Pesky, Inconvenient Facts About Seed Oils at Nutrition 2025

New research at Nutrition 2025 used blood markers to measure linoleic acid levels and their relation to cardiometabolic risk. The results add to the evidence that this omega-6 fatty acid may help to lower risks for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Annoyingly, the facts of these findings challenge deeply held beliefs that seed oils are harmful to cardiometabolic health.

The current administration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is on the move to Make America Healthy Again. A key source of our health problems, according to its leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is seed oils:

“Seed oils are one of the most unhealthy ingredients that we have in foods. And the reason they’re in the food is because they’re heavily subsidized. They’re very, very cheap. But they are associated with all kinds of very serious illnesses, including body-wide inflammation, which affects all of our health. It’s one of the worst things you can eat.

Pesky, Rigorous Research

Kevin Maki is a lipids research scientist and a past president of the National Lipid Association. He conducted this study and described its findings and the rigor behind it:

“Our study, based on almost 1,900 people, found that higher linoleic acid in blood plasma was associated with lower levels of biomarkers of cardiometabolic risk, including those related to inflammation.”

“Although other studies have assessed relationships between linoleic acid and cardiometabolic risk factors, our study used objective biomarkers rather than diet records or food frequency questionnaires to assess linoleic acid intake. We also measured a range of markers of inflammation and indicators of glucose metabolism.”

These new findings line up with other pesky research that keeps telling us “higher intakes and blood levels of linoleic acid are associated with improved cardiometabolic health outcomes.” This contradicts the seed oils are toxic creed, which holds that linoleic acid is the bad actor in seed oils.

But none of these facts seem to penetrate in the worldview that demonizes seed oils. They’re just bad.

Click here and here for Maki’s research at Nutrition 2025. Click here, here, here, and here for further perspective.

Canola Oil, photograph by Veganbaking.net, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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June 3, 2025