Seed Oils

2020catchphraseactive

Seed Oils is an internet health panic and meme format that treats vegetable oils like canola, soybean and sunflower as toxic industrial poisons. The discourse picked up on 4chan and Twitter in 2020 and blew up after Dr. Paul Saladino talked about it on Joe Rogan's podcast in October 202013.

moral panic memesfood memesconspiracy memesself improvement memesmanosphere memes

Overview

Seed Oils is the umbrella name online health influencers use to attack refined vegetable oils like canola, soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, rice bran and cottonseed oil. Wellness circles call this group the 'Hateful Eight,' a label popularized by family physician Cate Shanahan on a 2020 podcast1. Fans of the panic blame the oils for everything from obesity and heart disease to dementia and age spots, usually while promoting butter, tallow or a full carnivore diet as the fix2.

As a meme, Seed Oils lives mostly as reaction images, screenshot dunks and catchphrase tweets. Anti-seed-oil posters brand themselves 'seed oil disrespecters,' post before-and-after body pictures blaming canola oil for weak jaws, and edit classic templates like Distracted Boyfriend or Chad vs. Soyjak to cast tallow as the Chad option and vegetable oil as the soy option37. On TikTok and Instagram the tag #seedoilfree is used by cooks, restaurants and product brands to signal they cook with animal fat or olive oil instead2.

While most mainstream nutrition experts do not treat these oils as uniquely dangerous, the meme still drives real behavior1. Some restaurants now list 'seed-oil-free' on menus, and figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have publicly called seed oils 'toxic' and accused them of 'poisoning' Americans, pulling the meme out of forums and into political speeches5.

How It Spread

Twitter picked the topic up almost immediately. In mid-2020 accounts like drjamesdinic, run by cardiovascular researcher Dr. James DiNicolantonio, and AlpacaAurelius, an early handle of the account now known as Carnivore Aurelius, posted anti-seed-oil takes that pulled hundreds to thousands of likes7. The real accelerant came on October 16, 2020, when carnivore-diet advocate Dr. Paul Saladino went on The Joe Rogan Experience and spent hours warning about seed oils, plant toxins and mitochondrial damage. A JRE Clips YouTube upload of the segment pulled roughly 358,100 views inside eighteen months7.

GQ published Andrew Zaleski's feature 'Seed Oil Is the Latest Thing We're Being Told to Eliminate from Our Diets' on October 14, 2021, which mainstreamed the debate and coincided with a wave of new memes17. On October 11, 2021, Twitter user Defendthewest17 posted a James Bond edit about seed oils that racked up roughly 4,500 likes, and on October 24 a cartoon by user JohnConstas of 'lizard people' bragging about putting seed oils in everyone's food pulled around 6,900 likes7. By February 2022 the format was oversaturated enough that user SA4543567360 joked, 'Hate seed oils as much as the next guy but damn are these niggas becoming vegan-level annoying,' pulling about 2,400 likes in six days7.

From there the meme colonized Instagram and TikTok. Carnivore Aurelius alone grew past 300,000 Twitter followers and 700,000 Instagram followers, and a February 2023 Instagram post calling seed oils 'the most destructive force in the world today' pulled more than 63,000 likes and 1,700 comments3. Salon, Rolling Stone and Fly by Jing all ran explainers between 2022 and 2024 trying to catch general readers up on why their timeline was suddenly at war with canola oil235. Family physician Dr. Brian Kerley built a whole meme brand as the 'Seed Oil Disrespecter,' later appearing on the Mind and Matter podcast to argue the health case in his own words4.

How to Use This Meme

Seed Oils memes typically pit an 'ancestral' fat like butter, tallow, ghee or extra virgin olive oil against an 'industrial' fat like canola, soybean or sunflower oil, using an existing template to code the animal fat as the strong or correct choice. Common conventions include Distracted Boyfriend edits with tallow as the girlfriend and seed oil as the woman on the street, Chad vs. Soyjak panels where the Chad grills in tallow, and screenshot dunks on restaurant menus or product ingredient lists that contain any of the 'Hateful Eight' oils71. Posters often sign off as a 'seed oil disrespecter' and tag posts with #seedoilfree, especially on Instagram and TikTok food content24.

