The Importance of Cooking Oil Choices

The fats you cook with are just as important as the foods you eat. While most people focus on eating whole, nutrient-dense foods, they often overlook one of the biggest sources of hidden toxins in their diet: industrial seed oils. Canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil—these oils have become staples in modern kitchens, but they’re anything but healthy. Highly processed, oxidized, and inflammatory, these oils have been linked to everything from metabolic dysfunction to heart disease and cognitive decline.

For decades, seed oils were marketed as “heart-healthy” alternatives to traditional fats like butter and tallow. But the truth is, these oils undergo intense chemical processing, requiring solvents like hexane, high heat refining, bleaching, and deodorizing just to make them edible. The end result? A highly unstable fat that oxidizes easily, fuels systemic inflammation, and contributes to chronic disease. If you want to take control of your health, getting rid of seed oils is one of the best things you can do.

How Industrial Seed Oils Are Made

Most seed oils don’t come from foods that naturally produce a lot of fat. Unlike olive oil, which is pressed from olives, or butter, which is made from cream, seed oils require extensive processing to extract oil from crops like soybeans, corn, and rapeseed. The process begins with mechanical pressing, followed by chemical extraction using hexane, a petroleum-based solvent. Once extracted, the crude oil is subjected to high heat refining, which destroys beneficial nutrients and creates harmful oxidation byproducts.

At this point, the oil is dark, rancid, and foul-smelling, so manufacturers bleach it to remove color and deodorize it to eliminate the strong odor. The final product may look clean and clear, but it’s nothing more than an oxidized, pro-inflammatory fat loaded with chemical residues. These oils are found everywhere—cooking oils, salad dressings, processed snacks, and restaurant foods. If you’re eating anything from a package or a fast-food restaurant, there’s a good chance it’s been cooked in or made with seed oils.

Why Seed Oils Are Harmful to Your Health

One of the biggest issues with seed oils is their high omega-6 content. While omega-6 fatty acids are essential in small amounts, the modern diet is overloaded with them, creating an unhealthy imbalance between omega-6 and omega-3 fats. This imbalance promotes systemic inflammation, a key driver of chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and neurodegenerative disorders.

Another major problem is that seed oils are extremely unstable when exposed to heat. Unlike saturated fats, which remain stable during cooking, polyunsaturated fats oxidize easily, creating harmful byproducts such as lipid peroxides and aldehydes. These compounds damage cells, accelerate aging, and increase oxidative stress, contributing to a range of health issues.

Additionally, studies show that seed oils can contribute to insulin resistance, liver dysfunction, and impaired mitochondrial function. They disrupt cellular membranes, interfere with metabolic health, and have even been linked to cognitive decline. The widespread use of seed oils in the food supply means that unless you’re actively avoiding them, you’re likely consuming them daily in amounts that are far from healthy.^[1]

The Best Cooking Fats to Use Instead

If you want to protect your health, replacing industrial seed oils with stable, nutrient-dense fats is essential. Here are some of the best alternatives:

• Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil – A rich source of monounsaturated fats and polyphenols, olive oil is an excellent choice for raw applications like salad dressings or drizzling overcooked foods. Studies show that high-quality extra virgin olive oil reduces inflammation, supports heart health, and can lower all-cause mortality by up to 17%. However, it’s not the best option for high-heat cooking due to its lower smoke point.^[2]
• Grass-Fed Butter or Ghee – Unlike seed oils, butter, and ghee contain beneficial fatty acids like butyrate and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which support gut health, metabolic function, and inflammation reduction. Ghee, which is clarified butter, removes milk solids and has a higher smoke point, making it ideal for high-heat cooking.^[3]
• Organic Coconut Oil – One of the most heat-stable oils, coconut oil contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) that provide a quick energy source and support metabolic health. It’s naturally antimicrobial and does not contribute to inflammation like seed oils.

Other great options include grass-fed tallow, pastured lard, and avocado oil, all of which are stable at high temperatures and free from the harmful processing of industrial seed oils.

How to Make the Switch

The first step in removing seed oils from your diet is reading ingredient labels. Seed oils are hidden in everything from snack foods to restaurant meals. Even many organic products contain canola oil or sunflower oil, so vigilance is key.

Next, replace all cooking oils in your home with healthier alternatives. If you have vegetable oil, canola oil, or any other industrial seed oil in your pantry, toss it. Stock your kitchen with high-quality olive oil, coconut oil, butter, and ghee instead. Cooking at home with real fats is one of the simplest and most effective ways to improve your health.

Final Thoughts: The Power of Choosing the Right Fats

Switching to natural, stable fats isn’t a fad—it’s about giving your body the nutrients it needs while avoiding harmful, oxidized oils that contribute to disease. Modern food manufacturing has prioritized cheap, shelf-stable oils at the expense of human health, but you don’t have to accept that in your own kitchen. By eliminating industrial seed oils and replacing them with traditional, whole-food fats, you can reduce inflammation, support metabolic function, and set yourself up for long-term health.

1. Cravotto, Christian, et al. “Towards Substitution of Hexane as Extraction Solvent of Food Products and Ingredients with No Regrets.” Foods, vol. 11, no. 21, Oct. 2022, p. 3412.
2. Flynn, Mary M., et al. “Is Extra Virgin Olive Oil the Critical Ingredient Driving the Health Benefits of a Mediterranean Diet? A Narrative Review.” Nutrients, vol. 15, no.
3. Basak, Sanjay, and Asim K. Duttaroy. “Conjugated Linoleic Acid and Its Beneficial Effects in Obesity, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer.” Nutrients, vol. 12, no. 7, June 2020, p. 1913.