We are still told that vegetable oil was the healthy choice, and butter and lard are the bad guys. Cherie Calbom’s research shows that this is the wrong way round.

Cherie is best known as “The Juice Lady,” with a Master’s in nutrition and 36 books to her name. Her latest, The Truth About Seed Oils, co-written with Liana Werner-Gray, grew out of years studying healthy fats such as coconut oil. What she found about the oils in nearly every kitchen and packaged food is something everyone should know.

What seed oils are

“Vegetable oil” is a misleading name. These oils come from seeds: canola (rapeseed here in the UK), soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, rice bran, cottonseed and peanut.

The processing is the problem

Seed oils start out as unstable polyunsaturated fats, rich in linoleic acid. Extracting them industrially means extreme heat and chemical solvents, and that breaks the fats down into toxic by-products: lipid peroxides and aldehydes. Inside the body these cause oxidative stress at the cellular level and drive inflammation throughout the system. Frying with these oils, especially reusing them, makes it worse.

The omega imbalance

Omega-6 is essential, but not in this form or in these amounts. A healthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is around 4:1. The modern diet pushes it to 20:1 or higher. That imbalance fuels chronic inflammation, which lies behind heart disease, cancer, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune disease, mental health problems and skin disorders.

How we were misled

During and after the Second World War, tropical oils such as coconut oil were in short supply. Seed oils filled the gap and were sold to the public as modern and heart-healthy. Meanwhile, saturated fats were blamed for heart disease on the strength of superficial links to arterial plaque, while the real damage, done by oxidative stress, sugar and smoking, was ignored. As seed oils took over, heart disease rose with them.

Why it hasn’t changed

Much of the medical and nutrition world is still working from outdated training. And there’s a lot of money in seed oils, and in managing chronic disease rather than preventing it. That’s why change is coming from the ground up, from people who are paying attention.

Where they hide

Seed oils aren’t only in chips and takeaways. They’re in crisps, salad dressings, mayonnaise, plant-based milks, gluten-free products, some hummus, and plenty of what’s on health food shop shelves. Reading labels is the only way to avoid them.

How Cherie lives with it

• At home: start with your own kitchen. Swap canola, corn, soy and sunflower for olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, ghee or beef tallow.
• Small wins: homemade popcorn in coconut oil with grass-fed butter instead of the microwave kind.
• Eating out: ask for your food to be cooked in olive oil, and use the Seed Oil Scout app to find places that don’t use seed oils.
• Travelling: take your own snacks.
• Cost: good fats cost more, but it’s an investment now that saves on medical bills later.

It isn’t about perfection. Awareness comes first, then small changes you can stick to, alongside fresh food, juicing and cutting down toxins generally.

The results

When people remove seed oils, the improvements are striking: less joint pain, fewer migraines, easing arthritis, clearer skin, and better mental health. Many of the conditions we treat as separate diseases are really the effects of one root cause, chronic inflammation. Take away the cause, and the body can do what it’s designed to do.