Are Seed Oils Actually Bad for You?
Strangers tell me their feelings about canola oil now. They find out I host a nutrition podcast and immediately need me to know that beef tallow fixed their knees. So here is the honest answer to the question everyone keeps asking: are seed oils bad for you? No. Not in any way the research backs up.
Do seed oils cause inflammation?
The chemistry that supposedly makes them inflammatory barely happens inside an actual body. Feed people more of the stuff, measure their blood, and the inflammation everyone warns about does not show up. The thing worth eating less of is ultra-processed food, which happens to be loaded with seed oils.
Is beef tallow better than seed oils?
Probably not, and possibly worse. Tallow is mostly saturated fat, and the people eating the most plant oil tend to outlive the people eating the most butter. If you want a real upgrade, olive oil and avocado oil have the stronger evidence. Forty-dollar tallow for your morning eggs is a personality choice.
So eat a fruit. Eat some salmon. Stop letting a cooking oil decide what kind of person you are.
References
Pett, K. D., Willett, W. C., Vartiainen, E., & Katz, D. L. (2017). The Seven Countries Study. European Heart Journal, 38(42), 3119–3121. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehx603
Ramsden, C. E., Zamora, D., Majchrzak-Hong, S., Faurot, K. R., Broste, S. K., Frantz, R. P., Davis, J. M., Ringel, A., Suchindran, C. M., & Hibbeln, J. R. (2016). Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis: Analysis of recovered data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment (1968–73). BMJ, 353, i1246. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i1246
Su, H., Liu, R., Chang, M., Huang, J., & Wang, X. (2017). Dietary linoleic acid intake and blood inflammatory markers: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Food & Function, 8(9), 3091–3103. https://doi.org/10.1039/C7FO00433H
Zhang, Y., et al. (2024). Higher ratio of plasma omega-6/omega-3 fatty acids is associated with greater risk of all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality: A population-based cohort study in UK Biobank. eLife, 12, RP90132. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.90132
Zhang, Y., Chadaideh, K. S., Li, Y., Li, Y., Gu, X., Liu, Y., Guasch-Ferré, M., Rimm, E. B., Hu, F. B., Willett, W. C., Stampfer, M. J., & Wang, D. D. (2025). Butter and plant-based oils intake and mortality. JAMA Internal Medicine, 185(5), 549–560. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.0205
