1. The Processing

Most of us picture cooking oil being made the way olive oil has traditionally been made: press something oily and collect the oil.

Industrial seed oils are a different story.

Producing many conventional seed oils involves high heat, pressure and chemical extraction followed by additional refining steps.

The resulting oil may be bleached and deodorized to create the neutral-colored, neutral-tasting product sitting on the grocery store shelf.

That's a very different product from squeezing an olive.

For our family, that alone was enough reason to ask:

If we have less-processed traditional fats available, why wouldn't we choose those instead?

2. They're Rich in Polyunsaturated Fats

Polyunsaturated fatty acids—PUFAs—aren't inherently something your body should never encounter. We naturally consume them in whole foods.

The concern is quantity, source and what happens to these chemically delicate fats.

Many commonly used seed oils contain large amounts of the omega-6 fatty acid -linoleic acid. Omega-6 is an essential fatty acid. Your body needs it BUT too much Omega-6 reduces Omega-3 Levels in the body! Omega-3 is the healthy one! 

Remember "essential" doesn't mean unlimited amounts are better.

Modern diets can supply enormous quantities of omega-6-rich oils because seed oils are added to so many processed foods.

At the same time, many people eat relatively little omega-3-rich seafood and other whole foods.

This is one reason the balance between omega-6 and omega-3 fats has become such an important topic in functional nutrition.

3. Oxidation Matters

This may be the most important part of the conversation to understand.

PUFAs contain multiple double bonds in their chemical structure. Those bonds make them more vulnerable to oxidation when exposed to things like:

heat + oxygen + light.

And what do we routinely do with industrial cooking oils?

Heat them.

Sometimes extremely hot.

Sometimes repeatedly.

Think about a restaurant deep fryer running for hours.

When vulnerable fats oxidize, they can form compounds including aldehydes, lipid peroxides and oxidized linoleic acid metabolites.

This is why simply looking at an oil's smoke point doesn't tell the entire story.

An oil can tolerate a particular cooking temperature from a smoke-point standpoint while still being more susceptible to oxidative breakdown than a more stable fat.

4. The Inflammation Conversation

You've probably heard the statement:

"Seed oils cause inflammation."

The actual biology is more complicated than a meme can explain.

Omega-6 fats participate in pathways involved in normal inflammatory signaling, and inflammation itself is part of the body's normal immune and repair response.

The concern raised by many functional medicine practitioners is what happens when an ultra-processed modern diet supplies a very large amount of omega-6-rich oils while also contributing to oxidative stress.

And this matters because chronic inflammation and oxidative stress are involved in an enormous number of chronic health problems.

This isn't about blaming every health problem on one bottle of canola oil.

It's about asking whether flooding our diets with industrially refined fats makes sense when we have other options.

For our family, the answer was no.

But Aren't Vegetable Oils "Heart Healthy"?

This is where things get interesting.

For decades, Americans were encouraged to replace traditional saturated fats like butter with vegetable oils rich in polyunsaturated fats.

One reason is that replacing saturated fat with certain PUFAs can lower LDL cholesterol.

But heart health is about more than one number on a cholesterol panel.

Researchers also look at oxidative stress, inflammation, blood-vessel health and oxidized LDL, which is involved in the development of atherosclerotic plaque.

There are other things worth considering when choosing to call a food heart healthy. 

We also have to think about:

How processed is it?

How stable is it?

How is it being cooked?

How much are we consuming?

What foods is it replacing?

What foods is it usually packaged with?

There are also monounsaturated-fat-rich options such as extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil available without relying so heavily on omega-6-rich industrial oils.

So in our kitchen, we're choosing the options we feel better about.

Meet the Seed Oils We Don't Keep in Our Kitchen

By now you understand the bigger concerns we have with industrial seed oils: processing, oxidation, repeated heating and the enormous amount of omega-6-rich oils that have made their way into the modern diet. So let's take a look a the top culprits. 

Canola Oil: The One With a Rebrand

Canola doesn't come from a "canola plant" in the way olive oil comes from olives.

Canola was developed from varieties of the rapeseed plant that were bred to contain very low levels of erucic acid and glucosinolates. The name "canola" was created from "Canadian oil, low acid."

Most conventional canola oil then goes through significant processing to extract and refine the oil into the pale, neutral-tasting product we're familiar with.

It's cheap, versatile and incredibly common—which is precisely why reading labels matters.

