The Seed Oil Controversy: Debunking Myths, Inflammation Claims & the Beef Tallow Hype

Are seed oils really toxic — or is social media getting it all wrong?

In this no-fluff episode, Dr. Richman and Dr.Fiorillo take on the growing anti-seed oil narrative spreading across TikTok, Instagram, and even presidential campaigns. From hexane fears to omega-6 inflammation claims and the trend of replacing seed oils with beef tallow, the hosts lay out the real science and call out misinformation.

💥 What you'll learn:

What seed oils really are (and what they're not)

Why omega-6 fatty acids don’t cause inflammation

The truth about hexane, toxicity, and “dose makes the poison”

What studies from the 1960s to today actually show about seed oils and heart health

Why switching to beef tallow might be worse for your health and the environment

How to spot pseudoscience and influencer agendas

Whether you’re a fitness enthusiast, a health skeptic, or just trying to make better choices in the kitchen, this episode will equip you with facts — not fear.

🔍 Because when it comes to your health, the truth matters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

okay how we doing today everybody how you doing dr richmond

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

i'm doing well doing well happy to be here fired up for this topic

SPEAKER_02: 0:07

today yeah it's a great topic today's topic is going to be the seed oil controversy and this centers on whether or not industrial seed oil like soybean canola corn sunflower are harmful to your health and should we be switching to other stuff like beef tallow and recently influencers and some other people like rfk who's an influencer is telling us that off seed oils and we should be using beef tallow and we've done a lot of research on this and we're going to share it with you today

SPEAKER_01: 0:46

Absolutely. Just getting started, obviously, Mike and I talk a lot about, we're all about the truth, okay? And I want to bring up just a point first. There's, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of epistemology. I'm being a little like geeking out now. So that's a philosophical branch of how we obtain our knowledge, okay? So when we look on the internet, we're assuming all you guys, if you're taking the time to watch us, that you're intelligent and you do your due diligence. But where do you Who is an expert? Is somebody just an expert on the internet because they have a strong opinion and they have a lot of followers? And the answer is, seems like it's that way. Mike and I talk about this all the time. We encourage you, yes, we want you to believe that we're experts, but Mike and I were both laughing because we have biology degrees, bachelor's of science in biology. Am I a biologist? No, but there's famous influencers got millions of followers all over the Internet was a biologist and you would think he's the Messiah. Okay. And he talks about everything. What makes him an expert? So this is more of a rhetorical question on. You need to dig deep. You know, what we're going to provide you today is. the best knowledge and the most current knowledge and the most accurate knowledge but you're gonna have to make that decision who you view as an expert and

SPEAKER_02: 2:09

we don't have an agenda at all right right we really don't and some of these other people their agenda is to sell you something right and They say it very convincingly. I find myself sometime watching some of these TikToks and saying, I got to go out and buy this. Yes, you

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

do, my friend. Yes, you do. I

SPEAKER_02: 2:29

do. I do. And people are very convincing and you trust them. I'm a trusting person and a lot of people are trusting, right? But who are you putting your trust in? And listen, we may be wrong on a topic, but We won't be wrong in our effort to try and find the truth. And that's what we're going to do with every podcast is dig deep and find the data. And listen, you can't argue with real studies. If you don't want to trust the FDA, if you don't want to trust the American Heart Association, there's not much we can do about that.

