Until recently, most Americans had never heard the term “seed oils,” even though they’ve likely cooked with and consumed them for decades.
It’s the catchy description coined by internet influencers, wellness gurus and some politicians to refer to common cooking oils — think canola, soybean and corn oil — that have long been staples in many home kitchens.
Those fiery critics refer to the top refined vegetable oils as “the hateful eight” and claim that they’re fueling inflammation and high rates of chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes.
Well I cannot prove that they are the cause of obesity, diabetes and all other sort of malady.
However, I can tell you that for a huge percentage of people but not all they have a marked, easily-identified and absolutely repeatable seriously-negative impact on a very sensitive metabolic marker that cannot be argued with, it is approximately as bad as drinking three beers at once in many individuals (myself included) which exactly nobody argues is "healthy" and it is trivially discernable on an individual basis with a device that costs little but until a few years ago didn't exist in the consumer space at all.
But since you can now on an individual basis identify if you are harmed by these -- why would you not?
Simply get a smartwatch or other device that measures overnight HRV, establish a baseline, and then if you eat them now take one week and eliminate all of them from what you consume, changing nothing else.
If you do not eat them now (and if you eat "carnivore" you probably don't) then go ahead and try eating them and see if you get immediately hit that night.
Again, this is personal and utterly impossible to argue with when it comes to the results.
Oh by the way you can also identify many other "foods" that do bad things to you as well this way (e.g. low-level food allergies), and yes you should. Never mind that if you pay attention you can also use it to identify environmental allergies that do not trigger significant overt symptoms. You're likely to learn a lot -- and if you act on that it may result in marked improvements in your health.
This much is certain: It won't hurt you.
One warning: You must read labels assiduously and if there is no label (e.g. in a restaurant) presume they're in there because they are. For example go into a grocery store and try to find any salad dressing that doesn't contain them. Good luck with that; they're in essentially all of them and while a green salad is perfectly ok to eat the dressing, full of that crap, for most people will objectively hammer your overnight HRV if you're sensitive to these oils.
I eliminated them "by accident" about 15 years ago when I went ketogenic on my food intake -- and the result was all negative metabolic changes that had occurred over the previous couple of decades reversed, I was able to athletically perform at levels I had never formerly achieved (even in High School!) and sixty pounds disappeared.
Today, 15 years later, I require no prescription medications, I have no chronic conditions, everything works as God intended (including the annoying part of waking up as a man who is not in a heterosexual relationship and does not desire to **** my cat), my body mass has not gone back to what it was, I am still very capable of athletic performance at 61 years of age and I still eat mostly-ketogenic. Yes, I do "cheat" on occasion and have a couple of times done a "challenge" on glucose tolerance (starting at about 5 years after changing what I eat) since I (now) have a KetoMojo (which also measures glucose with a finger-stick along with ketones) and I am not insulin resistant, by said self-administered test, whatsoever. 15 years ago I was.
Now I'm quite sure if I went back to eating what I used to eat all those problems would return and progressively get worse. I have no intention of doing so because I desire neither obesity or diabetes, and a stroke or heart attack isn't on my bingo card as a desired outcome either.
Further, while I can't be certain I'll bet those who claim they went "keto" and didn't get results were continuing to use seed oils, particularly for cooking, they're sensitive to them and that is why it didn't work for them. This of course is verifiable for any individual person since there is now knowledge that indeed they hammer many -- in my experience most -- people metabolically.
However, since I now have a Garmin that does HRV (and many other things that are quite useful in my athletic and other sports pursuits) I have individually tested seed oils several times in various types and every single time I get massively whacked that night in overnight HRV.
It is utterly repeatable in every instance and many other people have reported the same on my forum both in "The Bar" and in comments on my articles related to food consumption habits and the change it made in my life. Further, unintentional challenges where a restaurant screws me when I'm traveling invariably show up that night -- and if I eat somewhere and something that I know does not (e.g. Texas Roadhouse, any of their steaks, chili and steamed veggies as a side) I do not take said hit, ever.
But -- this very clear, substantial and immediate hit to overnight HRV I experience is not universal. There are a couple of people on my forum who have run such tests personally and they have no negative impact from these oils in their HRV. They are outliers -- most who have done such a test have had significantly negative results -- repeatedly so.
That some people -- even if only a small minority -- have no negative impact isn't that surprising. People from England, for example, can typically eat far more fast ("white") carbohydrates without insulin resistance problems than those of African heritage. Why? Because historically English people did eat much more "white" carbohydrate over a period of thousands of years and genetic adaptation over time is real -- but it takes generations to become common. The same has been noted in the Inuit, who had nearly zero cardiovascular disease and obesity historically but now have some of the highest rates in the world as a result of introduction of "western" foods.
Nonetheless given that it appears to be not "rare" but "uncommon" to not be impacted why are these "researchers" not testing this in people individually given that devices that can do so are now inexpensive and can be worn all the time without difficulty -- all you need is roughly $200 and you get value from that for years (until it wears out) at no additional cost once you purchase the device. The Garmin Instinct 2, a superseded model that is still available, is (as far as I know) the least-expensive option at $200; there are several others in Garmin's line that are prettier, more-capable and of course cost more depending on what you actually do. All of them are extremely convenient in that they only have to be charged once a week or even less, which is a huge problem with some competing devices (many of which don't do overnight HRV anyway) such as the Apple watch and various "smart" Android watches.
If these chuckle****s continue to pontificate without running said tests in any sort of formal setting you can and the advantage of you doing so is that the results are personal to you. I'm sure you agree that a couple hundred bucks is a hell of a lot cheaper than a heart attack, diabetes or obesity never mind the disability all of them cause -- and if you already are living with either of the latter two getting that crap out of your mouth might well help or even reverse it, especially if you delete the carbohydrates other than green vegetables at the same time.
Read here for more -- it was written long before I had this tool available to me, but now I understand why it worked and worked it did for me nearly 15 years ago and most-importantly the changes were durable, including the extra body mass staying off.
And if you find that you, like so many others, are seriously negatively impacted by these things?
Go raise Hell and tell the *******s who told you these were "good for you", probably including your doctor, to **** him or herself with a cactus -- and while you're at it you might consider exactly how many other pieces of "advice" that person and the rest of the "establishment" and media gave you that are equally full of **** and have directly contributed to the ruination of your health and what all that deserves in retribution, including among the "establishment" in all of its elements.
I'll leave the details of that last part up to you.