Seed Oils Guide

Seed oils are a very "talked about" topic. There are so many oils/so much information, it can become overwhelming and confusing. This topic really needs an entire book (and there are many great ones out there), but let’s take a simplified and generalized look. 

Not ALL seed oils are bad. There are many components, like processing and fatty acid composition, that determines the health status of an oil. 

TOP OILS TO AVOID

The oils you want to avoid contain large amounts of unstable fats. These can turn into toxins when heated during cooking, and once inside our bodies. Unfortunately, these oils are typically heated during the refining process. These oils include:

• Canola oil (Rapseed oil)

  • Canola oil used to be marketed as "heart-healthy" because it has more omega-3 PUFA and less omega-6, but we now know that all PUFA is unstable and shouldn't be refined or used for cooking.

• Corn oil

• Cottonseed oil

• Grapeseed oil

  • Grapeseed oil is extracted from the seed of the grape, not the fruit. And is chemically composed of unstable fats 

• Hydrogenated oil

  • These oils have been chemically processed to be more saturated; hydrogenated oils start with refined oils and are processed even further to create trans fats

• Ricebran oil

• Safflower oil

• Soy or soybean oil

  • soy oil has been found to cause liver damage and possibly fatty liver and is one of the top genetically modified (GMO) crops in the U.S

• Sunflower oil

  • high-oleic sunflower oil is better than most seed oils, but overall still not the best

• Vegetable oil

  • this is a generic term used, and technically coconut and olive oil are vegetable oil, but these are very rarely used in the vegetable oil label

  
  

TOP BENEFICIAL OILS:

• Unrefined Almond oil

• Unrefined Avocado oil

  • not actually a seed oil, as it comes from the avocado fruit

• Unrefined Coconut oil

  • high in saturated fats, which are very stable and resist oxidation

• Unrefined Macadamia nut oil

• Unrefined Peanut oil

  • one of the few seed oils with good fats, because the oil can be extracted without damaging nutrients

• Unrefined Olive oil

  • not actually a seed oil, as it comes from pressing the olive fruit, not the seed

• Sesame Oil (I wouldn't consider it one of the tops, but it's not terrible)

  • Sesame oil is high in PUFAs. However, sesame oil has been bred for hundreds and hundreds of years in order to increase its oil yield. Because of this, enough oil is able to be extracted without needing to use extreme heat, pressure, and solvents that would otherwise strip their nutrients.

Why Choose UNREFINED Oils

Ideally when shopping for healthy oils, you want to look for UNREFINED oil. The refining process turns oils into "empty calories" by stripping them of their minerals and antioxidants.

Refined oils contain high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and while we need some PUFAs in our diet it is best to consume them through whole foods like sunflower, chia, and flax because they are protected by antioxidants within the seeds. The refining process strips these protectants away, making the PUFAs toxic. 

When exposed to heat, pressure, metals, and bleaching agents the molecules are chemically altered into compounds like 4-hydroxynonanal, 4-hydroxyhexanol, and aldehydes which promote free-radical reactions (highly reactive and very unstable) that can damage our mitochondria, enzymes, hormone receptors, and DNA. 

What's the Deal with Palm Oil?

Palm oil is one of the more talked about oils, especially when it comes to baby formula. Palm oil can be a healthy fat, as long as it is not refined.

The problem is that this it not the case with most manufacturers. However, while the refining process of palm oil does have the potential to make it toxic, it is lower in PUFAs than the oils to avoid, making it "ok, but not great" (as described by Dr. Catherine Shanahan author of Dark Calories).

Formula & Oils

Formula is tough because it has to provide babies with essential fatty acids, and oils are the easiest source for this. Some formulas do contain beneficial oil like coconut, but they are often blended with other oils like safflower, sunflower, soy, canola, etc. in order to best mimic the fatty acid profile of breast milk. It's near to impossible to escape this. Whether you use formula by choice or necessity, try not to overly stress - we must pick and choose our battles, and some things are simply out of our control.

But a few things you can choose to control, if you wish, are to look for non-GMO and/or high-oleic oils like this.

NO SEED OIL SNACKS

Source: drcate.com