Frequently Asked Questions

Seed Oils

2020catchphraseactive

Seed Oils is an internet health panic and meme format that treats vegetable oils like canola, soybean and sunflower as toxic industrial poisons. The discourse picked up on 4chan and Twitter in 2020 and blew up after Dr. Paul Saladino talked about it on Joe Rogan's podcast in October 202013.

moral panic memes food memes conspiracy memes self improvement memes manosphere memes

Overview

Seed Oils is the umbrella name online health influencers use to attack refined vegetable oils like canola, soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, rice bran and cottonseed oil. Wellness circles call this group the 'Hateful Eight,' a label popularized by family physician Cate Shanahan on a 2020 podcast1. Fans of the panic blame the oils for everything from obesity and heart disease to dementia and age spots, usually while promoting butter, tallow or a full carnivore diet as the fix2.

As a meme, Seed Oils lives mostly as reaction images, screenshot dunks and catchphrase tweets. Anti-seed-oil posters brand themselves 'seed oil disrespecters,' post before-and-after body pictures blaming canola oil for weak jaws, and edit classic templates like Distracted Boyfriend or Chad vs. Soyjak to cast tallow as the Chad option and vegetable oil as the soy option37. On TikTok and Instagram the tag #seedoilfree is used by cooks, restaurants and product brands to signal they cook with animal fat or olive oil instead2.

While most mainstream nutrition experts do not treat these oils as uniquely dangerous, the meme still drives real behavior1. Some restaurants now list 'seed-oil-free' on menus, and figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have publicly called seed oils 'toxic' and accused them of 'poisoning' Americans, pulling the meme out of forums and into political speeches5.

How It Spread

Twitter picked the topic up almost immediately. In mid-2020 accounts like drjamesdinic, run by cardiovascular researcher Dr. James DiNicolantonio, and AlpacaAurelius, an early handle of the account now known as Carnivore Aurelius, posted anti-seed-oil takes that pulled hundreds to thousands of likes7. The real accelerant came on October 16, 2020, when carnivore-diet advocate Dr. Paul Saladino went on The Joe Rogan Experience and spent hours warning about seed oils, plant toxins and mitochondrial damage. A JRE Clips YouTube upload of the segment pulled roughly 358,100 views inside eighteen months7.

GQ published Andrew Zaleski's feature 'Seed Oil Is the Latest Thing We're Being Told to Eliminate from Our Diets' on October 14, 2021, which mainstreamed the debate and coincided with a wave of new memes17. On October 11, 2021, Twitter user Defendthewest17 posted a James Bond edit about seed oils that racked up roughly 4,500 likes, and on October 24 a cartoon by user JohnConstas of 'lizard people' bragging about putting seed oils in everyone's food pulled around 6,900 likes7. By February 2022 the format was oversaturated enough that user SA4543567360 joked, 'Hate seed oils as much as the next guy but damn are these niggas becoming vegan-level annoying,' pulling about 2,400 likes in six days7.

From there the meme colonized Instagram and TikTok. Carnivore Aurelius alone grew past 300,000 Twitter followers and 700,000 Instagram followers, and a February 2023 Instagram post calling seed oils 'the most destructive force in the world today' pulled more than 63,000 likes and 1,700 comments3. Salon, Rolling Stone and Fly by Jing all ran explainers between 2022 and 2024 trying to catch general readers up on why their timeline was suddenly at war with canola oil235. Family physician Dr. Brian Kerley built a whole meme brand as the 'Seed Oil Disrespecter,' later appearing on the Mind and Matter podcast to argue the health case in his own words4.

How to Use This Meme

Seed Oils memes typically pit an 'ancestral' fat like butter, tallow, ghee or extra virgin olive oil against an 'industrial' fat like canola, soybean or sunflower oil, using an existing template to code the animal fat as the strong or correct choice. Common conventions include Distracted Boyfriend edits with tallow as the girlfriend and seed oil as the woman on the street, Chad vs. Soyjak panels where the Chad grills in tallow, and screenshot dunks on restaurant menus or product ingredient lists that contain any of the 'Hateful Eight' oils71. Posters often sign off as a 'seed oil disrespecter' and tag posts with #seedoilfree, especially on Instagram and TikTok food content24.

Frequently Asked Questions