SPEAKER_01: 3:03

I just want to give a little anecdote just about that, which is really funny. As you know, on a podcast we've already done, we talked a lot about lipids, particles. So I have a patient who this week, he's on rosuvastatin. He's on a statin for his cholesterol. We need to make an adjustment and go up on the dose. Nope. Even though he listens to me and I've been his doctor for years, nope, he won't do it. Why? because I read some BS that it harms your liver. I know you sent me all the data and I know you've written a paper and there's no evidence, but it helps your liver. And he says, oh, by the way, Dr. Richmond, so I have a nodule on my prostate and I'm having a prostate biopsy and I think it's prostate cancer. So I said to him, okay, for prostate cancer and especially breast cancer, there's an abundance of evidence and I'll give you two papers to look at. about metastasis and rapid progression. If you're on a statin, it slows it in prostate cancer. Oh, yep, I'll go up on the dose, no problem. Absolutely. And I said to him, wow. I said, so you pick and choose. He goes, I just don't trust the FDA and I don't trust this. I go, but when it comes to cancer, and I said to him, well, what's the number one killer? And he said, yeah, you say it's heart disease, but it doesn't register in somebody's head. Yes. And I said, so that's our point is it's really and that's what we're going to be talking today. Poison in a way. Pick your poison. OK, at the end of the day, it's you'll do something for one reason, but you won't do it for another reason. So like Mike and I say, if you look at all these all these influencers, unless they have an alternative product or a book, they don't comment. But if they have something alternative or a book to sell or something freaking a weight vest or something like that they have a comment okay and mike and i will i would love to sit down and challenge anybody on this stuff okay so without further ado let's start and i think i think the best way to start is what seed oils are and mike and i talked about it so just to make the distinction We'll mention olive oil, but olive oil is not a seed oil. Olive oil is a monounsaturated fat. We're talking about polyunsaturated fat. So canola oil, also known as rapeseed oil, peanut oil, grapeseed oil. What else, Mike? Soy oil. Okay, so those are polyunsaturated. And there's an abundance of evidence, regardless of what you hear on the internet, that it has... anti-atherosclerotic properties. In other words, it reduces your risk for developing coronary heart disease, okay? And it's overwhelming. But these influencers, here's their two go-tos, okay, that are all over the internet. First go-to is that somehow there's this theoretical imbalance between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. And then omega-6s promote inflammation. okay so i want to show you and remember i'm a heart surgeon they do not they're anti-inflammatory okay and the study that is most famous for this is they fed volunteers for seven weeks seven times the maximum allowed amount of omega-6 fatty acids. So basically, they stuffed them full of omega-6s, which, as we said, are mostly from seed oils. And they measured markers of inflammation in their blood. And they measured adiponeptin, C-reactive protein, ESR, which is your sedimentation rate, and fibrinogen. And nothing was elevated. Okay. So this whole idea of inflammation, it's off the table. Okay. And I'm telling you, this is a heart surgeon. There is no, there is no, in fact, it is anti-inflammatory. Comments? Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 7:00

Well, yeah, a hundred percent. So people might be confused too, where this came from, the seed oils, right? Before seed oils, most people cooked with butter and lard and that we know for sure, butter and lard, was leading to atherosclerosis. And there's the famous study that we've talked about several times already about on that, right? So that's what we know. So the industrial age started, or industrial seed oil started, and we know that you need omega-3, omega-6. You need essential fatty acids in your diet. You can't go without it.

SPEAKER_01: 7:35

Your body doesn't make it. Tell people what essential fatty acid means, like omega-6s, when we say

SPEAKER_02: 7:40

essential. So in other words, your body doesn't make it. So you need to get it from your diet. Exactly. Right? Correct. So we need those. And then we'll talk about the ratio between the three and six. Which is bullshit, I told you. Inflammation. But turns out that when they started producing seed oil, they were making seed oils with hexane. And hexane is not a good chemical, right? We don't want hexane in our bodies. And it's not a good chemical. It's a bad chemical. However, they were using that to process the seed oils. And the way they did it, was they burnt off the hexane at the end right they used the hexane to to kind of extract out the oils and the hexane is in trace amounts and i think that's where the influencers and other people are checking in saying you're taking hexane it's causing it it's a carcinogen it's cancer causing but everything we see dr richmond is going to show you that

SPEAKER_01: 8:32

well it's actually not it's not so again This weekend, I kind of geeked out. I developed a friendship with an environmental toxicologist who's a full professor at UC Irvine and asked him about this because on Joe Rogan's podcast, the influencer who we're talking about, That's one of his main go-tos is hexane, hexane. Little history. So Paracelsus from the 1500s is the father of toxicology. And the thing that he said is it's the dose that makes the poison, okay? So whenever we're talking about anything, you need to look at the dose of something, the duration of exposure, and the root, okay? So for example, caffeine. Caffeine is a toxin, okay? In large amounts. caffeine will kill you. And we know for people in energy drinks where there's huge amounts of caffeine, people die, okay? So we need to understand that. So hexane is used and it's still used, as Mike said, to remove the oil from the seeds, okay? And it's the most efficient process. And at the end of the processing, there are still trace amounts of hexane. Trace. It evaporates. Most evaporates out. Right. But the situation reminds me, I don't know if you guys remember, there was, I don't know, I want to say 10, 15 years ago, there was methylene, this whole thing with methylene chloride in decaf coffee or potassium bromate, which is in bread. And this is an example where potentially hazardous chemicals might be involved in the processing, but the risk depends totally on the final exposure, not just the presence of the history in the compound. So you need to look at compounds, what is in the final product. And the point is that the FDA and the European Safety Food Authority, who's actually much more stringent than the FDA, set standards. And the amount of hexane in seed oil is minuscule, minuscule.

