Dialing Back Concerns Regarding Seed Oils
2024 New Year's Resolution Fulfillment
As long-time readers will know, my annual new year’s resolution is to find a way to change my mind on something.
Long before the 2024 election brought about a MAHA-MAGA merger, I stumbled onto this post by Dynomight originally posted April 20241—the updated version is August of last year on his new domain. In it he thoroughly covers the arguments and evidence (or lack thereof) regarding seed oils being negative for health outcomes.
It uncomfortably challenged my fairly strongly held view that seed oils were obviously, certainly very bad for health including the major culprit for long-term bad health trends.
Needless to say, it challenged my epistemic priors regarding seed oils to the point that I felt compelled to change my mind. It is not that I am now endorsing seed oils or feel they are neutral in health outcomes. I remain concerned that they are in fact net negatives to be avoided and may still be A major if not THE major dietary factor that ails us. It is just that I have to back away from holding this view with much conviction—I have to lower the probability considerably for each of these roles played by seed oils.
As Dynomight puts it,
But seed oil theorists mostly seem to push a much stronger theory: We know that seed oils are the cause of Western disease.
I’ll just be honest. I think this view is completely indefensible. I feel embarrassed when I see people promoting it. You’re sure? How? I don’t see any way to get to this conclusion other than heavily filtering the evidence—ignoring the flaws in everything that supports a predetermined view while scrambling to find flaws in everything that contradicts it.
Before objectors get ahead of themselves, they should know this isn’t because of some anti-RFK, Jr./anti-Trump bias. I had changed my mind long before I was aware of RFK’s particular stance on seed oils. And I am not 100% against 100% of RFK’s points of view. Where I do disagree with him, it is definitely not for an ad hominem circumstantial reason.
This isn’t because I am so fond of counter-conventional wisdom and the anti-seed oil view has arguably become conventional wisdom. The turn of thought is coincidence—yes, those still happen.
It is also not because Little Debbie sponsors my podcast. That sponsorship came long after my change of mind.
You might think I’m joking or being too preemptively defensive, but the climate today is one where the illusion of asymmetric insight seems pervasive.
(Related: Matt Yglesias - Are “ultra-processed” foods really the problem?)
So there it is. I fulfilled the resolution by changing my mind about seed oils being certainly bad for health.2 My view now is cautiously negative to seed oils.
PS: It probably would have been too weak to be itself the fulfillment of the resolution, but Bryan Caplan’s tetanus experience gave me a lot of insight into how unimportant tetanus boosters are. Definitely a counter-conventional wisdom insight.
Note that there is a meaningful argument to be made that would push back against the anti-seed oil position notwithstanding a lack of evidence about negative health connections. That is the economics of food and how seed oils might have played a very helpful role in making calories cheaper.