How religion, wellness bros and conspiracies made some Americans doubt seed oils

(RNS) — Millions of Americans made resolutions to start the New Year, hoping to exercise, eat right and otherwise try to be healthier in 2025. For an increasing number of Americans, this includes avoiding seed oils — like corn and canola oil, often used in highly processed foodstuffs and in fast-food restaurants.

Touted for years as healthy alternatives to using butter, lard or beef tallow, these vegetable oils have come under fire recently from critics such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine advocate who hopes to “Make America Healthy Again” if confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services in a new Trump administration. Kennedy and other critics blame what they call the Hateful Eight — canola, corn, soybean, sunflower, cottonseed, safflower, grapeseed and rice bran oils — for causing inflammation, obesity, cancer and other health woes, calling them one of the leading threats to public health in America.

Food scientists disagree, saying that eating too much fried or processed food is the issue – not the oils used. 

But the fight over seeds oils hasn’t been solely about healthy eating. Instead, the conflict has become part of a larger American quest for purity — both in body and in soul — with healthy eating a sign of spiritual purity and unhealthy eating a sin, or even worse, a risk to national or racial purity. 

Andrew Torba in a 2018 interview. (Video screen grab)

For some religious folks, avoiding such oils has become a matter of faith. Or in extreme cases, a matter of national survival — with seed oils seen as part of a plot to weaken conservatives Christian and allow immigrants to take over.

“The ultimate goal of our enemies is the destruction of our nations and the replacement of our people with those who are more easily controlled and manipulated,” Andrew Torba, founder of the Gab social media site and a self-described Christian nationalist, wrote in a long post criticizing seed oils.

“By keeping us sick, weak, and distracted, they are able to accelerate this process and ensure that we are unable to resist their plans,” he continued.

 Torba repeated his claims in an email to RNS, blaming the agriculture industry for popularizing the use of seed oils, which he claims are inferior to “traditional fats like butter, lard, and tallow.”

He also blamed Phil Sokolof, an Omaha philanthropist who spent years crusading against high-fat foods and in favor of seed oils. Sokolof, who became an activist for healthier food after suffering a heart attack in his 40s, has been largely credited with convincing McDonald’s and other fast-food chains in the 1990s to abandon beef tallow for cooking fries.

Torba, who has a long history of antisemitic comments — last year he boasted of banning his family from playing Christmas songs written by Jews — referred to Sokolof as a “Jewish businessman” in his email to RNS.

Torba also said his faith prompted his opposition to seed oils.

“From a religious standpoint, eating healthily is a form of stewarding the body that God gave us — which is a temple,” he said. “I believe the promotion of seed oils is part of a broader agenda to keep the American population sick and dependent on the medical industrial complex.”

Other critics of seed oils also cite their faith but more out of a concern for healthy living rather than conspiracies.

Wes Russell, pastor of Immanuel Baptist in Pikeville, Kentucky, said that swearing off seed oils changed his life. Russell, who has long been frustrated with his weight, said he lost 100 pounds over the past year, largely after cutting out seed oils.

Pastor Wes Russell. (Video screen grab)

He calls himself a “hopeful skeptic” about seed oils.

“I was just cutting things out of my diet — hoping I’d find something that would work,” Russell said.

Russell said his thinking about seed oil was shaped by personal experience and by reading the work of Brian Kerley, a Kentucky doctor known online as the “Seed Oil Disrespecter.” Kerley, who runs an app called Seedy, which helps users shop for products and find restaurants that shun seed oils, often posts links to scientific reports about seed oils, which are commonly used in highly processed foods. Those reports have led Russell to believe seed oils are problematic.

Still, he’s hesitant to blame others for his health woes or to ascribe the nation’s public health concerns to a conspiracy, saying he takes personal responsibility for being overweight.

“I willfully confess that I very frequently partook in the sin of gluttony,” he said, a reference to one of the so-called seven deadly sins. He said churches rarely discuss the issue of eating to excess — even though the Bible describes such behavior as sinful. And too few Christians, he said, see the connections between their faith and healthy eating.

