I'm an author, strength coach, and physical therapist — also a father, husband, and hack golfer. Every Saturday I send The Saturday Standard: research worth knowing, a thought worth keeping, an action worth taking, a book worth reading, and a note from me. Five things, five minutes, one coffee. This and other blog posts are available for free every week — join below.
The Saturday Standard: Are seed oils killing us?
The Saturday Standard — Vol. 22Saturday, October 3, 2026 As always, coffee first, fellas — and let's sort out this whole "seed oils are the DEVIL" situation. The ResearchSeed oils are taking too much of the blameSeed oils are getting a lot of blame. But is it deserved? The internet treats them like villains in a Marvel movie, branding them the Hateful Eight and treating them as equal conspirators in destroying the world. The eight: canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and rice bran. However, they are not one thing, nor should they be treated as such. And a quick nutrition lesson will help clarify this. Essential vs. non-essential In nutritional science, "essential" does not mean "important." It means your body cannot build it on its own. This is the same for essential amino acids, which we can only get from our food as well. In effect, you either eat the essential ones or you go without them. The two essential fatty acids are:
Both are polyunsaturated fats, or PUFAs. When you hear that term, think 3s and 6s. Every other fat you need, your body can make from those two or from scratch. I've had clients ask whether omega-9 is essential. It isn't. It is a non-essential, monounsaturated fat by the name of oleic acid — the fat olive oil is so famous for. It is by no means useless, but your body will not become deficient if it's absent from your diet. Your body can turn ALA into EPA and DHA, the omega-3 bash brothers. But men convert very little of it.¹ That is why you get these from fish or, for many modern men, fish oil pills. Now, why does this matter at all for seed oils? Well, the two fats you cannot make are packed into seeds, nuts, and the oils pressed from them. Seed oils are the most concentrated source of both. They are not the only source. Omega-6 also shows up in nuts, chicken, pork, and eggs, and fish covers your omega-3. You will not go deficient if you throw out the canola. But these oils are carrying nutrients your body requires. That makes this a question of how much and in what balance. A seed oil is a mix of fatty acids, and the mix varies a lot. So what makes up these seed oils?
Lumping flax, canola, and corn oil into one category tells you almost nothing about what you're eating. How much do you need? Not much. The adequate intake for men 19 to 50 is 17 grams of linoleic acid a day and 1.6 grams of ALA.²·³ Most men already hit both. Median omega-6 intake in the U.S. sits right around that 17-gram mark, and the average man eats about 2 grams of ALA a day.²·³ True deficiency of either one is virtually nonexistent in healthy Americans.³ The gap is in EPA and DHA. The average American adult gets about 90 milligrams a day from food.³ There is no official target for those two, but the American Heart Association recommends one to two servings of seafood a week.³ The ratio. Omega-6 and omega-3 run through the same enzymes in your body. They compete.³ Flood the system with one and less of the other gets processed. That is where the last century matters. Between 1909 and 1999, soybean oil consumption in the U.S. rose more than a thousandfold. Linoleic acid went from about 2.8% of calories to 7.2%. The authors concluded this has likely lowered the EPA and DHA in our tissues.⁴ The most cited estimate puts the Western diet at 15 to 1 or higher, omega-6 to omega-3.⁵ In that same paper, a ratio of 4 to 1 was associated with a 70% drop in deaths among heart patients.⁵ That is the number to aim toward. One caveat. The 4 to 1 figure comes from people who already had heart disease, and the NIH says the optimal ratio, "if any," has not been defined.³ Treat it as a direction to move in. The modern diet simply overeats omega-6. That does not make it any less important. We need to bring our 3s up to meet it. Most researchers agree that raising EPA and DHA matters far more than lowering omega-6.³ And most of that extra omega-6 does not come from your skillet. It comes in the fryer basket and the chip bag. The best case against seed oils. The Minnesota Coronary Experiment. From 1968 to 1973, more than 9,000 people in state hospitals and a nursing home were fed either saturated fat or a diet loaded with corn oil. Cholesterol dropped in the corn oil group. Deaths did not.⁶ Look at the dose. The corn oil group got about 13% of their calories from linoleic acid, nearly double what the average American eats. More was not better. Which really tells us something we already know: you shouldn't overeat. What the larger body of evidence shows. A pooled analysis of 30 studies across 13 countries measured omega-6 directly in blood and fat tissue rather than trusting food diaries. Among 68,659 people, higher linoleic acid was associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease, ischemic stroke, and cardiovascular death.