Can we please debunk this myth and rhetoric that seed oils are bad? It's getting kind of ridiculous.
I cringe when people make blanket statements like "seed oils are bad" because they are uninformed or don't understand nutrition or food processing, for which we can't blame them.
Seed oils can be expeller/cold-pressed or heat/hexane-extracted. The differences are significant.
Cold-pressing involves a centuries-old mechanical process of crushing a seed for its oil. It's slow, pure, and retains all the healthy fats and nutrients. This is the only method of oil processing we accept for our dressings. We use an organic cold-pressed high-oleic sunflower oil and cold-pressed hemp seed oil.
Our oil press slowly crushing seeds and pushing oil out of those holes to the collection bin.
When seeds (typically soy, canola, sun and safflower) are extracted for commercial use with hexane and heat, healthy fats can convert to trans fats. We want to stay away from trans fats.
But here's where things get worse. When the unsaturated fats in those oils get reheated to high temperatures, such as in restaurant deep-fryers where oil is infrequently changed, the oil gets oxidized, and this is a health concern. This is where seed oils get a bad rap.
From Guy Crosby of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health:
"It’s the amount of food that people consume that is deep fat-fried that is the issue. Not the oil itself.”
Furthermore....
"While it’s true that many foods that use seed oils—such as packaged snacks and french fries 🍟 —are unhealthy, they also tend to be high in refined carbohydrates, sodium, and sugar. In addition, seed oils tend to be found in fast and fatty fried foods, which the standard American diet often features in large amounts. But these other components, not the seed oils themselves, are the culprit behind weight gain and other negative health outcomes."
Soooo... let's all stop blaming seed oils and start looking at diet.
We're quick to soak up blame-claims, without knowing all the info or context.
Read labels. Look for COLD-PRESSED and high-oleic oil.
Ask questions of processes. Get to know your food better.
And reach out if you have any questions about our oils or processes! We are 100% transparent about our ingredients and processes!
As a side note, we use an organic high-oleic expeller-pressed sunflower oil for one of our oils in our dressings. High-oleic is very high in oleic (monounsaturated) acid while low in polyunsaturated acid, making it a very healthy oil option that can help reduce risk of coronary heart disease amongst many other health issues. Our cold-pressed hemp seed oil has one of the best fatty acids for our health (Gamma Linoleic Acid) you can find in a plant oil.
Read the full Harvard School of Public Health article here: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/scientists-debunk-seed-oil-health-risks/