Soybean Oil: The One We're Eating Everywhere

If there's one seed oil that demonstrates how dramatically the American diet has changed, it's soybean oil.

Soybean oil became a major contributor of linoleic acid in the U.S. diet as its use in commercially prepared and packaged foods exploded during the twentieth century.

Most people aren't pouring cups of soybean oil into their frying pans at home.

They're consuming it without realizing it because it has become part of the background of our food supply.

That's what makes soybean oil particularly important to understand:

Exposure adds up quickly when an ingredient is everywhere.

Corn Oil: Corn Doesn't Equal Corn Oil

Corn itself is a recognizable food.

Corn oil is something very different.

There's relatively little oil in a kernel of corn, and producing the clear bottle of corn oil at the grocery store requires extracting and refining oil primarily from the germ of the kernel.

That's an important lesson in label reading:

The fact that an oil originates from a familiar plant doesn't tell you how processed the finished product is.

Cottonseed Oil: Yes, Cotton

This may be the oil that makes people stop and say:

"Wait...we eat that?"

Cotton is primarily grown for fiber—not because anyone is sitting down to a bowl of cotton seeds.

Historically, those seeds were largely a byproduct of cotton production. Eventually manufacturers developed ways to refine cottonseed oil for use in food, including removing naturally occurring gossypol, a compound present in cottonseed that is toxic at sufficiently high amounts.

Refined cottonseed oil went on to become an important ingredient in shortening and processed foods.

If you want an example of how industrial food processing can transform an agricultural byproduct into a common food ingredient, cottonseed oil is a fascinating one.

Sunflower Oil: The Healthy-Sounding One

Sunflowers sound wholesome.

And that's exactly why sunflower oil can be confusing.

There are actually different types of sunflower oil with very different fatty-acid profiles.

Traditional high-linoleic sunflower oil contains considerably more omega-6 linoleic acid, while high-oleic sunflower oil has been bred to contain substantially more monounsaturated oleic acid.

That distinction matters.

Simply seeing "sunflower oil" on the front of a package doesn't tell you which type you're getting—and it's one reason we want people reading more than marketing claims.

Safflower Oil: Another Oil Where the Type Matters

Safflower has a similar story.

Traditional safflower oil is exceptionally rich in linoleic acid, while newer high-oleic varieties contain considerably more monounsaturated fat.

So again:

Not every bottle bearing the same plant name has the same fatty-acid composition.

Understanding how an oil was produced and what type you're consuming tells you much more than a pretty flower on the label.

Grapeseed Oil: The Health Halo

This one is a perfect lesson in food marketing.

Grapes? Healthy.

Grapeseed oil? Sounds healthy.

But grapeseed oil isn't grape juice in oil form.

The tiny seeds left behind during winemaking contain relatively little oil, so commercial grapeseed oil generally requires significant extraction and refining. The resulting oil is also particularly rich in polyunsaturated linoleic acid.

It's a great reminder that the health reputation of the original food doesn't automatically transfer to every highly processed product made from it.

Rice Bran Oil: Smoke Point Isn't the Whole Story

Rice bran oil is extracted from the bran and germ surrounding the rice grain and has become popular partly because of its relatively high smoke point.

But here's something we really want people to understand:

Smoke point and oxidative stability are not the same thing.

Smoke point tells you when an oil visibly begins smoking. It doesn't tell you everything happening chemically inside that oil as it's heated.

The fatty-acid composition, antioxidants, refining process, temperature and length of heating all influence how an oil behaves during cooking.

So "high smoke point" isn't enough, by itself, to earn an oil a place in our kitchen.

And Then There's "Vegetable Oil"

Here's your final label-reading lesson:

Vegetable oil isn't a vegetable.

And it isn't necessarily one particular oil either.

A bottle labeled "vegetable oil" is commonly soybean oil, although blends of plant oils can also be sold under that general name.

That's exactly the kind of vague ingredient terminology that makes us flip the bottle over and keep reading.

We want to know what we're eating—not simply that it came from some kind of plant.

The important thing isn't memorizing eight scary-sounding names.

It's learning to look beyond the front of the package.

Because "plant-based," "vegetable," "sunflower," "grape" and "rice" can all sound incredibly wholesome.

The ingredient's origin is only the beginning of the story. How it became the food sitting in front of you matters too.

The Oils That Have Earned a Place in Our Kitchen

Removing seed oils doesn't mean cooking without fat.

