Lots of uTube presentations talk about the problems of unsaturated seed oils but they don’t entirely identify the causes. Let me explain, cooking with corn oil is bad but eating corn that has corn oil is not bad. What’s going on?
THE LARGEST UNCONTROLLED NUTRITION EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY
The Captain
Way too long. Please give us a summary.
Unsaturated fats in their natural state are not bad for humans, it’s the high temperature processing to extract them that oxidizes them and turns them into poison. Olive and avocado oils are extracted by cold pressing so they don’t suffer any harm.
Same happens with oils used to fry stuff that are used again and again.
It’s the processing that causes the problems.
T Cap
Saturated fats like coconut oil have higher melting point and more likely to be a wax. More stable. Less subject to air oxidation. But thought to contribute to artery clogging deposits. Tallow used to make candles is one example. Lard is pressed to remove lard oil removing unsaturated oils. Can also be hydrogenated to convert to saturated fat. (Partial hydrogenation results in transfats but not a problem when fully saturated–the reason most products now show 0% trans fats on their label.)
OTOH, if you prefer a quicker read with a mention of evidence, there’s this (among many others that come up on Google….depending upon the question you ask 
)
The Evidence Behind Seed Oils’ Health Effects | Johns Hopkins | Bloomberg School of Public Health https://share.google/l98rGveRWvw9VyX7C
I think one of the issues with the perceived harmful effects that the influencers don’t bother to mention (assuming….correctly, I guess…that their followers aren’t that intetested?) is that “seed oil” consumption is heavily correlated with craptaculous eating habits and UPF, so there’s that.
Of course, avid readers of labels are well aware that, regardless of how toxin inducing the high temperature extraction process might be, it’s totally possible to purchase products that are expeller-pressed instead.
Yes, and many processors are smart enough to protect the oil from air while they process it. Nitrogen or carbon dioxide should work fine. I think soybean oil is usually recovered using hexane (essentially raw gasoline w/o additives). It’s flammable. Excluding air is an important safety issue. Also spark free area.
Is olive oil still safe? Seed oil?
W only three food groups, fats seem essential in our diet. The discussion of what is safest seems endless.
Moderation is the best answer for most of us. How can you cook w/o butter?
Google AI
Olive oil is not a seed oil;
it is a fruit oil extracted from the fleshy, fatty pulp of olives. Unlike seed oils (such as canola, soybean, or sunflower) that require intense industrial refining and chemical solvents, high-quality olive oil is produced via mechanical pressing, often described as “fruit juice”.
The Captain
While we are talking nutritional fats, let me throw in a modest recommendation for using ghee — clarified butter — for some cooking. It can take high heat with no trouble — amazing for extracting extra flavor from most herbs and spices, tastes like rich butter, and stores easily and well at room temperature for weeks at a time in my kitchen.
Most seed oils are alkali refined. They get washed with lye to remove acidity (as soap). Then washed again to remove alkali and dried. Not very chemical.
Olive oil is triolein. It is unsaturated and susceptible to air oxidation. Saturated fats are more stable.
Cup of raw carrots - 25 calories. Cup of boiled carrots - 55 calories.
You don’t boil carrots in bleach and other nasty stuff, do you?
The Captain
The argument is that saturated fat is good for you after all. For most, LDL is a nightmare as we age, eating saturated fat in large quantities. Seed oil is a much better alternative.
Steak vs a homemade vegetable stir-fry, you are better off with the vegetable oil. It is not just a choice of highly processed foods.
Well, that might very well depend upon whether seed oils are consumed in large quantities also…..a nuance that I suspect is oftentimes absent on AI overviews.
Even a relatively “low” fat diet can contain oodles of dietary fat….saturated or otherwise….if the total daily energy intake is high enough to build and maintain an overfat body. A nuance that tend to be ignored by folk who want to claim “a low fat diet made me fat”.
Conversely, if routine daily energy intake is low, a perceived high fat diet may not contain that that much fat at all in absolute terms ……something dedemonstrated by the so called French Paradox.
Makes little difference with strong genetic predisposition to ASCVD, but there you go…
A point well made. The body is quite able to deal with small and infrequent problems, that’s what the immune system is for. But food tends to be habit forming and we need to reduce bad habits.
Not all vegetable oils are seed oils. Olive, avocado, and coconut oils are fine. The oils to avoid are the ones that rely on high temperature and chemicals to extract the oil from the vegetable, most if not all vegetable seeds. As VeeEnn points out, once in a while is OK.
The Captain
The point being, even a “simple processing” off food changes its dietary profile. Carrots all of a sudden have more calories available.
Cooking is good.
Industrial chemical processing is not.
Why conflate the two?
The Captain
Define industrial chemical.
Chemistry is THE basic material science. All materials are chemical.
Depends on how you define “is”?
All the chemicals that our grandmothers would not use to cook with but are used by industry to extract cooking oil from seeds.
From what I can tell, it all started with Procter & Gamble trying to find a use for waste cotton seed. They invented Crisco which looked rather appetizing but the side effects were unknown and not researched back then. Another case of the road to hell paved with good intentions.
Let’s see what Google AI has to say:
Your assessment is accurate. The story of Crisco is indeed a significant example of industrial innovation turning a waste byproduct into a mainstream consumer product, with long-term, unforeseen health consequences.
Here are the details behind the history of Crisco and Procter & Gamble:
- The Waste Product: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cottonseed oil was an unwanted byproduct of the cotton industry. While the fiber was used for textiles, the seeds were often left to rot or used as low-grade fertilizer.
- P&G’s Need: Procter & Gamble (P&G) was originally a soap and candle company. They relied on animal fats (lard and tallow), but these were expensive and controlled by a monopoly.
- The Innovation: In the early 1900s, P&G sought a cheaper, more consistent alternative. They acquired cottonseed mills and utilized a new process called hydrogenation (perfected with chemist E.C. Kayser in 1907) to turn liquid vegetable oil into a solid, white fat that closely resembled lard.
- “Crystallized Cottonseed Oil”: The product was initially going to be named “Cryst,” but P&G management feared a religious connotation. They settled on Crisco, which was short for Cristallized Cottonseed oil.
- The Marketing Strategy: Launched in 1911, Crisco was marketed as a “pure,” modern, and more digestible alternative to lard. It was cheaper, didn’t need refrigeration, and was advertised as superior to animal products.
- The “Unknown” Side Effects: The hydrogenation process used to create Crisco produced trans fats. At the time of its introduction, the negative health impacts of trans fats—such as their role in raising “bad” cholesterol and lowering “good” cholesterol—were not understood or researched. It took decades for the scientific consensus to link artificial trans fats to heart disease.
The Captain