Ultra-processed seed oils, like canola oil and sunflower oil, have long been considered heart-healthy cooking fats. But a new wave of health influencers says alternatives like beef tallow are a more natural — and healthier — option. Health editor Mia de Graaf takes a closer look at the science to see if seed oils are really as bad as the critics think.
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00:00Back in 1990, it was a pretty big deal when McDonald's announced that they would stop cooking their fries in beef tallow and start using a mixture of seed oils instead.
00:10It was around then that health experts agreed that seed oils are much better heart-healthy options, and they became a big part of the American diet.
00:19Now, a reckoning of sorts is happening.
00:22Run, force, run, because these are highly processed oils.
00:25It causes inflammation.
00:26And people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are sounding the alarm on ultra-processed seed oils and pushing for beef tallow to make a comeback.
00:36Companies like Steak and Shake have actually removed seed oils from their menu and have gone back to tallow.
00:42So what's the truth about seed oils? Are they really that bad for you?
00:46I'm Nia DeGraff, and I'm a health editor at Business Insider.
00:50Seed oils have been used by different civilizations for thousands of years.
00:54During the Song Dynasty in China, around 1000 AD, locals crushed soybean plants with stone mills and wedge presses to extract the oil.
01:04In India, people used mustard seed oil in food and Ayurvedic medicine.
01:09Indigenous populations in North America also squeezed oil out of sunflower seeds for use in cooking and jojoba oil as a skin treatment.
01:17However, it wasn't until the late 19th century that seed oils became a big business in the U.S., as scientists figured out how to improve their taste and look and make them more shelf-stable.
01:30So how are cooking oils made today?
01:33Seed oils are extracted from the seed of plants, which is where you can find the highest concentration of fat.
01:39Take canola oil, which is made from rapeseed, a bright yellow flower in the mustard family.
01:45Manufacturers use pressure, heat and different chemical techniques to extract the oil.
01:50These days, it has gone through a lot of processes to reach you.
01:55It's washed with a bunch of chemicals along the way to remove impurities and improve its color and flavor and make it more stable to cook.
02:02But that doesn't mean that there are more chemicals in the oil.
02:06There aren't even chemical byproducts.
02:09Hexane, which is the solvent used to extract the oil, evaporates very fast and actually it can't bind with oil.
02:17Same with the bleaching process, which sounds really toxic.
02:21In reality, the oil is put in a vat with activated charcoal or clay, which absorbs the color.
02:27But those things are solids.
02:29They don't and they can't mesh with the oil during the processing.
02:33And they're not toxic to your health.
02:35Now let's look at how fruit oils like avocado or olive oil are made.
02:40These are, for the most part, mechanically cold pressed.
02:44That means the only process used to extract the oil from the fruit is pressure.
02:50Cold pressing is more expensive because it isn't very efficient.
02:53You will never extract 100% of oil through pressure alone, maybe 75% at best.
03:00But the nice thing about this process is that the oil retains a lot of the original nutrients.
03:06The downside, however, is that these oils aren't the most versatile to cook with.
03:11They retain a strong flavor and color.
03:13And then lastly, the third main kind of cooking fat is animal fat.
03:19So that could be butter made from dairy and tallow.
03:24It's made from the trimmings of beef or pork or poultry.
03:28When the fat melts, you can strain it through a cheesecloth.
03:32And that's pretty much it.
03:33You don't need to use chemicals to extract the fat.
03:36And of course, you also retain most of the nutrients that are naturally in the oil.
03:41I've never tried beef tallow, so I'm going to give it a taste.
03:45This is not, obviously, how you would normally consume it.
03:48But I want to get a sense of the flavor.
03:50Wow.
03:52It looks, I mean, it looks like butter or ice cream.
03:56Oh my god.
03:58I can't believe I'm doing this.
03:59Look, I would never eat a spoon of butter in the same way I'm never going to eat beef tallow.
04:08However, the flavor of it, I mean, if I was cooking potatoes in this, I mean, that would be delicious.
04:15So on here, there are lots of signposting that there is no artificial ingredients, no preservatives.
04:24And it has a lot of things on here promoting nose-to-tail usability.
04:28So that means that you're using every part of the animal, nothing is going to waste.
04:33So comparing all three categories, beef tallow and fruit oils are minimally processed compared to seed oils.
04:40But the refinement doesn't actually add dangerous toxins to the oil.
04:44It does, however, strip out some of the really good stuff from the original seed, like vitamin E and certain types of antioxidants.
04:51So does that mean that this is healthier for you?
04:54Not so fast.
04:55The reason tallow is good for cooking is the exact same reason that tallow is not that great for your body.
05:02It's very high in saturated fat.
05:04And as we know, saturated fat can clog up your arteries and veins.
05:08It can cause obesity, cholesterol problems, and it can pave the way to heart disease.
