Yes, the memes are true: seed oils are bad.
But how bad? Ancient myths say that after Satan finished with Adam and Eve, he set to work creating seed oils, finally perfecting the technique in 1911 when he bestowed the invention to humanity through his faithful vassals at Proctor and Gamble.
Think I’m exaggerating? As you will see by the end of this compendium of harmful health effects, they are so totally and irredeemably destructive that they can be described as nothing other than pure evil.
The next time someone claims that so-called “vegetable oils” are indeed “heart healthy”, feel free to send them this.
Note on the text: “Seed Oils” refers to oils, most of which (but not all) come from seeds, that are high in poly-unsaturated fats, aka PUFAs.
Harmful Effects
Cancer
What’s more evil than terrifying tumors of mutated tissue slowly killing you from the inside? Naturally, seed oils, the most insidious of ingredients, causes such a disease.
How does it work? Oxidative stress causes cancer, and of course “lipid peroxidation” (aka “seed oil decay”) is a major source of oxidative stress.
Further, many of the byproducts of seed oil decay, such as acrolein and aldehydes, are also carcinogenic.
It has been explicitly linked to kidney cancer, and is likely a main driver of every other type of cancer via similar mechanisms, although I haven’t found a ton of research establishing it.
Remember: just because it hasn’t been studied yet, doesn’t mean the connection doesn’t exist.
Hormones and Sexual Health
Elevated estrogen causes men to be infertile, and is also linked to all manner of health problems in women (e.g. breast cancer).
So it’s no surprise that seed oils are estrogenic—so much so that this paper lists multiple functions where PUFAs and estrogen do the exact same thing.
PUFAs decrease semen quality (in bulls), they make your balls smaller, and have even been found to cause so much damage in sperm that the sperm cells shut down before reaching the egg.
Heart Disease
Heart attacks have been a grim shadow over every middle-aged man since Eisenhower famously had his in the 1950s.
Funnily enough, this very event justified the mass adoption of “heart healthy” seed-oils.
What’s more evil than a food claiming to solve the very problem it causes? Hence, there is “overwhelming evidence” that the byproducts of seed oil decay drive the inflammation that leads to heart disease.
Skin Damage
Most religions of antiquity worshipped the sun as a primary deity. What a coincidence then that the divine solar essence burns the skin of anyone made unclean through eating this most unholy food.
It’s well established that lipid peroxidation is one of the main mechanisms through which UV light damages the skin, and that sensitivity to UV lights is increased with seed oil consumption.
Scientists even know that PUFAs increase lipid peroxidation in the skin.
Yet no one has put two and two together—the demons go to great lengths to deceive those victimized by their invention.
Diabetes?
Sugar causes diabetes right? Think again.
If sugar caused diabetes, why did diabetes only start to be a problem in the late 1960s, around the time of the first wave of seed oil popularity, instead of concurrently with the invention of sugar?
That’s because it doesn’t. That’s right, seed oils cause even more diabetes than fructose, all while pointing the blame at sugar, in typical deceitful seed oil fashion.
Gut problems
Digestive discomfort is very unpleasant. Demons love suffering, so what’s more fun for them than watching you suffer in the bathroom?
That’s why seed oils also induce gut inflammation by messing with your gut bacteria.
Brain Damage
Brains are a huge obstacle to the spread of seed oils, doing all that pesky thinking, investigating, and article writing that exposes the danger for what it is.
As their natural enemy, brains are thus a prime target for the deleterious effects of seed oils.
They lead to brain swelling, alzheimers, and can screw up gene expression in the brain too.
Obesity
Possibly the greatest scourge of modernity, obesity has been blamed on many false perpetrators: laziness, sugar, soda, sitting down all day— and yet, the primary cause eludes popular discussion.
Here’s how it works.
Cells get “full” when they get certain amounts of different macro nutrients. Saturated fat is generally filling, and sugar isn’t— that’s why you can drink a whole jar of apple juice but not a whole stick of butter.
Seed oils are as energy dense as saturated fat, but they signal satiety to the cells in the same way that sugar does—that is, they really don’t.
Meaning, if you eat seed oils, you’ll eat way more calories until you feel full than if you ate saturated fat (over 300 calories more in one meal, according to this study on children).
And in case you thought sugar was the problem here, seed oils also cause more obesity than both saturated fat and fructose.
This lecture has a great explanation:
DNA Damage
As if messing with you weren’t enough, seed oils also mess with your descendants.
That’s right, we’re talking DNA damage, both of your own primary cells as well as sperm cells.
Fortunately for men, new sperm are produced every three months, so your babies may be fine if you quit today. But no one has looked into the effects of seed oils on egg cells (yet).
Eye Problems
Macular degeneration, the primary cause of blindness in “developed” nations, is caused by seed oils.
(Fun fact, the level of “development” a country has is roughly proportional to the amount of seed oils they consume. What a perverse metric)
Blue light also causes increase in seed oil decay in the eyes.
Why? While seed oils are damaging to all tissues, since your eyes are exposed to the light, and light accelerates lipid peroxidation, it makes sense that the eyes are uniquely susceptible.
Check this lecture for more info.
What else?
Make no mistake, there is no redeeming quality to these oils whatsoever: they make every bodily function worse, they attack every organ, and they don’t even taste good.
And that says nothing about the destructive economic, social, spiritual, cultural, and environmental havoc that seed oils have wrought on the world.
As they mercilessly attack your body, so too should you mercilessly eliminate them.
What to do about it?
You get it now, seed oils are bad. So here is a brief overview of what you can do to protect yourself from them (my article on cellulite explains much of this protocol):
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