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Why are you being told to avoid seed oils?

Experts say the worries around seed oils are, in essence, a repackaged wellness fad.
Photo Illustration: Three bottles of seed oil in a phone with oil leaking out from the sides, resembling a Rohrschach test
Online, wellness influencers warn against consuming the “Hateful Eight”: canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, rice bran, safflower, soybean and sunflower oil.Kate Dehler for NBC News
By Melissa Dahl

A year or two ago, chances are you’d never given much thought to the concept of “seed oils.” But in 2025, they’re becoming harder to ignore. 

On social media and popular podcasts, wellness influencers warn of the dangers of consuming the “Hateful Eight”: canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, rice bran, safflower, soybean and sunflower oil. Late last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary — repeated those claims on X, arguing that Americans are being “unknowingly poisoned” by seed oils. (Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.)

It’s even become the stuff of online parody: In a recent post on TikTok, a young person pretends to sauté a pan that appears to be filled with mini bottles of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky, while intoning, “The most important thing about this meal is avoiding seed oils.”

Now, at least some in the food industry are making changes. The CEO of Sweetgreen this month announced the introduction of the restaurant’s “first-ever seed oil-free menu.” A spokesperson for Sweetgreen told NBC News in a statement, “We’re proud to connect people to real food and give options to our guests that we can be proud of.”

sweetgreen seed oils seedoils menu
The salad chain Sweetgreen introduced a seed oil-free menu this month.NBC News

But nutrition experts say the worries swirling around seed oils are, in essence, a reheated, repackaged wellness fad. “This has been coming and going for 20 years,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, the director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. And the focus on seed oils, Mozaffarian and other experts argue, misses the bigger picture when it comes to improving Americans’ health. 

What are the concerns about seed oils — and where did they come from?

When critics talk about seed oils, “I really think what they’re after is the omega-6, omega-3 thing,” said Christopher Gardner, the director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. (Gardner also served on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.) 

The “omega-6, omega-3 thing” he’s referring to is a wellness idea that dates to at least the 2000s, when chatter circulated in nutrition circles about the supposed dangers of omega-6 fatty acids, which could increase inflammation and thus lead to chronic illness like heart disease or diabetes, or so the thinking went. Eventually, those voicing these claims became loud enough to prompt the American Heart Association to issue a scientific advisory laying out the evidence for the health benefits of omega-6s, particularly concerning cardiovascular disease.

Given that context, Gardner said, it becomes easier to begin to understand the claims about the dangers of seed oils, which can sometimes seem as if they came out of nowhere. 

Most claims about the dangers of seed oils tend to focus at least in part on inflammation — more specifically, that seed oils contain large amounts of omega-6s relative to omega-3s. Current seed oil skeptics say this ratio is pro-inflammatory and can lead to chronic illness.

Omega-6s are fatty acids; so are omega-3s. Most fats, Gardner explained, are converted to energy in the body. “A very small number of our fats — and it’s these omega-6s and omega-3s — actually get converted to hormone-like substances,” Gardner explained. He added that these fatty acids play a role in regulating blood pressure, vasodilation, clotting and triglyceride levels in the blood, all processes that are related to inflammatory response, he said. 

“The omega-3s are a little less inflammatory than the omega-6s,” Gardner said. “There are some byproducts of omega-6s that could contribute in some way to inflammation, but the net impact is not pro-inflammatory.”

But there are also health benefits associated with omega-6s.

“Omega-6s, in dozens and dozens of randomized controlled trials in people, improve blood cholesterol levels — multiple aspects of blood cholesterol levels, from increasing the good cholesterol, like HDL, reducing LDL cholesterol, reducing triglycerides to improving glucose and insulin levels,” Mozaffarian said. “And it’s ironic, because many of the influencers talk about diabetes — and there’s well-established randomized trials showing that omega-6 fatty acids actually improve glucose, improve insulin resistance, improve insulin secretion by the pancreas. 

“They’re extremely healthy,” he added.

Zeroing in on these fatty acids isn’t the best way of understanding whether a food is healthy, Gardner said. “The big deal is, is it saturated or unsaturated?” he said. 

Both omega-3s and omega-6s are a type of unsaturated fat — specifically, polyunsaturated fatty acids. Data shows that eating polyunsaturated fats instead of saturated fats can lower heart disease risk. Most saturated fats come from animal products, like meat and dairy. The foods that account for the biggest sources of saturated fats in Americans’ diets include cheese, pizza, ice cream and eggs.

