Seed Oils: Should You Switch to Butter?

Science Vs

Spotify Studios

Education, Science, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 11.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve been told that foods like butter and bacon are bad for us — because they're packed with saturated fats. And top dogs in nutrition say that a better option is vegetable oil, like canola oil. But lots of people, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are saying hold on. They're arguing that saturated fats are actually the way to go. And they're claiming that those vegetable oils, aka “seed oils,” are incredibly dangerous. So — who’s right?? To find out, we speak to author and physician Dr Cate Shanahan, professor of nutrition science Jason Wu, professor of endocrinology David Schade, and Dr David Iggman. [REBROADCAST] Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/SVSeedOils In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Seed oils are the devil (05:35) Is saturated fat killing you? (12:25) Does cholesterol cause heart attacks? (22:02) Do seed oils cause inflammation? (28:00) Are seed oils killing you? This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, with help from Joel Werner, Rose Rimler, Nick DelRose and Michelle Dang. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Carmen Drahl. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Peter Leonard, and Bumi Hidaka. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke to including Dr Lorena Pacheco, Dr Qi Sun, Dr Tetsumori Yamashima, Dr Idrees Mughal, Professor Rashika Ahmed, Dr Hatem Tallima, Dr Heidi Silver, Professor Ronald Krauss, Dr Yutang Wang, Dr David Sullivan, Professor Peter Clifton, Dr Lee Hooper and others. And a big thank you to Morgen Rockel, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Furses.
0:03.5	And today on the show, we are pitting facts against fats.
0:09.6	For years, the top dogs in nutrition have been howling about how foods like butter and bacon are bad for us,
0:17.2	because they are packed with saturated fats.
0:20.9	And instead, they say, we should be eating vegetable oils.
0:25.9	These oils are filled with a different combination of fats
0:28.9	that experts have told us are good for us.
0:32.4	But there's a trend that's popping off right now
0:34.4	that says that these top dogs are barking up the wrong tree. And in fact,
0:39.7	butter is healthy and those vegetable oils, which are probably sitting on your kitchen countertop
0:45.6	right now, are actually incredibly dangerous and might even be killing you.
0:56.8	Medical science is messed up when it comes to nutrition.
1:00.8	This is Dr. Kate Shanahan.
1:02.9	She's a family physician who's been raging against the nutrition science machine.
1:07.2	It's just so wrong.
1:08.5	It's morally wrong.
1:09.8	It's ethically wrong.
1:13.6	It's shocking. And I just, after 20 years,
1:19.8	I still haven't gotten over it. Kate has a big problem with vegetable oils that are extracted from seeds.
1:24.5	The so-called seed oils. What exactly are the seed oils?
1:30.4	The problematic seed oils are a collection of eight highly refined,
1:37.4	industrially processed vegetable oils, specifically, soy, safflower, sunflower,
	...

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