First order of business is to tell you what we use in our foods and soups. We use mostly organic olive oil, plus some avocado and coconut oils. We do not currently use any seed oils in our products.
Now look, if someone offers one billion dollars for goodsugar and the new owners want to use seed oils, milk, eggs, and animal protein, they can. As long as I get two hundred million of that billion. Other than that, hard pass.
Let’s be honest. Who wants to add a thousand basis points to their cost of goods sold by using pure ingredients. Why should a food company give two flying f**ks about your inflammatory markers, your grandma, or your annoying kids. Hmm. goodsugar question.
I am not judging anyone for doing their thing. But if I do not say it, who does. This is all a distraction. Just switch to cleaner oils. Done. The universe rewards.
Seed oils are a category of industrially extracted vegetable oils made from seeds like soy, corn, canola, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, rice bran, and grapeseed. These oils now dominate the modern food supply. They are in almost every packaged food, restaurant fryer, salad dressing, vegan butter, plant based meat, cracker, and baked good.
This is not because they are especially healthy. It is because they are extremely cheap, shelf stable, and easy to mass produce. The seed oils are disgusting tasting in my view.
For almost all of human history, people did not eat these oils. Traditional fats came from whole foods. Olive oil from olives. Coconut oil from coconuts. Avocado oil from avocados. Butter and ghee from milk. Fat from nuts, seeds, and animals was eaten in its whole form, not separated and chemically altered.
Seed oils only became common in the last one hundred years, when industrial food processing made it possible to extract oil from tiny hard seeds using heat, pressure, and chemical solvents like hexane. The oils are then bleached, deodorized, and refined so they do not smell rancid.
This matters because polyunsaturated fats, which make up most seed oils, are chemically fragile. Their molecular structure contains multiple double bonds that easily react with oxygen, heat, and light. When these oils are heated, stored, or reused, they oxidize and form compounds that the body treats as inflammatory and toxic.
One of the main byproducts of oxidized seed oils is lipid peroxides and aldehydes, which are known to damage cells, irritate blood vessels, and disrupt normal metabolic signaling. These compounds increase oxidative stress in the body, which is linked to heart disease, insulin resistance, neurodegeneration, and accelerated aging.
This does not mean fat is bad. It means unstable fats are bad.
The human body evolved primarily on saturated and monounsaturated fats. These fats are structurally stable. They resist oxidation when heated and stored. Olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, and butter remain chemically intact at cooking temperatures. Seed oils do not.
Another major issue is omega six overload. Seed oils are extremely high in omega six fatty acids, especially linoleic acid. Omega six fats are not inherently harmful. We need them in small amounts. But the modern diet delivers them in massive excess, often ten to twenty times higher than omega three intake.
This imbalance pushes the body toward chronic inflammation. Omega six fats are precursors to inflammatory signaling molecules called eicosanoids. When the diet is dominated by seed oils, the immune system becomes more reactive, more inflamed, and more prone to pain, swelling, and metabolic dysfunction.
This is why many people feel worse when they eat processed vegan or vegetarian foods even though they are avoiding meat. The problem is not plants. The problem is industrial fat.
A tiny amount of seed oil, something like under a teaspoon in a whole day, is unlikely to meaningfully burden a healthy body. The human system is incredibly good at handling small insults. What really matters is the context in which those oils are showing up.
Seed oils are almost never added to real food. They show up in ultra processed food. Chips, packaged snacks, vegan junk food, frozen meals, fake meats, commercial baked goods, shelf stable sauces. So the real question is not did you eat a little seed oil today, it is what kind of food was it carried in.
If you are eating something made with refined sugar, preservatives, gums, fillers, flavor chemicals, and industrial starches, then the seed oil is just one more layer of stress on top of an already inflammatory product. Even if you swapped the oil out, it would still be metabolic garbage.
This framing keeps it honest and sane. It is not about fear of a molecule. It is about recognizing that seed oils are a marker for food that was never designed to nourish a human nervous system in the first place.
Seed oils also integrate into cell membranes. When the fats in your diet change, the fats in your cells change. If your membranes are built from fragile, oxidized polyunsaturated fats, they become less stable, more permeable, and more prone to oxidative damage. This affects everything from hormone signaling to mitochondrial energy production.
This is not fringe science. It is basic lipid biology. I am not a biochemist, and I did not run lab experiments myself, but this information is widely available from credible nutrition and medical sources. What you quickly find is that most serious research focuses less on the type of oil and more on what happens when any oil is overheated, reused, or used for frying. That process creates oxidized fats and toxic byproducts. That is where much of the risk comes from.
Fried food is far more damaging than tiny amounts of seed oil used as an ingredient in an otherwise normal product. In most cases, the real problem is the food the oil is attached to. Ultra processed snacks, refined sugar, artificial flavorings, preservatives, and colorings are what drive inflammation and metabolic stress. The oil is just part of that package.
This is the sleight of hand people miss when they fixate on one ingredient instead of the whole system. Fried chicken is not unhealthy only because of the oil it is cooked in. It is unhealthy because of the refined flour, the sugar in the seasoning, the chemical additives, and the extreme heat used in frying, which alters the fat and the food itself.
The same is true with candy and desserts. Refined sugar is far more harmful than a trace amount of seed oil. If someone removed fried foods and refined sugar from their diet but still consumed small amounts of seed oils, they would not be committing a health crime.
The real target is not one molecule. It is ultra processed food and high heat cooking.
None of this means you need to be afraid of eating seeds or nuts. Whole foods contain fiber, antioxidants, and protective compounds that stabilize their fats. The problem arises when oil is extracted, concentrated, heated, and stored.
The solution is not zero fat. The solution is better fat.
Use olive oil.
Use avocado oil.
Use coconut oil.
Use cacao butter.
Use nut and seed butters in whole form.
Avoid foods where soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, or corn oil are listed at the top of the ingredient list.
This one change alone can reduce inflammation, improve energy, stabilize blood sugar, and support brain and hormonal health.
This is not about perfection. It is about reducing the largest invisible source of metabolic stress in the modern diet, processed and refined ingredients.