05:13In fact, a recent study found that replacing butter with seed oils would drastically reduce your risk of an early death.
05:19So to better understand this debate between dietary fats, we need to understand what kind of fats and oils we need and how our body processes them.
05:30So we've got monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.
05:35Both are good for your heart health and your cholesterol levels.
05:38Let's break down polyunsaturated fats.
05:40There are two kinds, omega-3 and omega-6.
05:44And we need to get them from food because we can't produce them naturally.
05:47Seed oils have high levels of omega-6 fatty acids that help us with energy, immunity, skin health, and repairing injuries.
05:56It creates an inflammatory response, which is actually useful.
05:59It helps us with blood clotting, allergic reactions, and wound healing.
06:04So then you have omega-3.
06:05And that you can find in cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil.
06:10Omega-3 is kind of like the yin to omega-6's yang.
06:13It helps keep that inflammatory response in check.
06:17It's also great independently for brain development because the chemical bonds are so flexible.
06:23Humans are used to having a little more omega-6 than omega-3 because omega-6 is more readily available.
06:29Omega-3 is harder to find.
06:31It's in fish, olives, fermented foods.
06:34Maybe if you live in a coastal community, you have more access to it.
06:37So really, you need both of these.
06:40And ideally, we want a ratio of around 4 to 1 omega-6 to omega-3.
06:46Today, that ratio is more like 20 to 1.
06:50That is a huge imbalance.
06:53Some researchers and nutritionists say that the problem with having a 20 to 1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3
06:58is that your body isn't regulating the inflammation.
07:02Inflammation drives the body to release something called cytokines, which can pave the way to diabetes.
07:07Inflammation is also a building block for heart disease and obesity, and it can increase the risk of certain cancers.
07:15So while seed oils are rich in omega-6, that may not necessarily be the issue.
07:20It might actually be this imbalance in our intake of the two kinds of fatty acids, which can cause health problems.
07:27So we're going to look at some of the most common ones to better understand the nutritional makeup.
07:33Let's look at something that's a really common crop in the U.S., and that is soybeans.
07:39On the label, it says smooth, mild, and neutral taste.
07:42That's really what you're getting with a seed oil.
07:45It's going to be versatile, and it's not going to be a very pungent flavor,
07:48as you might get with something like a tallow, an olive oil, something that is extracted in a different way.
07:55Per tablespoon of soybean oil, you're getting 14 grams of fat.
08:00Here, actually, most of the fats are unsaturated fat, so that means things that are going to lower your cholesterol levels.
08:07So next, let's look at canola oil.
08:09So this is your classic seed oil.
08:12Compared to soybean and sunflower oil, you're actually going to get more monounsaturated fat and less polyunsaturated fat in a canola.
08:22So ultimately, for your cholesterol levels, this would be something that you would go for.
08:26Okay, so next, let's look at corn oil.
08:29It is, again, higher in unsaturated fat and lower in saturated fat.
08:34So that means that you can heat it to a very high heat, but it might be a little less stable when heating it compared to something like a tallow,
08:42because the higher saturated fat in a tallow is going to keep it more contained.
08:47So how do we get to the point where people have decided that seed oils are categorically bad?
08:53Most harmful foods that people constantly eat.
08:55Seed oil.
08:56Buy it whenever you're looking at it.
08:57Seed oil.
08:57Canola oil.
08:58Horrible.
08:58Don't heat.
08:59One of the most vocal critics of seed oils is U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
09:06He says that they contribute to health issues like obesity.
09:09And he posted this video around Thanksgiving.
09:11This is the dangerous part.
09:13Urging folks to use tallow to deep fry their turkey.
09:16He claims that Americans were healthier when fast food restaurants used tallow instead of seed oils.
09:22But RFK and anti-seed oil influencers sometimes rely on flawed or cherry-picked science.
09:29For example, one study often cited by them found arachidonic acid, or AA, derived from omega-6-rich seed oils, caused inflammation in mice.
09:39But doctors generally disregard mouse studies.
09:44Humans do not metabolize arachidonic acid in the same way as a mouse.
09:48That's not to say the case is closed, but it's simply false to say that there is good evidence that AA is bad for humans.
09:56No randomized control trials in humans have found seed oils to be worse for you than saturated fat like beef tallow.
10:03Then there is the Sydney Heart Study.
10:06This is a commonly cited one.
10:09It was published in the 1970s, and it's often referenced by anti-seed oil advocates today.
10:14They found that men who consumed more seed oil or margarine had more heart issues than those who consumed less.
10:22The problem is this was done during a time when seed oils and margarines went through partial hydrogenation, a process that we know creates trans fats.
10:31Trans fats have actually been completely eliminated from our food system because they cause heart disease and high cholesterol.
10:36Another common concern that's raised by people who are skeptical of seed oils is the issue of heat during the refinement process.