SPEAKER_02: 10:40

Trace, yeah. It's really a non-issue.

SPEAKER_01: 10:43

It's a

SPEAKER_02: 10:43

non-issue. There are people looking for a talking point and looking to say something bad about

SPEAKER_01: 10:49

it. And their main concern is actually neurotoxicity. And when they look at it, the concern is in people who are in that business, high dose, long exposure. So obviously, if you cook something in canola oil, Okay, that's not high dose and high exposure. So take that off the table. So hexane, not a problem. And you know

SPEAKER_02: 11:13

what's funny is that the same people that will say that, trace amounts, will have a couple scotches or bourbons or drinks, which alcohol is way more toxic in that dose as well. So it's really a non-issue. All

SPEAKER_01: 11:26

right, so that one's done. Yes, so take that off the table.

SPEAKER_02: 11:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 11:29

So

SPEAKER_02: 11:30

move on to the next thing. The seed oils, as we talked about, came in in what like the 50s

SPEAKER_01: 11:37

maybe i don't know that was before we were born but uh but it came in

SPEAKER_02: 11:42

around that time and uh they were shown to reduce

SPEAKER_01: 11:47

atherosclerosis correct you want me to actually quote so yeah so we have found okay so the three studies because mike and i told you were all about facts Okay, so epidemiologically, if you replace 10% of your calories from fatty acids, and we know that fatty acids cause saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty, butter, lard. Coconut oil. palm oil, so it's tropical oils, dairy, and meats, okay, are saturated fats. So if we replace 10% of our saturated fatty acids with omega-6s, you lower your cholesterol on average of 18 milligrams per deciliter, okay? So the first study that you can quote is called the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, which was from 1968 and 1973, and it was a randomized human trial that found that replacing saturated fats with vegetables oils reduced all cause risk of cardiovascular disease and death okay huge experiment 1968 to 1973 and that's why cedals became popular right then a guy in 2010 moza zafarian at all showed that replacing five percent of saturated fat calories with omega-6s had a 13 percent reduction of coronary events okay but the thing now the guys who don't want you to believe They'll quote the Lyon, France, not Lyon, L-Y-O-N diet heart study, which was shown that people who were on the Mediterranean diet and reduced saturated fats had lower risk of cardiovascular death. But their go-to point is on that. Well, that was omega-3s. That wasn't omega-6s. No, it was a combination of all of them. Okay, so the data is overwhelming that consuming omega-6s oversaturated fats, beef fat, lard, or whatever reduces your risk of developing atherosclerosis. It's unconscionable that any of these guys say that a high cholesterol level doesn't cause atherosclerosis. That's the only thing that causes it. Yes,

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

correct. Correct. So that's the issue with that. So for people to say that seed oil is bad, get off seed oil, is just really not true

SPEAKER_00: 14:14

right

SPEAKER_02: 14:14

and the other thing is you also have to look in what is what's being cooked and what are the other ingredients in what's being cooked in it so it's not also the seed oil people don't take that into account when they're doing these studies they're not just looking at the seed oil they also have to look at the food

SPEAKER_01: 14:33

exactly exactly so why don't you talk about your wife for a second

SPEAKER_02: 14:37

okay so seed oils We took out the whole hexane argument, which I think we've debunked that. And then the second thing is they're touting inflammation, and they're saying that it's causing a lot of bad things in your body, inflammation. So there are no studies that show that omega-6, like we said, is causing inflammation in your body, correct?

SPEAKER_01: 15:04

Right. In human studies, there is no data. This concept of inflammation is so crazy because there are a lot of people who are misguided who believe that atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease. It's not a disease of cholesterol. Failing to understand that they're all involved with each other. And if you remember in the former podcast, I talked about the particles entering the wall of the artery, what causes atherosclerosis. Unless a plaque forms inside the wall of the artery, You don't develop inflammation. So that's what causes inflammation. So what their go-to is that somehow omega-6 fatty acids, and we'll get into the burning point in a second on that, promote inflammation and cause atherosclerosis. And that's just, it doesn't happen. And talk about arachidonic acid.

