How to Avoid Seed Oils | Alternatives to Seed Oils

Last month, we looked at why seed oils are bad for you (hint: inflammation). This month, you’ll learn how to avoid seed oils and alternatives to seed oils.

After I had worked on my leaky gut and addressing my food sensitivities, my digestion was no longer interfering with my daily life.

Except, I repeatedly had an IBS flare when we visited extended family. My mother-in-law had always done a wonderful job accommodating my food sensitivities. 

So why was I ending up in the bathroom? I asked her about what ingredients she used. My first guess was that she had tried a new spice blend that had a filler I did not tolerate. 

But next to her spices, I noticed the organic olive oil. I knew she bought the bottle for me because we had been eating primarily organic foods. 

It was a brand from her local grocery store that I hadn’t used before. I asked her to avoid it the rest of the trip. 

When we visited a few months later I had forgotten the connection I made, and I had food with the olive oil again.

I thought it was so bizarre that I was reacting to this brand of organic olive oil, but I was fine eating the EVOO (use the code STEWARDSHIP for 10% off at that site!) I had at home. What was the difference? 

But what I later learned while listening to one of those health summits is that cooking oils are frequently cut with cheaper seed oils to save money on production. And legally, they don’t have to disclose the full ingredient list if they’re not a top 8 allergen.

What a scam!

In this post, you’ll learn how to avoid seed oils and my hacks for keeping your inflammation low with alternatives to seed oils. 

How to Avoid Seed Oils 

The trickiest part about avoiding seed oils is that companies can use them without disclosing it. 

A 2020 study of avocado oils found 82% of their samples were adulterated with other oils or were already oxidized before their expiration date.¹

Olive oil has the same issue, blending lower-grade seed oils without labeling them.²  

The law only protects those with the top eight allergens. So you think you’re eating whole food, but you’re actually consuming inflammatory additives without being told.

On the food label, if I see words like 100 percent pure, then I will reach out to the company asking to confirm the ingredients. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been ghosted. 

Related: What Is Medical Gaslighting? How To Recognize It And What To Do

So do your research when you are consuming any kind of oil to make sure that the company is not adding inflammatory seed oils that you wish to avoid.

To review, here is a list of inflammatory seed oils to avoid.

List of Seed Oils to Avoid

The seed oils that I try to avoid are:

•  Vegetable oil (usually made from corn oil)
•  Canola oil (also called rapeseed oil)
•  Cottonseed oil
•  Rice bran oil
•  Soybean oil
•  Peanut oil
•  Sunflower oil 
•  Safflower oil
• Grapeseed oil
• Palm oil

You can read more about the links between seed oils and inflammation here. But to summarize, some of the issues are:

• Imbalance of Omega-6s and Omega-3s
• Loss of antioxidants from the refining process, like bleaching and deodorizing
• Addition of harmful additives like hexane and emulsifiers

 Your consumption of the above seed oils is linked to inflammation and health issues like:

•  Heart disease³
•  Diabetes⁴
•  Obesity⁵
•  Depression⁶
•  Dementia⁷
•  Autoimmune disease⁸
•  Asthma⁹

However, there are some cold-pressed seed oils that I will occasionally only consume raw:

• Extra virgin olive oil
• Avocado oil 
• Sesame oil
• Walnut oil
• Flaxseed oil

What I mean by raw is that I do not cook with them. This is because these oils have a lower smoke point. 

While they do contain some omega-6 fatty acids, they don’t typically go through the refining process with chemical solvents, hydrogenation, and other methods that cause harmful byproducts.

However, I’m cautious about their short shelf life before they go rancid. To extend their shelf life, I keep some of them in the fridge. 

It’s also important to keep them somewhere dark and not out on your kitchen counter because the sunlight makes them oxidize and spoil faster. 

But here’s what else you need to know about how you store your oils. 

Avoid Oils in Plastic

With the story I shared in the intro, initially, I wrote off my reaction to the olive oil being in a plastic bottle because the one I had at home was glass.

I always try to buy oils in glass for two reasons. 

1. Oils are more likely to leach out harmful endocrine-disrupting chemicals from plastic containers.

2. Plastic can only be recycled a limited number of times while glass can be recycled an unlimited number of times. So buy your alternatives to seed oils in glass. 

So what do we cook with? I want to focus on nourishing foods and less on what we are trying to avoid. Like any bad habit you’re trying to break, you want to replace it with something good. 

Related: How to Stop Stress Eating -Tips and Tricks

Alternatives to Seed Oils 

Here are the alternatives to seed oils that we use because they have a high smoke point.

However, most don’t have the neutral flavor of a deodorized seed oil. So you’ll want to be mindful of the flavor implications when you use a healthier alternative in place of a seed oil. 

Coconut oil

Coconut oil can tolerate high heat. I also love using coconut oil around the house and on my skin.

However, one of the issues of cooking with coconut oil is you get a bit of the coconut tang. One way to counter that is to use a lot of salt or other intense spices. But I don’t like to cook scrambled eggs in coconut because my eggs end up tasting kind of tropical.

For example, I don’t mind the undertones of coconut flavor in an Asian dish but it doesn’t taste right in Italian.

Let’s look at animal fats next.

