Post from Sama Hoole :

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Plants need liquid oils. Their seeds need to survive winter, disperse on wind or water, and remain viable in soil. Solid fats would be useless for these functions.

Solution: Polyunsaturated fats. PUFAs. Multiple double bonds. Liquid at low temperatures. Perfect for plant survival in varying climates.

The trade-off: Instability. Those double bonds react with oxygen. Oxidation happens quickly. This creates lipid peroxides, free radicals, inflammatory compounds.

Plants don’t care. They’re not eating the seeds. They’re using them for reproduction. Oxidative stability isn’t the goal. Liquid state is.

Now humans come along and decide these seed oils are food.

Problem: We’re not plants. We don’t need liquid oils for seed dispersal. We need stable fats for cell membranes, hormone production, and energy metabolism.

Human cell membranes: Designed for saturated and monounsaturated fats. Stable. Don’t oxidise easily. Maintain membrane integrity for years.

When you eat seed oils, those PUFAs integrate into your cell membranes. They replace the stable fats that should be there. Now your cell membranes contain unstable oxidation-prone molecules.

Every time those PUFAs encounter oxygen or stress, they oxidise. Creating inflammatory cascades inside your cells. For years. Until those cells fully turn over.

This is why seed oil damage is cumulative and long-lasting. Once integrated into membranes, PUFAs stay there until the cell dies and is replaced.

Plants evolved PUFAs for liquid properties needed in seeds.

Humans evolved to use saturated fats for stable properties needed in cells.

These are incompatible requirements.

A plant doesn’t care if its seed oil oxidises after the seed germinates. It served its purpose.

A human should care if their cell membranes are oxidising constantly. That’s called chronic inflammation.

Saturated fat: Solid at room temperature. Stable at body temperature. Perfect for cell membranes. Zero oxidation problems.

Seed oils: Liquid at room temperature. Unstable at body temperature. Terrible for cell membranes. Constant oxidation.

We chose the one designed for plant reproduction over the one designed for animal biology.

Then we wondered why inflammation became epidemic.

Cows eating grass: Converting plant PUFAs into saturated animal fats in their tissues. Their biology does this automatically through biohydrogenation. They’re pre-processing the plants for us, turning inflammatory PUFAs into stable saturated fats.

Humans eating seed oils: Integrating plant PUFAs directly into cell membranes. Creating inflammatory damage that lasts years.

One species evolved to eat plants and convert them to animal fats.

One species evolved to eat animal fats directly.

We’re eating the intermediate product meant for the converter, not for us.

Plants need liquid oils. We don’t. But Procter & Gamble needed to sell Crisco, so here we are.