If you’ve been online lately, you’ve probably been bombarded with the discourse about seed oils. Once a completely innocuous food that no one really talked about, they have become the enemy of the moment. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of health and human services in the US, has called them “toxic” and vowed to act against them.
There are countless activewear-clad influencers online saying that nothing harms your health more than these products. Which is odd, because the Australian dietary guidelines say seed oils are basically fine. You should limit them because they’re high in calories but otherwise there’s no major reason – according to the guidelines and most experts – why you should avoid them.
As Prof Lauren Ball, director of the University of Queensland’s Centre for Community Health and Wellbeing, says: “There’s no convincing evidence that eating seed oils like canola or sunflower oil in normal dietary amounts harms our health. In fact, these oils contain unsaturated fats, which are generally beneficial for cardiovascular health.” Dr Jason Wu, a professor at the University of New South Wales, agrees: “The evidence base consistently points to health benefits of eating seed oils.” Seed oils are a group of cooking oils that are, unsurprisingly, extracted from seeds. They’re generally quite highly refined – although you can get less refined versions of many of them – and include canola oil, sunflower seed oil, rice bran oil, soya bean oil and corn oil.
Most of the time vegetable oil is composed of seed oils – it’s often a mixture of sunflower seed and canola oils. The concerns about seed oils boil down to one thing: inflammation. It is asserted that the omega-6 fatty acids contained in most seed oils such as linoleic acid can be harmful in large doses and may cause the body to become more inflamed over time.
This isn’t entirely crazy – there is some evidence from rodent studies that omega-6s cause inflammation, and that having too many of them can have long-term negative outcomes. The problem, of course, is that lab rats and mice aren’t people. Very high levels of omega-6s can cause liver dysfunction and gut issues in rats but that doesn’t mean that a bit of sunflower seed oil is going to destroy your intestines.
Data from humans doesn’t really show this connection. People who eat more linoleic acid have substantially lower risks of cardiovascular disease than those who eat more. Studies looking at supplementing seed oils in people’s diets have shown no major impacts – and sometimes even modest benefits – compared with placebos.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
