You likely know someone living with heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune issues, or ongoing mental health challenges. These problems are showing up earlier, lasting longer, and affecting more people than in the past. While many factors contribute to this trend, one of the most influential is what we eat every day.

Over the last century, the American diet has undergone a dramatic transformation. Home-cooked meals made from simple, whole ingredients have steadily given way to ultraprocessed products — foods engineered for convenience, mass production, and longer shelf life. These changes didn't happen all at once, and most people weren't aware they were even happening.

Today, many of the ingredients found in everyday packaged foods are far removed from anything found in a traditional kitchen. The featured documentary, "Fed a Lie: The Truth About Seed Oils," takes a closer look at one of the most impactful shifts in our diet — how industrial seed oils became a foundation of the modern food supply and what that means for long-term health.1

The Rise of Seed Oils in the Modern Diet

The featured video lays out the historical pathway that caused the industrial seed oils to dominate the American food supply, drawing on historical records, government data, and expert interviews. These oils were later marketed as "vegetable oils" to make them sound healthy, but they are extracted from crops like soybeans, corn, and cottonseed. This change took place over the span of about a century, but its effects are still unfolding.2

•From trace amounts to a daily staple — In 1865, Americans consumed almost no seed oils. Fats came mostly from animals in the form of lard, tallow, and butter. By 2014, the average person was consuming about 65 grams of vegetable oils per day. As noted by Dr. Paul Saladino in "Fed a Lie":

"The average American consumes 3 to 5 tablespoons of seed oils per day, and it's in almost all ultraprocessed food — salad dressings, it's in cookies, it's in cakes, it's in crackers, it's in breads, it's in plant milks.

To consume the equivalent of 3 to 5 tablespoons of corn oil, we would have to eat 60 to 70 ears of corn. To consume the equivalent of 3 to 5 tablespoons of soybean oil, we're looking at more than 2 pounds of soybeans. Amounts that would never ever have encountered historically as human.

So, what we have here is a very striking discordance between what we have done for hundreds of thousands of years and what we're eating today in our diets — incredibly evolutionary and consistent consumption of seed oils, which are just easy to consume today."3