JJ Virgin breaks down why eight common seed oils—corn, soybean, canola, and others—may harm you. They're extracted with hexane, a toxic solvent, and their omega-6 fatty acids turn toxic when heated. Our diet shifted from a 4:1 omega-6 to omega-3 ratio to about 20:1, driving inflammation. Avocado and olive oil are safer bets.
Seed oils, are they really as bad as everybody's saying or is the fear overblown? Let's unpack this. So Dr. Cate Shanahan on my Well Beyond 40 podcast talked about the hateful 8: corn oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, and rice bran oil. The issue with these specifically is in the processing. When you process these oils, when you have to extract the oils from the seeds, you get a toxic byproduct called hexane. Now, a little bit of hexane probably wouldn't be a problem, but these things store in our tissues and become a problem. There are two other issues here with this. Number one, they oxidize. So that's— high heat can make these fragile omega-6s oxidize. Now you've just made a good thing bad. And while omega-6s are an essential fatty acid, too much is a problem. Used to be that we'd have somewhere in the neighborhood of 4:1 omega-6s to omega-3s. Now we're like 20:1, which puts us into more of a pro-inflammatory state. All of that to say, you are better off sticking with something like a monounsaturated oil. So I like either a real avocado oil or a real extra virgin olive oil instead.
