Seed oils are not a health food. They are industrial waste products that somebody worked out could be deodorised, bleached, and sold to you as a cooking medium. Here’s the full story.
The journey from cottonseed oil being a toxic byproduct of the textile industry to vegetable oil being officially endorsed as heart-healthy takes about seventy years, involves a considerable amount of funded research, and represents one of the most consequential errors in the history of public health advice.
These articles cover what seed oils are, what they do, how they became ubiquitous, and why eliminating them is one of the highest-leverage dietary changes you can make.
The science
The Four Insidious Ways Seed Oils Destroy Your Health
The biochemical mechanisms by which linoleic acid accumulates in your tissues, oxidises, and drives inflammation. This is the foundational piece.
How Seed Oils Made The Sun Your Enemy
The link between polyunsaturated fat accumulation in skin tissue and UV sensitivity. Why sunburn isn’t a sunlight problem: it’s a diet problem.
Why You Don’t Need Antioxidants On Carnivore
The antioxidant argument for plants only makes sense if your diet is oxidising your cells in the first place. Eliminate seed oils, and the equation changes.
The history
How Seed Oils Poisoned The Planet
The full history: from Procter & Gamble’s Crisco, through Ancel Keys, through the dietary guidelines, to the bottle of rapeseed oil on your supermarket shelf. How we got here.
The Corrupt History Of The Dietary Guidelines
Seed oils didn’t become mainstream by accident. They became mainstream because the research that should have stopped them was bought. The full audit.
What to cook with instead
You Can’t Do Carnivore Without High Fat
Tallow, lard, butter, dripping: the cooking fats that were standard before seed oils replaced them, and why they’re considerably better for you.
Can You Eat Pork On The Carnivore Diet?
The PUFA content of pork is directly related to what the pig was fed. Source it correctly and the problem disappears.
Everything in this guide
How an industrial waste product ended up in your kitchen.
The other guides
Each guide collects the articles worth reading on one subject. Start wherever the problem is.
- Start Here: where to begin, in the order that makes sense.
- Carnivore Foundations: what to eat, what to avoid, and how to run the first weeks.
- Carnivore Fat Loss: how the fat comes off without counting anything.
- Carnivore And Building Muscle: protein, training, and the pairing that always worked.
- Carnivore And Health: cholesterol, gut, hormones, and the honest evidence.
- The Case Against Plants: what the vegetables were promising, and whether they deliver.
- The History Of Carnivore: ice age hunters, Victorian doctors, and the modern revival.
- The Animals That Built The World: the goat, the sheep, the cow and the pig.
- The British Table: dripping, offal, and what this country ate before it got sick.
- Carnivore Recipes: the cooking, with the fat ratio kept where it belongs.
