Seed oils are everywhere. In restaurants, packaged foods, cafés, and even the healthy snacks people buy without reading the label. But most people don't actually know what they are or how they're made.
Understanding them matters, especially if you care about inflammation, skin health, hormones, and long term energy.
Seed oils are oils extracted from seeds such as soybeans, canola, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, and grapeseed. They sound harmless and natural, but their story is more complex.
How Seed Oils Are Made
Seed oils don't simply drip out of seeds the way olive oil drips from olives or coconut oil comes from coconut flesh. They require intense processing. The seeds are heated to extremely high temperatures.
They're then treated with chemical solvents, often hexane, to force out the oil. After that, they must be deodorized because the smell created during this process is harsh and unpleasant. Then they're bleached to make the color look clean and uniform.
By the time the oil reaches a bottle, it's a highly refined product that has been stripped of natural antioxidants and structurally changed by heat.
Why People Are Concerned About Seed Oils
The biggest concern is their fat composition. Seed oils are extremely high in omega 6 polyunsaturated fats. Your body needs omega 6, but the modern diet contains far more than the human body evolved to handle. When omega 6 is eaten in excess, and especially in its refined form, it becomes unstable.
These unstable fats oxidize, meaning they break down easily when exposed to heat or light. This oxidation creates compounds that irritate the body, raise inflammation, and stress the cells.
This is why many people experience better skin, digestion, energy, and mental clarity when they reduce seed oil intake. Their body is simply dealing with less inflammatory load.
Where Seed Oils Hide
Seed oils aren't only in deep fried foods. They're in dressings, sauces, granola, chips, plant based milks, protein bars, restaurant foods, almost all packaged snacks, pastries and baked goods, and most premade healthy café bowls. Many cafés use canola or soybean oil even when the menu looks clean and natural.
What To Use Instead
There are oils that the body handles very well and that have been used for hundreds or thousands of years. Extra virgin olive oil. Avocado oil. Coconut oil. Butter or ghee. Beef tallow. Sesame oil used gently and traditionally. Macadamia oil.
The Bottom Line
Don’t drive yourself crazy overthinking ingredients to the point you can’t enjoy a night out or a home cooked meal with family or friends. Like most things when you’re standing the market faced with decisions to just take a second to read and make the best decision, it gets easier with time.
Your health doesn't need to be complicated. Sometimes it's just about removing what overwhelms the body and choosing ingredients that support the way you want to feel.