SPEAKER_02: 15:56

Yeah, so there is some thought that diets that are very heavy in seed oils increase your arachidonic acid level in the cell membrane. and potentially amplify pro-inflammatory levels, especially if omega-3 is low. So that's where you're starting to hear about this ratio of omega-6 to omega-3.

SPEAKER_01: 16:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 16:20

But there are no studies that show that a high level of omega-6 is causing this.

SPEAKER_01: 16:28

Random, right. Randomized causation trials. There are none. And like I said, I'm a heart surgeon. I've been doing lipidology, which is this, which is taking care of lipid abnormalities for over 20 years. And I can promise you, I've written about it for WebMD that it's not the case. It's this philosophical thing because non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen and all that, they block arachidonic acid. Okay, so you'd think to yourself, okay, why can't I take one of them? Well, Mike will tell you, his wife was the rep for Vioxx. And Vioxx, which was the premier, strongest, best anti-inflammatory, blocked arachidonic acid. And what happened?

SPEAKER_02: 17:11

Yeah, it was killing people, heart disease, heart attacks.

SPEAKER_01: 17:15

Yeah, okay, so it doesn't make sense. So what we do know is that omega-6 is... have an anti-inflammatory effect. We know that it lowers cardiovascular events. Okay. And we also know that it promotes good endothelial function, which means the lining of the blood vessel. Okay. Makes it better. So we need to take all those off the equation. So it's not poison. Then there's one other thing that they keep getting to, and it's called the burning point the heating point okay and they look at and they look at seed oils and olive oil first of all has the highest avocado or which is a seed oil avocado oil or olive oil which is not has the highest burning point and what the burning point refers to is when your kitchen starts filling up with smoke and the reason why that's significant a lot of these guys it's called LOP, lipid oxidation products. So in other words, and this is now going to get like totally weird because you're going to think to yourself, okay, isn't that good? So lipid oxidation products are ketones, okay? And those of you who are into fasting, what is the whole point of fasting, right? Ketosis, burning fat. So you would think to yourself, okay, if lipid oxidation products are bad for you, but they're ketones in your body, how could they be bad? So once again, what I'm saying is pick your poison and we'll do a podcast on that. So ketosis is good for you when you wanna fast and you wanna lose weight, but if you burn oil in your kitchen and you develop lipid oxidation products, it's somehow bad for you because it causes atherosclerosis. Crazy shit, right? Yeah, it's not right.

SPEAKER_02: 18:57

It doesn't make any sense. So the bottom line for us when we look at this is saturated fats are bad for you. We've known that for 100 years. Trans fat, we know, is really bad for you. I don't even know if they're outlawed now. I don't even know if you can get them anymore. Those are super bad for you, trans fats. We didn't even discuss those.

SPEAKER_01: 19:18

And trans fats, just quick, trans fats are a way to make liquid saturated fats and into a solid form at room temperature that's what a trans fat is right

SPEAKER_02: 19:31

next trans fat are out now so now you have seed oils okay which we've discussed the controversies seed oil is fine in moderation everything in moderation like you talked about dose dependent is fine but if you want to take it a step better we like olive oil and we like avocado oil olive oil also has some neuro neuroprotective effects as well so

SPEAKER_01: 19:54

Definitely, yeah. And

SPEAKER_02: 19:56

cardiovascular. And cardiovascular. It's hard to find faults with that. But once again, the seed oil also, look at what it's being used for. What kind of food are you eating with it as well? Because that might be worse than the seed oil itself. So we have, in our way of thinking things, we have olive oil, avocado oil, seed oil, and then on the bottom. You're right, canola. Yeah, and then on the bottom.

SPEAKER_01: 20:20

Peanut, peanut.

SPEAKER_02: 20:22

Yep. On the bottom, we have the beef tallow.

