You Had One Job

Stop Lying to Me

Last night I was doing the whole shutdown ritual. Bed, mask, rain sounds, surround sound sealing me off from the world. That deliberate slide toward sleep where nothing is supposed to get in. Then I glanced at my phone and saw a podcast headline about seed oils. Scientific community, bullshit, myth, panic. Those words should not exist near bedtime.

Here is the part that matters. For years, my partner and I have been militant about this. No seed oils. Avocado oil, olive oil, sometimes palm oil if we had to. Labels checked like border passports. We warned friends. We preached. We said if there is one thing you can do for your health, it is avoid seed oils. I told people, half joking but not really, that smoking would be better than cooking with them. That is how certain I was.

So when I saw a serious podcast calmly saying the science does not support the panic, my nervous system hit the ceiling. Not because of the claim, but because of the implication. If this was wrong, then I had been wrong loudly. For years.

I did not sleep. I spiraled. Chemistry terms, studies, confidence crashes. Every few years nutrition crowns a new villain and everyone lines up with pitchforks. Seed oils got their turn. Toxic. Inflammatory. Hormone destroying. Industrial waste. The language sounded smart because it borrowed real science and then sprinted past the evidence.

“What actually holds up is annoyingly unsexy. Seed oils are mostly linoleic acid, an essential fat your body cannot make. When they replace saturated fats like butter or tallow, LDL cholesterol drops. That shows up over and over in long term human trials. The hexane scare only works if you ignore scale. The solvent is removed. Residues are regulated to parts per million. The real damage shows up in factory workers breathing it daily, not in people eating salad dressing. Reused fryer oil at high heat for hours is a problem. Normal home cooking is not. Hormone panic collapses under basic biochemistry. Refined soybean oil does not contain phytoestrogens. Human trials do not show testosterone suppression.” … WTF!

Eventually I passed out, more from exhaustion than peace. In the morning I listened again, calmer, clearer. And honestly, the bigger feeling was not relief. It was fatigue. I am so tired of being scammed. Tired of discovering that the thing I warned everyone about was mostly a proxy for something else. Tired of certainty aging like milk.

I have definitely spouted opinions. Confident ones. To friends, to anyone who would listen. And now here I am, realizing how easy it is to be wrong while feeling righteous. Maybe nothing is real unless I try it myself. Maybe the real lesson is not about oil at all. But wait … I always try everything on myself. Whatever.

Nutrition problems are almost never one molecule. Eat real food when you can. Protect your sleep. And do not let the internet rewrite your worldview right as you are trying to go to bed. “Don’t sleep on the tracks and don’t talk to the police.”