Quite the opposite.

We use traditional fats and minimally processed oils that have earned a permanent place in our kitchen.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

One of our staples.

Extra virgin olive oil is mechanically extracted from the olive fruit and is rich in monounsaturated fat and naturally occurring polyphenols.

We love it for dressings, drizzling and plenty of everyday cooking.

Avocado Oil

Another fruit oil and one of our favorites when we need a neutral flavor or higher-heat cooking option.

Grass-Fed Butter

Yes. Butter.

We happily welcomed real butter back into our kitchen.

It's delicious, recognizable and something humans have been eating far longer than industrial vegetable oils.

Ghee

Ghee is clarified butter with the milk solids removed.

It's incredibly useful for higher-temperature cooking and has become another easy seed-oil replacement.

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is naturally rich in saturated fats, making it relatively stable during cooking.

We use it for baking and recipes where the flavor works.

Beef Tallow

Talk about an old-school comeback.

Tallow is rendered beef fat and is extremely heat stable.

Our grandparents would recognize it immediately—even if modern grocery shoppers are only now rediscovering it.

Whew. That Was a Lot.

If your brain is currently trying to remember which oils are which, don't worry—we made it easy for you.

Save the graphic below for reference. Keep it on your phone for the next time you're grocery shopping, reading an ingredient label, or standing in the oil aisle wondering which bottle to grab.

The goal isn't to memorize all of this today. It's to start recognizing what you're looking at when you turn that label over.

Save it now. Your future grocery-shopping self will thank you.

What Happened When Our Family Made the Change

This is where I stop talking about studies for a minute.

Because I can tell you what happened in our house.

About five years ago, we removed seed oils from our home.

Are we perfect?

Absolutely not.

We eat at restaurants. We travel. We live in the real world, and unless you're standing in the restaurant kitchen yourself, you can't control every oil touching your food.

But what comes into our house?

That's something we can control.

And removing seed oils was one of the changes that coincided with a dramatic improvement in my own health.

It was enough of a difference that I have never wanted to go back.

But there was another change our entire family noticed.

We stopped burning in the sun.

And THAT sent me down another rabbit hole.

Wait. What Do Seed Oils Have to Do With Sunburn?

More than most people realize.

Your skin contains lipids—fats—and research has shown that diet can influence the fatty-acid composition of tissues.

Remember what we just learned about PUFAs?

They're chemically vulnerable to oxidation.

Now add ultraviolet radiation.

UV exposure naturally creates oxidative stress in the skin. When that oxidative stress interacts with polyunsaturated fats that are especially vulnerable to oxidation, it can trigger a process called lipid peroxidation.

Think of it like a chain reaction.

One unstable fat molecule becomes damaged, which can then affect another, and another.

Researchers study this process because this type of oxidative damage can affect cell membranes, proteins and even DNA.

And this is where the seed-oil conversation suddenly becomes a skin conversation.

What About Skin Cancer?

Researchers have explored relationships between dietary fats, lipid peroxidation, oxidative stress, UV exposure and skin damage. Some observational human research has also reported associations between fatty-acid patterns and skin-cancer outcomes, while animal studies have investigated dietary linoleic acid and UV-induced tumor formation.

That doesn't mean we can reduce something as complex as skin cancer to one ingredient.

But the relationship between dietary fats, oxidation and UV damage is absolutely worth understanding.

And repeated sunburn matters.

So perhaps supporting our skin begins before we ever walk outside.

Our Family's Five-Year Sunshine Experiment

This is where our experience gets interesting.

Over the past five years, several things changed simultaneously.

We removed seed oils from our home.

We stopped routinely wearing sunglasses outside.

We stopped using conventional sunscreen.

We spend time outside regularly.

We use hats and shade when it makes sense.

And when we're going to be outside for an extended period, we use a mineral-based Sun Balm.

We live in Florida.

We aren't sitting inside avoiding sunshine.

And yet our family—who absolutely used to burn—has not experienced the same sunburn problem we once did.

It's been about five years since we've burned.

Now, we also use common sense here.

We also don't decide to sit directly in the Florida summer sun for 12 straight hours.

If your skin is telling you it's had enough sun, listen to it.

Go inside.

Find shade.

Put on a shirt.

Wear a hat.

And What About the Sunglasses?

One other change our family made was ditching sunglasses for most everyday outdoor time.

