Seed Oils: Are they really bad for you?

Here's a number that should stop you mid-scroll: in a large 2025 study, people who consumed the most plant-based oils had a 16% lower risk of dying than those who consumed the least. Replacing about two teaspoons of butter a day with plant-based oil was linked to a 17% lower risk of cancer mortality. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, followed more than 221,000 US adults for up to 33 years.

And yet sunflower, canola and soybean oils are on trial. Eggs were the villain in the eighties. Carbs took the fall in the 2000s. Now it's seed oils' turn, and the verdict, handed down mostly on Instagram and podcasts, is that they're slowly wrecking your health.

Here's something often missed in the debate: the fat at the centre of this panic is linoleic acid, an essential fatty acid the body cannot synthesise on its own. We need to get it from food. Severe deficiency is rare, but when it occurs, it can cause problems such as dry, scaly skin, hair loss and impaired growth. WHO identifies linoleic acid as one of the essential fatty acids that must come from the diet.

Then comes the biggest fear about seed oils: inflammation. The argument is that linoleic acid can be converted into arachidonic acid, which is involved in inflammatory pathways. But the biology is more complex than the social media version suggests. Reviews of randomised controlled trials have found no significant increase in key inflammatory markers when people consume more linoleic acid.

"Inflammation has become a buzzword, but its relationship to health is complex," says Elissa Meditz, a clinical dietitian at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. "There's no evidence that people who eat typical amounts of seed oils have increased inflammation."

So are ghee, butter and tallow actually the healthier swap they're marketed as? The evidence does not support that blanket conclusion. Seed oils are predominantly unsaturated fats, while butter, ghee and tallow contain considerably more saturated fat. The World Health Organisation recommends replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat, particularly polyunsaturated fat from plant sources.

Christopher Gardner, director of nutrition studies at Stanford's Prevention Research Centre, puts the evidence more plainly: "Every study for decades has shown that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats lowers the level of LDL cholesterol in your blood."

None of this makes ghee the enemy. In an Indian kitchen, ghee is an inheritance before it's a health decision. It's Sunday dal, a grandmother's hands on the pan, a smell that means home before it means anything nutritional.

But there's a real difference between choosing ghee because you love it and abandoning sunflower oil because someone on your feed called it poison. One is culture. The other is fear wearing the mask of science.

The bigger question is not whether a particular oil has been labelled good or bad. It is what the oil is replacing, how much you use, and what the rest of your diet looks like.

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