“Whether it’s omega-6 or omega-3 is fairly trivial,” Gardner said. “They’re both good for you.” 

Some of the claims about seed oils aren’t wrong — but they are misguided, experts say

It’s true, as Kennedy and other detractors claim, that Americans are consuming more seed oils and less animal fat than we were a century ago. But we’re also eating more fast food and highly processed foods, both of which tend to contain large amounts of seed oil. 

“If you look through the grocery store, let’s say 70% of the grocery store is packaged foods in the middle aisles,” said Lisa Young, a registered dietician and adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University. “We have tons of junk that we’re consuming. These seed oils are the foundation of all that junk.” 

The problem, in other words, is just as likely to be the excessive refined carbohydrates, salt and sugar Americans are eating along with the seed oils. 

It’s tempting to zoom in on a specific nutrient and blame America’s health woes for it, said Alice Lichtenstein, a professor of nutrition science at Tufts University. Carbs, calories and fat, for example, have all assumed the role of nutritional villain in the past several decades. But it’s more helpful to consider overall dietary patterns, she said. Are the people who consume the most seed oils doing so because they’re sautéing vegetables in safflower oil at home? Or are they eating more seed oils because they’re eating more packaged foods? 

“Certainly dietary patterns that are higher in fish … are associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease,” Lichtenstein said. But, she added, diets that are higher in fish also tend to be lower in saturated fat and higher in monounsaturated fat. “People [who eat fish also] tend to be more active and they tend to smoke less and have other factors that are associated with better health outcomes,” she said.

In other words, one good health habit tends to beget another, and the same goes for bad health habits. Zeroing in on one nutritional component misses that bigger picture, Lichtenstein said. 

Is there any potential harm in avoiding seed oils?

All that said, choosing to avoid seed oils poses no inherent danger to your health, experts said. But there are downsides. 

Avoiding seed oils entirely would mean cooking all your foods at home — and that means all your food, including things like salad dressing, sauces and even bread, said Julia Zumpano, a registered dietitian at Cleveland Clinic. That takes more time than many busy Americans have, she said.

Many weekends, Zumpano packs a day’s worth of snacks for her three kids during their long days of basketball games. It takes time and effort, but for Zumpano, it’s worth it to avoid feeding her children the processed food on offer at the gym. (She doesn’t make the effort specifically to avoid seed oils, but by avoiding processed foods, she ends up avoiding seed oils, too.) 

“All they have to eat is hot dogs, chips, a bowl of noodles,” she said. “There’s not one fresh food item there.” 

But, again, not every parent has the time to prepare and pack an entire day’s worth of fresh food, Zumpano said. Also, seed oils are often cheaper than many alternatives, she added. 

Those on a budget might not have the option to swap canola oil for comparatively expensive containers of olive oil or avocado oil, both of which are monounsaturated fats. “Those kinds of fats, compared to the polyunsaturated omega-6s, are less susceptible to rancidity,” Young said.

For Gardner, it’s also a matter of taste. Sometimes you need a neutral oil, he pointed out. “If you’re cooking corn muffins, do you want to put olive oil in your corn muffin? No, I’m going to put corn oil in my corn muffins, because I don’t want the strong taste of olive oil in my corn muffin,” he said. “That would be really weird.”

But what’s replacing the seed oils? That’s the real potential health concern, experts say

Really, the trouble with avoiding seed oils is about what people choose to use instead, experts said. 

“I think the potential harm will be if enough consumers raise this as a concern, and the industry stops using these oils or restaurants stop using the oil, they’ll use worse alternatives,” Mozaffarian said. 

By “worse alternatives,” he means animal fats like butter, lard or beef tallow, all of which are higher in saturated fat than seed oils. Saturated fat is linked to cardiovascular disease and weight gain.  

“Animal fats are healthier than white bread,” Mozaffarian said, “but they’re not healthier than seed oils.” 

Instead of focusing on avoiding seed oils, experts said, you’d be better off spending that time and mental energy on avoiding fast and highly processed foods. 

“For years, we have told you to eat less sugar and salt and chips and junk food,” Gardner said. “If suddenly telling you that the seed oil in them is killing you [means] you stop eating all the crap for the wrong reason — I would be thrilled.” 

Melissa Dahl

Melissa Dahl is a health journalist covering psychology, fitness, women's health, and more. Previously, she was the executive lifestyle and wellness director for Bustle Digital Group; before that, she held a range of titles at New York magazine, including executive editor at The Cut. She is also the author of Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness, published by Penguin Random House.