⁷ This is observational, so it shows association, not cause. But it points the opposite direction from the scare. On inflammation, a systematic review of 15 randomized trials found virtually no evidence that adding linoleic acid to the diet raises inflammatory markers in healthy adults.⁸ So what do you do? Don't fear the bottle of canola. Cook with it, or olive oil, or high-oleic sunflower. Eat fatty fish once or twice a week.³ That fixes the side of the ratio that is actually short. Eat less fried and packaged food. You should do that anyway, and the oil is the least of the reasons. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record: we really need to get our calories under control and worry less about seed oils killing us. Eat whole foods, have some fish, and get to the weight room. Worth Remembering"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
— Proverbs 22:6 (KJV)
This is true of fitness and character. In one study, young children with two active parents were nearly 6 times as likely to be active themselves.⁹ Their first sign of how to care for themselves comes from you. Make sure you are giving them a fire worth carrying. Try This Week
From the BookshelfStories for a Dad's Heart, compiled by Alice Gray I have laid claim to my godmother's collection of books at our home in Maine. She has hundreds, and she has read every one of them. I likely owe my voracity for reading to her. This past time home I stole Stories for a Dad's Heart, which my godfather used to read. It is a simple compilation of short stories about dads. There is a quote in it, author unknown, that pulled at my heart: "There are many ways to measure success; not the least of which is the way your child describes you when talking to a friend." A really short read, but there are some gems of fatherhood in there. Closing ThoughtI have worked with a lot of men in my career, and one thing I have found with all of them is this: you cannot carry burdens alone. Many think they can. They think they can lose the weight alone, or put down the booze, or start working out, or stop smoking, or fix whatever habit they want to fix. They might survive for a few days, or even a couple of months. But inevitably, the demon pops up on their shoulder and whispers in their ear. "It's okay. You have done so well. A little taste won't hurt you. You have earned it." It is convincing, too. These are the moments many men think they can do it alone. They think they can willpower their way through it. Most men cannot. They will revert. They will get back to old habits or worse. That is why you need brothers, a spouse, and even your children to hold you accountable. When you try to shoulder that burden alone, it will break you. You still need to shoulder it, but do not climb the mountain alone. There are those who love you and want you to succeed. Lean on them. Tell them when you are struggling or about to take a step back. Let them fuel you toward a better decision. Burdens break a lonely man. Carry your burden, but let others encourage you. Have a great weekend, gents. Sources
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Forging Capable Men
I'm an author, strength coach, and physical therapist — also a father, husband, and hack golfer. Every Saturday I send The Saturday Standard: research worth knowing, a thought worth keeping, an action worth taking, a book worth reading, and a note from me. Five things, five minutes, one coffee. This and other blog posts are available for free every week — join below.
The Saturday Standard — Vol. 24 Saturday, October 17, 2026 As always, coffee first, fellas — and let's talk about cramps, and why a few bananas and a gallon jug of water probably isn't the fix. The Research Cramps aren't a water problem You've been told your whole life that a cramp means you didn't drink enough water. Maybe you needed more salt. Maybe a banana. Electrolyte companies claim their fancy packets can fix your cramps. It makes sense on paper. You sweat, you lose water and sodium,...
The Saturday Standard — Vol. 21 Saturday, September 26, 2026 As always, coffee first, fellas — and let's talk about testosterone, who actually needs it, and why some men are on it without ever being properly tested. The Research Should you be on TRT? Testosterone and men's wellness clinics are riding a high right now. From the Hims commercials about libido, weight loss, hair loss and the like, to local shops leaving flyers on your car, to your buddy at the gym who swears by this clinic up the...
The Saturday Standard — Vol. 20 Saturday, September 19, 2026 As always, coffee first, fellas — and let's clear up some confusion on the amount of muscle you have being more important than the amount of muscle being used. The Research Muscle is a storage tank, but it is also metabolically active We usually think about muscle in terms of how much of it we have. More muscle, more strength, better metabolic health. Less muscle, worse in all the same categories. If something is going wrong, the...