# Seed Oils 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 2020[1][3]. ## 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 podcast[1]. 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 fix[2]. 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 option[3][7]. 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 instead[2]. While most mainstream nutrition experts do not treat these oils as uniquely dangerous, the meme still drives real behavior[1]. 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 speeches[5]. ## 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 likes[7]. 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 months[7]. 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 memes[1][7]. 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 likes[7]. 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 days[7]. 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 comments[3]. 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 oil[2][3][5]. 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 words[4]. ## How to Use 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' oils[7][1]. Posters often sign off as a 'seed oil disrespecter' and tag posts with #seedoilfree, especially on Instagram and TikTok food content[2][4]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Seed Oils? Seed Oils is the online nickname and meme category for refined vegetable oils, canola, soybean, corn, sunflower and similar, which anti-seed-oil posters brand as toxic industrial products[1][5]. ### Where did Seed Oils come from? The meme took shape on 4chan's /pol/ board on July 6, 2020, in an anti-seed-oil thread using the Distracted Boyfriend template, then jumped to Twitter and Joe Rogan's podcast that same year[7]. ### What does Seed Oils mean? In meme use, 'seed oils' is shorthand for refined vegetable cooking oils blamed by wellness influencers for obesity, inflammation and chronic disease, often called the 'Hateful Eight'[1][2]. ### How do you use Seed Oils? Posters usually drop the term into image macros, tweets or TikTok cooking clips to contrast animal fats like tallow and butter with 'industrial' canola or soybean oil, often tagging #seedoilfree[2][4]. ### Is Seed Oils still popular? Yes. As of the mid-2020s the topic is a fixture in wellness content, restaurant menus advertise 'seed-oil-free' options, and politicians like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have publicly called the oils 'toxic'[5]. ### Who is Carnivore Aurelius? Carnivore Aurelius is a Twitter and Instagram account with hundreds of thousands of followers that pushes carnivore-diet content and anti-seed-oil posts, and sells beef liver crisps for around $89.99 a bag[3]. ### What is the 'Hateful Eight'? The 'Hateful Eight' is a label board-certified family physician Cate Shanahan used on a 2020 podcast for the eight most common refined seed oils she says people should avoid[1]. ### Who is the Seed Oil Disrespecter? Dr. Brian Kerley, a family-medicine-trained hospitalist, built the 'Seed Oil Disrespecter' meme account and later discussed the health arguments on the Mind and Matter podcast[4]. ### Did Joe Rogan really start the seed oils meme? Rogan did not invent it, but his October 16, 2020 interview with carnivore-diet doctor Paul Saladino is widely credited as the moment the topic broke out of forums into a mass online debate[2][7]. ### Is the seed oils panic backed by science? Most mainstream nutrition experts do not treat seed oils as uniquely unhealthy, and outlets like Fly by Jing and Rolling Stone have argued the memes rely more on fear appeal than solid evidence[3][5]. ### When did seed oils actually enter the human diet? Cottonseed oil was industrialized in the 1800s and Procter & Gamble launched Crisco, a cottonseed-oil product marketed as healthier than butter, in 1911[1][6]. ## References 1. [https://www.gq.com/story/seed-oil-health]() 2. [https://flybyjing.com/blogs/news/seed-oil-controversy]() 3. [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/is-seed-oil-bad-for-you-wellness-influencers-right-wing-debunked-1234809499/]() 4. [https://mindandmatter.substack.com/p/feel-the-burn-seed-oils-memes-and]() 5. [https://www.salon.com/2022/04/19/why-everyone-on-the-internet-suddenly-hates-seed-oil/]() 6. [https://heartandsoil.co/blog/the-hidden-history-of-seed-oils/]() 7. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/seed-oils]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/seed-oils Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library