10:45I've consumed a lot of anti-seed oil content, and this idea comes up a lot.
10:49That seed oils are exposed to so much heat and so much pressure in the factory that it creates free radicals, which means like an unstable molecule that could damage your DNA.
10:59And toxic compounds like polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, those can trigger inflammation in the body, and they're linked to cancer.
11:09However, refinement does not involve repeated heating to very high temperatures.
11:14To create toxic compounds takes a lot of heat, oxygen, and changing temperatures over and over again.
11:21And that's not going to happen during the manufacturing process.
11:24When you're cooking at home, seed oils can actually withstand quite a bit of heat because they've gone through the refining process.
11:31That actually helps to stop the oil from breaking down too much during cooking because unstable elements of the oil have been removed.
11:39However, compared to animal fats, seed oils are definitely more prone to damage when heated.
11:45We are seeing a lot of brands jumping on this anti-seed oil trend.
11:49Steak and Shake recently switched to cooking fries in tallow, saying that they RFK'd the fries.
11:54And people are raving about these French fries.
11:57You taste them, I taste them.
11:59Massa, a tortilla chip brand, switched to cooking their chips in tallow, which is more expensive but decadent, and they say it's paying off.
12:07There are other brands like Buffalo Wild Wings, Outback Steakhouse, and Popeyes that have been using beef tallow to cook food for decades.
12:13But there's no escaping seed oils because our entire food system in the U.S. relies on soy and corn.
12:21It started with the introduction of the Farm Bill in 1933.
12:25Large federal subsidies made crops like cottonseed and soybean cheaper to grow and sell.
12:31Once burned as waste, cottonseed now is a considerable factor in the American diet.
12:36And products like Crisco, which uses a blend of vegetable oils, became very popular.
12:41Today, farmers who grow soybeans, corn, cotton, rapeseed are eligible for loans, disaster relief payments, subsidies, and other perks.
12:52Banning seed oils could actually affect the economy.
12:55Cargill, a global commodities trader, put out a note saying that the U.S. simply cannot replace seed oils because you can't make enough of anything else.
13:04And they make up most of the world's edible oil supply.
13:07In December, 1.2 billion pounds of soybean oil was refined for edible use in the U.S.
13:13That compares to only 75.6 million pounds of edible tallow, according to USDA data.
13:20Pretty much every ultra-processed food has some kind of corn, soy, or oil baked into it.
13:27And we have some of those products with us today.
13:28A classic place you're going to find seed oils is in a ready-made, microwavable meal.
13:35So, for example, look at Ben's original ready rice, whole grain medley with brown and wild herbs.
13:42So, the ingredients here, we have water, rice, bread rice, canola oil, and then different kinds of powders and acids.
13:52And right at the end, it says that the canola oil only adds a trivial amount of saturated fat, which I love the editorializing of that label.
14:00And so, canola oil, it's very high in polyunsaturated fat, which is great for your heart.
14:06And on this label, it actually breaks down the different types of fat that you're going to get in this product.
14:10So, it says that the total fat per cup is 3 grams, and that breaks down to 1 gram of polyunsaturated fat and 1.5 grams of monounsaturated fat.
14:22Both are good for your heart health and your cholesterol levels.
14:26Next up, I've got Smart Balance Chunky Peanut and Flaxseed Spread.
14:31This contains peanuts, sugar, flaxseed oil, palm oil, salt, and molasses.
14:39Palm oil is processed in a similar way to seed oils.
14:43It's slightly different because it's 50% saturated fat, so it's a semi-solid at room temperature.
14:49You should also remember that most nuts are naturally high in oils.
14:53So, if you're trying to work out the fat composition of your peanut butter, it's not just going to be the added oils.
15:00You should take into account the peanut itself.
15:02Some other thoughts about just this product in general.
15:04It does have a lot of sugar and molasses, so that's a lot of added sweetener, which would maybe be my primary concern with this product.
15:13Peanut butter, it is high in calories.
15:15That's not a reason to avoid it, but that's just something else to take into account when you're thinking about the nutritional makeup.
15:21So, the cereal sector is a big one that uses seed oils, mainly for shelf stability.
15:26So, let's look at Nature's Bakery Fig Bars.
15:29I love these, I have to say.
15:31So, the ingredients, whole wheat flour, fig paste, cane sugar, brown rice syrup, canola oil, whole grain oats, glycerin fruit juice.
15:40Okay, I haven't had breakfast, so I'm going to have one of these.
15:43And I would not advocate this for a healthy breakfast, but, you know, in a pinch.
15:48It's pretty tasty.
15:49Something like this, oh, sorry, really, you know, wouldn't last from a manufacturing plant to me, like, days after it was made, if it was homemade.
16:05But if you're using different ingredients like glycerin and canola oil, that's really going to make it last and I can eat it and it tastes fantastic.
