From War Machines to Your Kitchen: The True Cost of Vegetable/Seed Oils

Few topics in nutrition stir up as much debate right now as vegetable or “seed” oils — the rapeseed, sunflower, and soybean oils that now dominate our diets.

Are they really the “heart-healthy” staples we’ve been told to trust, or hidden drivers of modern disease? To make sense of the controversy, we need to step back. The story of vegetable oils isn’t just about what’s in your frying pan today — it’s about their industrial origins, a century of marketing, and the timeline that saw them rise from factory floors to family kitchens.

As a certified health coach, I’ve seen how often people are confused about fats—and why it’s not their fault. I was too, once. I followed the labels, trusted the messaging, and thought I was making the right choices—until I started looking deeper.

A Time Before Vegetable Oils

In the early 1900s, British kitchens ran on traditional fats. Butter on toast, lard in Yorkshire puddings, dripping for Sunday roasts, and cream in soups. Olive or sesame oils appeared now and then, but rarely.

And heart disease? Almost unheard of. Medical textbooks barely mentioned heart attacks until 1912. By the 1950s, it had become the UK’s top killer. Something had shifted — and quickly.

From Factories to Frying Pans

Before they reached our supermarkets, vegetable oils had industrial roots:

• Cottonseed oil: a by-product of the cotton industry, once used in soaps and
  lamp oil. In 1911 it was rebranded as Crisco, the first hydrogenated “vegetable
  shortening.”
• Linseed oil: used in paints and varnishes.
• Rapeseed and sunflower oils: lubricants for wartime engines and aircraft
  coatings.

During the World Wars, these oils powered explosives, rubber, and machinery. After peace, the factories didn’t close. Their output shifted to food.

The Heart-Healthy Myth

By the mid-20th century, nutrition science took a decisive turn. The “diet–heart hypothesis” blamed saturated fats like butter and dripping for raising cholesterol and heart disease.

Suddenly, traditional fats were cast as villains. Vegetable oils — soybean, sunflower, rapeseed — were promoted as modern, scientific, and “heart-healthy.” Food companies reformulated products, restaurants switched to cheaper oils, and by the 1970s they were everywhere.

Here’s the striking coincidence: the 1960s was also when heart attack rates soared. Smoking, stress, and sedentary lifestyles played a role — but this was also when our fat intake flipped:

• In 1910, 85–90% of UK fats came from animals, under 10% from vegetable
• By the 1960s–70s, animal fats had dropped below 50%.
• Today, they’re less than 15%, while vegetable oils dominate.

Have our bodies adapted to such a shift in just a few generations?

Why Vegetable Oils Are Different

Not all oils are created equal. Natural fats like olive or coconut oil can be cold-pressed with minimal effort. Vegetable oils, by contrast, go through an extremely heavy industrial process. Often labelled RBD (refined, bleached, deodorised), they require:

• chemical solvents
• high heat
• deodorising and bleaching
• removal of antioxidants and flavour

This leaves oils rich in polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs)—which, in whole foods, are beneficial. But once refined, they become unstable. Heating or storing them leads to oxidation, creating compounds linked to inflammation—a major contributor to many chronic diseases.

PUFAs aren’t the problem—industrial processing is. In their natural state, they support health. But stripped from their food matrix and altered by machinery, they behave very differently in the body.

Hiding in Your Shopping Trolley

Even if you never pour rapeseed oil into a pan, you’re probably consuming vegetable oils daily. Check the labels on:

• bread and biscuits
• salad dressings and sauces
• crisps and snacks
• ready meals and frozen pizzas

I’ll never forget the day I picked up a packet of Italian biscuits I used to love. The original recipe was simple — flour, sugar, eggs, and olive oil, the kind of thing you could bake at home. Today? The label lists more than 15 ingredients, with vegetable oils right at the top. And the truth is, they don’t even taste the same. That moment was a shock — and a reminder of how quietly and dramatically our food has changed in just one generation.

The Bigger Picture: Who Pays?

Vegetable oils are cheap to make and hugely profitable. But the costs are passed on to us — and to the NHS. Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease have climbed alongside vegetable oil consumption, costing the NHS over £6.5 billion annually in obesity-related illness.

It’s a sharp example of privatised profits and socialised costs.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Vegetable oils do lower LDL cholesterol, which explains their “heart-healthy” badge. But health is more than one number. Oxidation, inflammation, and the sheer volume of these oils in modern diets muddy the picture — and the research is still unfolding.

A simple principle can guide us: choose fats that exist in nature, and that you could, in theory, make yourself. Butter, ghee, extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, or coconut oil. Stable, time-tested, and rooted in tradition.

In a world saturated with ultra-processed foods and clever marketing, perhaps true wellbeing lies not in the next “miracle” ingredient — but in the quiet wisdom of foods that have nourished us for centuries.

✨ If you’re curious about simple changes that truly support long-term health, I offer personalised 1:1 coaching rooted in clarity, not fear. Let’s cut through the noise together.