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Nutrition science is complicated, and it can be hard to separate fact from fiction.

If the claim sounds too good to be true or maybe a little crazy, they probably are.

It's Wednesday, November 27th, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm SciFri producer Shoshana Bucksbaum.

We've recently asked you our listeners, which dubious health claims you've been seeing in your social media feeds or being circulated by friends and family.

Unsurprisingly, we received a ton of questions about nutrition.

Sci-Fi producer Kathleen Davis talks with a nutritionist to help answer those questions and give advice on how to

figure out if those claims really hold up. Jessica Clifford, registered dietitian and nutrition

specialist at the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Colorado State University

based in Fort Collins. Jessica, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, thank you so much for having

me. We're so glad to have you. So let's get right in to our listener questions. The first one that we

have is from Lynn S. She's based in Syracuse, New York. She asks, why are internet comment sections freaking out about seed oils?

Okay, Jessica, first of all, what is a seed oil?

Well, seed oils are those oils that are extracted from the seed of a plant, and generally,

they contain unsaturated fats.

Seed oils include oils like canola oil or corn oil, cotton seed oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil,

sunflower oil, among a few others.

That is what a seed oil is.

And so why are people concerned about these?

Well, I think the biggest thing that we see across, you know, media platforms is that there's some

concern about the way that these seed oils are processed. And that is often through the form of,

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