How Industrial Seed Oils can be Harmful – Serenity Kids

How Industrial Seed Oils can be Harmful

Estimated time to read 9 minutes

If you follow the nutrition world in any capacity, you know that fat is our friend once again. You probably hear a lot about the benefits of “good fats” for all of us, from babies and toddlers to breastfeeding mamas and health-conscious fathers.

But you don’t hear nearly as much about the “bad fats.” I’m not just talking about fried foods and trans fats, I’m talking about industrial seed oils that have worked their way into just about every restaurant kitchen, food manufacturer, and kitchen cupboard in America.

Since these oils are now so prevalent in our food system, you might not give them a second thought. Sure, maybe they aren’t the best of the best, but are they really the worst for your health? That’s up for debate. Here’s what we know.

What are Industrial Seed Oils?

Industrial seed oils are highly processed oils extracted from the seeds of various plants like soybeans, corn, rapeseed (the source of canola oil), cottonseed, and safflower seeds.

Industrial seed oils are primarily polyunsaturated fats, which means that their chemical structure has many unsaturated or double bonds (poly = many). The reason this matters is that double bonds are a source of vulnerability in a fat.

The more double bonds a fat has, the more unstable it is and the more opportunities it has to be damaged (to oxidize or become rancid) by elements like light, heat, and air. Rancid industrial seed oils also tend to be high in omega-6 fatty acids and have an imbalanced omega-6:3 ratio (more on why that matters here).

What Qualifies as an Industrial Seed Oil?

When we refer to industrial seed oils, we’re talking about the following types of oils. Dr. Cate Shanahan refers to these as the “hateful eight”:

  1. Canola
  2. Sunflower
  3. Safflower
  4. Corn
  5. Soybean
  6. Cotton seed
  7. Grapeseed
  8. Rice bran

Where Did They Come From?

In the grand scheme of our nutritional history, industrial seed oils are actually a relatively new invention.

Seed oils weren’t introduced into our food supply until the early 1900s. Interestingly, they got their start when businessmen Proctor & Gamble wanted to find a cheaper alternative to animal fats for their new bar soap. They started mass producing cottonseed oil, a waste product of cotton farming.

So how did this oil go from soap to food? Well, of course Proctor and Gamble were looking for more ways to use this new product. Edwin Kayser, a German chemist, caught wind and wrote to them about a new chemical process that could create a solid fat from a liquid.

The company purchased US rights to the patents and created a lab on the Procter & Gamble campus to experiment. Proctor & Gamble scientists quickly found that they could produce a creamy, pearly white substance out of cottonseed oil.

Crisco’s success rose quickly as unfounded fears of saturated fat surfaced. Food manufacturers quickly learned that they could capitalize on this fear while increasing margins by producing cheaply-made and highly processed oils.

How Are Industrial Seed Oils Made?

Because these foods themselves aren’t exactly naturally rich in oil that is easily pressed, their oils must be refined, bleached, and deodorized before they are suitable for human consumption. Here’s how that works:

  1. Step 1: Seeds are gathered from their plants.
  2. Step 2: The seeds are heated to extremely high temperatures, which causes the unsaturated fatty acids in the seeds to oxidize, creating free radicals that can be harmful to health.
  3. Step 3: The seeds are generally processed with a petroleum-based solvent, such as hexane.
  4. Step 4: Chemicals are used to deodorize the oils, which can produce trans fats.
  5. Step 5: More chemicals are added to make the color of the industrial seed oils more neutral and appealing.

The Risks of Consuming Industrial Seed Oils

1. They are imbalanced in Omega 6:3

Industrial seed oils are incredibly high in omega-6 fatty acids, some with an omega 6 to omega 3 ratio as high as 75:1!

2. They can promote inflammation

A high omega 6 to omega 3 ratio can contribute to systemic inflammation in the body, which is at the root of nearly all disease.

3. They are void of nutrients and full of damaging free radicals

Industrial seed oils use damaging processing techniques that strip away all nutrients and leave us with an oxidized fat that causes free radicals in the body.

What Oils Are Better?

Opt for oils that are minimally processed since they are naturally-occurring, and/or more chemically stable:

Cooking/baking fats:

Other healthy fats:

The Serenity Kids Approach

What we know about industrial seed oils is clear - we don’t want them in our bodies, and we certainly don’t want to feed them to our little ones.

By developing their formula, Serenity Kids extensively studied the fatty acid profile of breastmilk. They mapped out the top twelve fatty acids present in human milk and evaluated the ratios of each. All of the healthy, quality fats included were chosen to balance out the fatty acid profile of the formula.

The bottom line? The type of fat we consume matters. It may sometimes seem difficult to avoid these harmful industrial seed oils, but just because they are everywhere doesn’t mean they are good. Seek out high quality oils and products that are made with them.