SPEAKER_01: 20:24

But I want to bring up just a sec because you see Kennedy specifically trying to get rid of seed oil and replace it with beef tallow. So just a few comments on that, what I think is important. Number one, so if you're vegetarian or vegan, you're going to go into every restaurant and you're going to start asking them now, excuse me, do you cook in beef tallow or do you use vegetable oil? So you know that if Kennedy has his way, Fast food, even good fast food is out and going to another restaurant may be out, okay? But even forgetting that. So saturated fats of which we talked about in a previous podcast, coconut oil has the most, 92% saturated fat, followed by butter, 64. Beef is anywhere between 50 to 55% saturated fats. And saturated fats raise your LDL cholesterol, your bad cholesterol. It's indisputable, there's nothing about it. Third thing, which Kennedy forgets to tell people, and I actually looked this up, there is residual hexane in a lot of the industrial beef tallow. Because remember, if we're doing beef tallow here in restaurants, it's industrial beef tallow. There's not a lot of, there's not enough grass fed organic cows walking around the United States to supply everybody. So it's industrial beef tallow, but guess what they have also found in it? Antibiotics, steroids, hormones, forever chemicals, PCB. I looked it up. Okay. Okay. So like, come on, pick your poison. Okay. Continuing. And we're going to actually do a podcast on it. Phthalates. It's, P-F, the P-F silent, T-H-A-L-A-T-E-S. Look it up. Horrible for you, okay? And it's pretty much in everything. It's what makes plastic soft. It's what makes makeup stick to your face. It's what gives fragrances the smell, okay? Beef tallow. And finally, for the environmentally conscientious people who worry about the environment, I know I do, it's toxic to aquatic systems, okay? So Kennedy's an environmental lawyer, okay? It's insane, right?

SPEAKER_02: 22:42

Yeah, it is. It's like the game, I equate it to the game of telephone when we were kids. That's what social media, it kind of is, you know, because someone is out there doing a lecture they have a microphone on and they're writing on a board or they have a microphone in front of them and they're saying seed oils are terrible they're causing inflammation in your body and which leads to chronic disease and inflammatory diseases and autoimmune diseases and and then it just keeps going on and then fast forward you're in the gym and you hear people saying i'm off seed oils i feel great i'm not taking any seed oils anymore i feel amazing and they don't even know why they're saying it because someone told them so All we can go by, like we said, is the evidence. And we've dug in. We're finding out, no, they are not as bad as everyone says. Look at your food choices, number one. They're good. They're actually good. Right. Exactly right. They're actually good. And if you want to really be super self-conscious, you can limit the amount of oils that you need to. You need some essential fatty acids, but you can limit it and you can start replacing stuff with olive oil, avocado oil.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 23:46

But we do. And then the other thing I want to mention too is, and Dr. Richmond actually put me on this, omega-3s as a supplement. So I know you're a big proponent of those.

SPEAKER_01: 23:57

Well, every cardiac surgeon is. Cardiologist. I've lectured on it on the topic before, like formal lectures. That's a whole nother topic of EPA and DHA, which are the major components. And do you want it all? EPA, fish oil. Or do you want a combination and all that? But we'll get into that at another time. But the take-home point of this is, number one, is don't be willfully ignorant, okay? And I'm not saying that to demean somebody. But because you're lazy, it's not okay. Don't believe what these people tell you. I don't care if you believe what Mike and I tell you. Do your due diligence. Get on the internet and Google. And if we missaid something, please contact us. We do our due diligence. So don't be willfully ignorant because you're lazy and just assume what somebody says or waste your money because the majority of the stuff that these people sell is a waste of money. Okay. And Mike said he more than me because he meets a lot of, I guess it's a Jersey thing. He meets a lot of guys at the gym who are all like, I'm taking this and taking this. I feel 20 years younger. And they still look their age. He doesn't tell him. It was like shit. But yeah, but

SPEAKER_02: 25:17

there's so much stuff overload out there now. And there's so many people and they want to believe it. They really want to believe it, you know, including myself. So we have you have to do your own homework and you have to see what works and and make sure it's not harming you, too. Because if something's not harming you, then you want to take it and it's worth a shot for you, then yes, go ahead. But our thought is that let's get some good science behind it. Hopefully we shed some light on seed oils. They're fine for you to take. We have no issue with them. This is from a heart surgeon that still will eat stuff prepared with seed oils. And we have no issue with it at all.

SPEAKER_01: 25:55

Absolutely correct. So all in all, hopefully you enjoyed today's show. We're going to do plenty more. Mike was on a little vacay. So now he's back in action. So we're going to be back in action and we're excited. I'm fired up.

SPEAKER_02: 26:11

And please send us some messages of what topics you want to hear. We're basically going to cover the important ones, but we also want to scour social media to get the hot topics that people are saying.

SPEAKER_00: 26:22

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 26:22

We'll pick a good topic for next week. And until then, Dr. Richmond.

SPEAKER_01: 26:28

Thank you for listening. And because when it comes to your health, Remember, the truth matters.

SPEAKER_02: 26:33

It certainly does. Take care, everyone.