That hasn’t always been the case.

Brian Wilson, a religious historian at Western Michigan University, said food and spiritual health have often been linked in American culture. Christian physiologists, such as William Andrus Alcott and Sylvester Graham, in the 19^th century hoped to solve social ills by changing what Christians ate — Graham’s famed crackers, for example, were supposed to curb lust and other desires — and urged their followers to cut out caffeine and alcohol and eat a vegetarian diet. They argued that healthful eating was a moral obligation, said Wilson, and believed “you can’t have a healthy soul in an unhealthy body.”

Religious health influencers such as Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who invented cornflakes with his brother William, also cranked out articles in newspapers and magazines to promote his ideas, sell products and attract followers to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a famed health resort he ran for decades. They tapped into the concerns that many Americans had about the state of public health and the American diet.

For Kellogg, those concerns about public health also had political overtones. Like many American leaders in the early 20th century, he became an avid supporter of the eugenics movement, which argued that poor health and too many of the wrong kind of immigrants would be the ruin of America. For years, Kellogg’s Race Betterment Foundation funded eugenics conferences that promoted causes such as forced sterilization and limits on immigration. Till his dying day, he remained committed to saving “the white portion” of the human race, as Wilson recounts in his biography of Dr. Kellogg.

Derek Beres, co-host of the “Conspirituality” podcast, says conspiracy theories have long been popular in the wellness community. Beres, a former reporter turned yoga instructor, said many of those theories promote a kind of bootstraps approach when it comes to health and ignore broader societal trends. Being unhealthy is seen as a matter of choice and a moral problem, said Beres.

To solve that problem, health influencers often demonize certain ingredients — for example, seed oils — as well as government bureaucracies, which are seen as ignoring the alleged dangers of those ingredients. Then the influencers offer simple solutions — usually a new product — to fix health problem.

“There is this constant demonization of individual ingredients or foods in order to effectively sell supplements,” Beres said. 

Seed oils, more commonly known as vegetable oils, had been viewed with suspicion in the past — in 2001, journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell blamed the switch from beef tallow to vegetable oil for both harming Americans’ health as well as making fries taste worse, while “The Big Fat Surprise,” a 2014 bestselling book by author Nina Teicholz, warned of the dangers of seed oils while promoting the benefits of natural fats.

(Photo by Rattanakun Thongbun/Vecteezy)

But the concerns about seed oil took off, said Beres, when Paul Saladino, a food influencer known as the “Carnivore MD,” began filming videos promoting a meat, fruit and raw egg diet, while condemning seed oils and other plant products. When Saladino began to appear on what Beres called “bro-fluence” channels such as Joe Rogan’s podcast, the demonizing of seed oils took off.

 “It’s become a bit of a brain worm in the wellness community,” Beres said.

For religious leaders and food influencers, beliefs about eating are often connected with concerns about purity, said Christina Ward, author of “Holy Food,” a history of how religious groups have shaped what Americans eat. Those ideas about purity are often picked up by food influencers, who talk about eating “clean,” a term that has religious overtones.

“What this really comes down to is purity,” said Ward. “Are we pure in soul? Are we pure in body?”

Ward said conspiracies about food are often rooted in legitimate concerns. One reason Americans began eating more foods made with vegetable oil in the early 20^th century is that they are “calorically dense,” an important factor when people were struggling to get enough to eat. But too much of a good thing can be a problem as the more calories people consume, the more weight they are likely to gain. 

Ward said concerns about seed oil or other food, which are exacerbated by mistrust of the government and large corporations, can be used to mislead people. She said food influencers can tap into that distrust in order to build an audience and sell products — offering people simple solutions to what are really complicated problems.

Ward has simple advice on how to respond when that happens.

“When people ask me about such things, I ask if the person they are listening to has a merch page,” she said. “If they have a merch page, walk away.”