Book Review: ‘The Truth About Seed Oils’ By Liana Werner-Gray and Cherie Calbom, M.S.

If you had asked me a few years ago what seed oils were, I probably couldn’t have given you much of an in-depth answer. That changed in early 2025, when I became much more interested in learning about what goes into the food we eat every day and how to improve my overall health.

Since then, I’ve realized just how much confusion and conflicting information surrounds the topic of seed oils, making it difficult for the general public to know what to believe. That is exactly why I found “The Truth About Seed Oils” by Liana Werner-Gray and Cherie Calbom, M.S., published by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., to be such a fascinating read.

The book explores one of the most widely debated topics in modern nutrition: the role of these oils in our everyday diets. It does an excellent job of highlighting just how commonplace they have become in the foods we eat. And spoiler alert — they are in almost everything!

Reading this book made me realize just how many nutrition messages I had accepted over the years without ever questioning them. I appreciated how the authors encouraged readers to dig deeper and think for themselves. They urge readers to question long-held beliefs about what makes an oil “heart healthy” and to take a closer look at the research behind those claims.

Whether you agree with every point or not, the book definitely pushes you to think more critically about the foods you eat instead of simply accepting what is printed on a label or advertised as “healthy.”

“The Truth About Seed Oils” starts out with informing readers what actually qualifies as a “seed oil,” where these common ingredients actually come from and why they are used so often. From there, Werner-Gray and Calbom take a deeper look at how these oils are processed and why they believe their widespread use has raised concerns for our health. They make the science behind seed oils easy to understand and encouraged me to be more curious about nutrition instead of just believing what’s considered common knowledge.

The book shows how many foods that many people consider harmless often contain seed oils. Even a lot of the meat available in supermarkets could be riddled with these oils. It is clear through this book that avoiding seed oils requires becoming more intentional about reading labels at the grocery store and paying closer attention to the ingredients in the meals we order at restaurants. If you are like the majority of the population who regularly buys packaged foods, there is a good chance you are consuming seed oils on a regular basis without even realizing it.

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The authors argue that common health concerns — especially chronic inflammation — can be attributed to seed oils. One of the most eye-opening parts of this book is learning just how deeply they have become woven into our everyday diets and how easy it is to consume them without even realizing it. I will leave the full discussion of the potential health concerns surrounding these oils to the book itself, but I will say that even as someone who had already spent time researching this topic, I was genuinely surprised by how much I learned. Even after doing my own research, I still came across facts and studies that were completely new to me —  which is why I think this is a topic more people should be paying attention to.

However, Werner-Gray and Calhoun do much more than just simply highlight the problems surrounding seed oils. They also take the time to guide readers through healthier alternatives, including which oils to choose, what ingredients to look for instead and how to make better-informed decisions in the kitchen. The book also includes over 50 recipes that are completely free of seed oils, which I personally am very excited to start making myself. They even included actress Cheryl Hines’ whitefish with lemon caper sauce recipe.

In January, Hines’s husband Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled a new food pyramid emphasizing whole, unprocessed foods and more protein consumption as well as moving away from the old guidelines’ crackdown on saturated fat — which had caused consumption of seed oils to spike.

I am no stranger to the fact that changing the way we eat each day can feel overwhelming, but the authors do a great job of making the process feel actually achievable. Rather than expecting readers to completely change their diets overnight, they focus on simple, practical changes that anyone can make. This book reminded me that small changes, like paying closer attention to ingredients, picking up olive oil as opposed to canola oil at the store, and overall being more mindful of what we put into our bodies, can really add up over time.

Whether you are just beginning your health journey or already consider yourself health-conscious, “The Truth About Seed Oils” will absolutely encourage you to look more closely at the choices you make and become more informed about the foods you put into your body.