The Nutrition Pundit

  Over the past few years, “seed oils” have been promoted from boring pantry staples to one of the loudest villains in popular nutrition. A list sometimes called the “hateful eight” (canola/rapeseed, corn, cottonseed, soybean, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and rice bran) gets blamed for obesity, chronic inflammation, and heart disease. A widely cited peer-reviewed version of the argument is the “oxidized linoleic acid hypothesis” of DiNicolantonio and O’Keefe, which casts omega-6 vegetable oils as a primary driver of coronary heart disease. 12 Restaurants advertise “no seed oils, fried in beef tallow.” Influencers reach for the metabolic equivalent of a smoking gun. The peer-reviewed evidence tells a much more boring story. When these oils replace saturated fats in the diet, the bulk of the evidence points to lower LDL cholesterol, lower cardiovascular risk, and no measurable rise in inflammation. A 2026 scoping review by Nagra and colleagues, the most comprehens...

At the 4- or 6-month checkup, most pediatricians bring up iron. Term infants are born with iron stores accumulated mostly during the third trimester, and for exclusively breastfed babies those stores typically cover the first ~4 months before dietary iron becomes critical for hemoglobin synthesis and brain development. 1 The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 1 mg/kg/day of supplemental iron for exclusively breastfed term infants starting at 4 months, continuing until iron-rich complementary foods are established. 2 Liquid iron is also routinely prescribed in pregnancy, post-partum, malabsorption, and to anyone who can’t swallow tablets. What rarely fits into a 10-minute appointment is why two bottles labelled “iron drops” can behave so differently. One causes constipation and dark stools, another doesn’t. One is the standard prescription locally, another is unheard of two countries over. One child tolerates the dose, a sibling refuses it outright. The answe...