ghee > seed oils
Here at Empress of Ghee, we believe in the power of good ingredients. We’re lucky to live in a time when it seems like more and more people are waking up to the industrialization of our food industry and the disregard of Big Food for our health.
Seed oils are a big part of this conversation, because most of us consume cooking oils 2-3x daily — that’s almost 100 occasions every month! Without even knowing it, the oils we cook our food in are often our most ingested ingredient.
And that’s exactly the rub when it comes to seed oils: the frequency at which we, as a society, consume them. Seed oils, a term which refers to a class of highly processed and refined oils — palm oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, and others — are high in omega-6 fatty acids. When we consume more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids, out bodies become inflamed and more likely to develop cardiovascular peril, join pain, and even cognitive decline. So, are seed oils in and of themselves evil? Not exactly, but their proliferation across our food industry certainly is, as well as the gaslighting of the public that being conscious around our seed oil consumption is some kind of right-wing quackery.
Last fall, for instance, the British Journal of Nutrition published a study that concluded “vegetable oils rich in UFA should be consumed instead of rich sources of SFA, including butter, tallow, lard, palm and coconut oils.” (italics mine). Who sponsored the study? At the end of the study, buried in the acknowledgements, is the fact that the study was funded entirely by the Soy Nutrition Institute Global, United Soybean Board, Corn Refiners of America, National Corn Growers Association, Canola Council of Canada and USA Canola Association. The article states that none of the funders played a role in “the design, analysis, or writing” of the article, despite the fact that one of the article’s key contributers, Mark Messina, is literally employed by Soy Nutrition Institute Global in Missouri.
OK, so we know that, in the standard American diet, the ratio of these ultra-processed oils to omega-3-rich oils, such as EVOO and ghee, is way off. This is honestly a reason why we created Empress of Ghee: we know that our lives and health have benefitted from ghee and want others, especially those who don’t yet know about the benefits of ghee, to experience the magic as well.
We don’t freak out about eating out at restaurants that likely cook with seed oils, but we always cook with ghee or high quality EVOO when we’re at home. More restaurants, such as True Food Kitchen and Sweetgreen, are going seed-oil free, as well as a bunch of Bozeman restaurants owned by the Blue Collar group. We’re here for it.
Recently spotted at Hachi in Bozeman, Montana. We love to see it!
