Unpacking RFK, Jr.’s claims: Are canola, soy bean and safflower oil feeding the obesity epidemic and poisoning America?

[Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] has said…vegetable oils — extracted from the seeds of plants, like canola, soybean and safflower — are poisoning Americans and driving the obesity epidemic. 

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“This is one of the more studied topics in nutrition. So it’s sort of extra bewildering to quite a few of us in the field that this is coming up,” says Christopher Gardner, a nutrition scientist and professor of medicine at Stanford University.

He says studies have consistently shown that replacing saturated fats, such as lard or beef tallow, with fats from plant oils leads to better health outcomes.

The main reason why our seed oil consumption has increased dramatically is because these oils are ubiquitous in ultra-processed foods, which now dominate the U.S. food supply.

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“So many of the seed oil haters show these beautiful graphs showing how, as intakes of seed oils have increased over the years, so have rates of all of these awful chronic diseases – cancer, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity,” [said Sara Berry, professor of nutrition at King’s College London]. “But look what else has changed. Our food landscape…”

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