Beef Tallow 

Beef tallow tastes amazing for baking fries and other vegetables. I also cook lean cuts of meat in beef tallow. It adds a savory flavor. 

I wouldn’t use it in a dessert though.

Pork Lard 

Pork lard has a slightly milder taste than beef tallow. It’s what my great grandma used in her pie crusts and pastie crusts before Crisco was invented. (Crisco is whipped seed oil.) 

When I was trying to lower my inflammation and reduce prediabetes, my functional medicine doctor suggested omitting pork for a short period of time. I’ve been able to add it back in by primarily consuming pastured or heritage pork where I know the pigs are getting a wild diet.

Pork lard tastes divine on any kind of vegetable chips that you make. Its taste is not as strong as bacon grease. 

Related: Getting started with lard and tallow.

Butter 

Butter is a great cooking oil. It’s very versatile and has the least invasive flavor of any of the other alternatives to seed oils. 

If you have issues with regular dairy from the grocery store, you may find you can tolerate A2  dairy. It is lower in the milk protein casein. (Not to be confused with the milk sugar lactose that some people react to.) 

I’ve started using melted butter as the base for marinades and salad dressings instead of olive oil or avocado oil. It adds a savory layer to the flavor profile that is delicious.

Just remember that if you’re using salted butter you don’t need to add as much additional salt. 

Have you ever burned your butter? You might wanna try ghee for higher temperatures. 

Ghee

Ghee may work as an alternative to butter too. It has a higher smoke point than butter. Even if you don’t tolerate butter, you may tolerate ghee. 

It is clarified butter. This means it is heated so that the milk fat separates from the solids. Taking out the milk solid removes most of the casein and whey. However, not all of it, so depending on your sensitivity level to dairy, you may have to test it.

Duck Fat

The next alternative to seed oils that’s on my list to try is duck fat. Tell me in the comments below if you’ve used it before and what you like to do with it.

Avoiding Seed Oils 

Avoiding seed oils, especially in hidden sources, like otherwise healthy fats that have been adulterated with seed oils not identified on the labels, helped me resolve my lingering digestive issues. 

While you may not feel immediate effects from consuming them, seed oils have been linked to widespread inflammation in our bodies. 

If you’re struggling with any unresolved health issues, talk to your doctor about swapping seed oils for less inflammatory options. 

My hope is that this article leaves you feeling empowered to use alternatives to seed oils that also taste great. 

More from Pastor SJ’s Healthy Eating Journey

• Self Compassion With Chronic Illness –  Don’t beat yourself up, here’s what to do instead! 
• Why I Quit the Grain-Free Diet –  And how you can know when to quit a diet
• Mistakes I Made In My Health Journey – And how you can do better 

References

1. Quinton, A. M. (2020, June 15). Study Finds 82 Percent of Avocado Oil Rancid or Mixed With Other Oils. UC Davis. https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/study-finds-82-percent-avocado-oil-rancid-or-mixed-other-oils 
2. Fataneh Hashempour-baltork, Somaye Vali Zade, Mazaheri, Y., Adel Mirza Alizadeh, Rastegar, H., Ziba Abdian, Torbati, M., & Sodeif Azadmard Damirchi. (2024). Recent methods in detection of olive oil adulteration: State-of- the-Art. Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, 16, 101123–101123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2024.101123
3. DiNicolantonio, J. J., & O’Keefe, J. H. (2018). Omega-6 vegetable oils as a driver of coronary heart disease: the oxidized linoleic acid hypothesis. Open heart, 5(2), e000898. https://doi.org/10.1136/openhrt-2018-000898 
4. Schwertner, H. A., & Mosser, E. L. (1993). Comparison of lipid fatty acids on a concentration basis vs weight percentage basis in patients with and without coronary artery disease or diabetes. Clinical chemistry, 39(4), 659–663. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8472362/
5. Barry Gumbiner, Cecilia C Low, Peter D Reaven; Effects of a Monounsaturated Fatty Acid–Enriched Hypocaloric Diet on Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Obese Patients With Type 2 Diabetes. Diabetes Care 1 January 1998; 21 (1): 9–15. https://doi.org/10.2337/diacare.21.1.9
6. Suneson, K., Lindahl, J., Chamli Hårsmar, S., Söderberg, G., & Lindqvist, D. (2021). Inflammatory Depression-Mechanisms and Non-Pharmacological Interventions. International journal of molecular sciences, 22(4), 1640. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms22041640
7. Darweesh, S. K. L., Wolters, F. J., Ikram, M. A., de Wolf, F., Bos, D., & Hofman, A. (2018). Inflammatory markers and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease: A meta-analysis. Alzheimer’s & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, 14(11), 1450–1459. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2018.02.014
8. DiNicolantonio, J. J., & O’Keefe, J. (2021). The Importance of Maintaining a Low Omega-6/Omega-3 Ratio for Reducing the Risk of Autoimmune Diseases, Asthma, and Allergies. Missouri medicine, 118(5), 453–459. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34658440/
9. Oliver, P. J., Arutla, S., Yenigalla, A., Hund, T. J., & Parinandi, N. L. (2021). Lipid Nutrition in Asthma. Cell biochemistry and biophysics, 79(3), 669–694. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12013-021-01020-w

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