The theory is that allowing natural light to reach the eyes helps communicate to the body that you're outside and may play a role in the body's natural responses to sunlight, including melanin production. Melanin production is your body's natural sun protection, but it mostly produces it when it knows it needs to. The theory is the way the body knows to produce melanin is through your eyes, but sunglasses tinting the world around you can slow down or even stop that process. 

This particular idea is still debated, but it interested us enough to try it—and it's one of several changes we've made over the past five years.

If you want to go down that rabbit hole yourself, Sarah Kleiner has a fascinating deep dive into the research and theory behind it.

And that's about as far down that rabbit hole as we're going today because we have seed oils to talk about.

Supporting Your Skin Naturally

So what does sun protection look like for our family now?

We pay attention.

We spend time outside regularly rather than going months with very little sun exposure and then suddenly spending an entire day baking on a beach.

We use shade.

We wear hats.

We cover up when we've had enough.

And when we know we're going to be outdoors for a longer stretch, our family reaches for No Crap In It Paradise Sun Balm.

It's made with:

22% non-nano zinc oxide
Grass-fed beef tallow
Organic coconut oil
Beeswax

The non-nano zinc oxide creates a physical mineral barrier on the skin, while tallow, coconut oil and beeswax create the nourishing balm base.

It's simple.

It's exactly the kind of ingredient list we want from a product carrying the No Crap In It name.

And If You Got a Little Too Much Sun...

It happens. If you stayed out a little longer than your skin wanted, reach for our Paradise After Sun Spray.

And here's something worth checking the next time you grab a bottle of conventional aloe vera gel: read the ingredients.That bright green "aloe" in a bottle may contain a whole lot more than aloe.

Paradise After Sun Spray keeps it simple with 100% natural ingredients designed to soothe and nourish sun-exposed skin.

Want that cold-aloe feeling? Pop the bottle in the refrigerator. It feels AMAZING chilled after a long day outside.

If You Only Remember Three Things...

1. Seed oils are hiding in far more foods than most people realize.

You won't know until you start turning packages around.

2. The fats you eat become part of you.

The composition and stability of dietary fats matter far beyond the number of calories listed on a nutrition label.

3. Supporting healthy skin doesn't begin when you open a bottle at the beach.

It begins with what you consistently feed your body.

Ready to Try Something?

Don't throw your entire pantry away tonight.

Instead, go read ten labels.

Look for:

• Canola.
• Soybean.
• Corn.
• Cottonseed.
• Sunflower.
• Safflower.
• Grapeseed.
• Rice bran.
• Vegetable oil.

Then replace ONE thing.

Maybe it's your cooking oil.

Maybe it's mayonnaise.

Maybe it's salad dressing.

Maybe it's the crackers your family eats every week.

And next week?

Replace another.

That's how our family did it.

Not perfection.

Education.

Then better choices.

Keep Learning

This subject is much bigger than one blog post. If you want to continue digging, these are several of the resources that helped shape this conversation:

Dr. Mark Hyman — Are Seed Oils Bad for You? Here's What You Need to Know
A deep dive into industrial processing, omega-6 intake, oxidation and the "heart healthy" debate.

Armstrong Sisters — How Diet Impacts Sunburn: The PUFA + Sunlight Connection
A deep dive into PUFAs, lipid peroxidation and the research surrounding dietary fats and UV damage.

Dr. Cate Shanahan — Do Seed Oils Age Your Skin? The Sunburn Connection
A deeper explanation of the proposed relationship between seed oils, oxidative stress and skin.

Sarah Kleiner — A Beginner's Guide to Ditching Your Sunglasses
For anyone who wants to explore the light/sunglasses conversation further.

Dr. Bojana Jankovic Weatherly — Deep Dive Into Seed Oils and Their Health Impacts
A deeper look at seed oils, omega-6 fatty acids, inflammation, oxidative stress, cardiovascular health, and the ongoing debate surrounding their place in our diets.

Seed Oil Scout
A community-driven restaurant map for people who want more transparency about the fats and oils restaurants use.

 

One Last Thought

We can't control every ingredient in every restaurant meal.

We can't control everything we eat while traveling.

But we can control what comes through the front door of our homes.

For our family, learning about seed oils changed the way we shop, the way we cook and, eventually, even the way we think about caring for our skin.

So start there.

Turn over the package.

Read the ingredients.

Ask questions.

And remember:

Healthy skin doesn't start with what you put on it.

It starts with what you consistently put in your body.