16:13This isn't just an American issue, we have a foreign product here.
16:18So, this is Oh My Okra, which is an okra snack made in Canada.
16:24Now, to make a snack like this, which is dried and crunchy and packaged, it's kind of impossible to make that without some kind of oil, especially if you're trying to have a coated flavor on it.
16:35It has three ingredients, whole okra, expeller pressed sunflower oil, and sea salt.
16:41Sunflower oil, it's really high in polyunsaturated fats, which is great for lowering your LDL or bad cholesterol levels.
16:50Expeller pressed, that means it was extracted using a machine, not necessarily with solvents or heat or any other methods.
16:58So, yes, this is processed and, yes, this is manufactured in such a way so that it would be shelf-stable for a long time, so it's not a whole food that you could just have at home.
17:08Now, let's look at an organic product.
17:12So, this is Brad's Organic Blue Corn Tortilla Chips.
17:17So, the ingredients, we have organic whole grain blue corn flour masa, and then a bunch of organic vegetable oils.
17:27It has one or more of the following, sunflower, safflower, canola, and flaxseed.
17:32So, the interesting thing about that is that every ingredient in this, including the oils, are organic, which means that they were grown without fertilizer or pesticides,
17:41and there are just tighter controls over the land in which you can grow the flowers and the plants that these seeds even come from before they are pressed.
17:48You're also going to find seed oils in protein products that Jimbrose might be taking for gains.
17:56For example, we have Muscle Milk Vanilla Cream.
18:02So, this has a ton of ingredients in it because to make a kind of creamy shake that has protein in it without it being clumpy and gross, you're going to have to add stuff to it.
18:13One of the things that's added to it is oil. So, we've got water, milk protein isolate, calcium, cassinate, high oleic sunflower oil.
18:24That means more oleic acid, which is a monounsaturated fat, and less linoleic acid, which is a polyunsaturated fat.
18:32High oleic sunflower oil is going to enhance the creamy texture of this drink, and it's also going to help improve the shelf stability.
18:41On top of that, seed oils are actually baked into our food system, and it's not exactly something that you can just see on a label.
18:47If you go to a restaurant, you might have grilled meats brushed with oil, fried food, fried in oil, sauces.
18:54Some examples of things that are high in seed oils include beef, pork, or poultry from grain-fed animals.
19:02Their entire diet is high in omega-6.
19:05The same is true for milk, cheese, and butter from grain-fed cows, eggs from grain-fed hens, farmed fish, which are fed a lot of soybean and cornmeal.
19:17So, we're going to look at how much oil or tallow you would be using in a given day of cooking.
19:25So, I've spooned out how much of these oils I would hypothetically use over the course of the day, cooking eggs for breakfast, soup for lunch, and a steak for dinner.
19:35So, to compare my whole day in either olive oil, canola oil, or beef tallow, this is what I'd be looking at nutritionally.
19:42My whole day in canola oil, I'm looking at total 4 grams of saturated fat, if this was all I used in the whole day, and I wasn't also consuming snacks that had added oils.
19:54With olive oil, you're looking at around 8 grams of saturated fat, same caveat.
20:00With beef tallow, if every meal you cooked was with beef tallow, and it was around this amount, you'd be looking at around 28 grams of saturated fat in the day.
20:10So, saturated fat, much, much higher in a beef tallow, and that's something to take into account, if that's something that you want to add a lot of to your diet.
20:19So, what should we be consuming?
20:22Number one is that we really need to eat more omega-3s, and that you can find in cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil.
20:31If you're going to fry, a recent study actually found that the healthiest oil is olive oil.
20:37Remember, it gets smoky more easily, so you do want to turn on your ventilator.
20:41If you're concerned about heart health, the doctors I spoke to all said that they would actually advise older patients to consume more seed oils.
20:50So that's like canola oil, and in particular, sunflower oil.
20:56You can't isolate seed oil when so much in our world has changed.
21:00We eat bigger portions, we eat more sugar, we eat more heavily processed food, we move less, our stress levels are higher.
21:07So it's a bit of a misnomer when anti-seed oil influences show charts that indicate the rise in seed oil consumption and the rise in obesity from 1940 to 2020.
21:18Yes, seed oil consumption has increased in tandem with obesity rates, but correlation doesn't equal causation.
21:24But also, if you are concerned about this kind of thing, don't fry as much.
21:29Try steaming or roasting or baking things.
21:32Try to eat fresh vegetables, try to buy organic meat and poultry and dairy from grass-fed animals that are consuming more omega-3s.
21:41And remember, ultimately, it's about the bigger picture of how you're living your life and finding balance.
21:48It's like butter that just completely dissolved in my mouth, it's now gone.
21:54Wow, it's really oily.
21:58Let's see, maybe about that much, yeah.
22:03Drop that in there.
22:09Now that really pungent flavour.