Answers
Straight answers, with the evidence attached
One question per page, answered in the first paragraph. Where the science is contested we say so and give both positions, because a scanner that overstates its case is not worth trusting.
What are seed oils?Seed oils are cooking oils extracted from plant seeds — canola, soybean, sunflower, safflower, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed and rice bran — and refined through solvent extraction, bleaching and deodorising. They are high in omega-6 linoleic acid. Generic 'vegetable oil' on a label is almost always a blend of these. Palm oil comes from fruit, not seed, and is a separate category.Are seed oils bad for you?The evidence is contested. Critics argue that refined seed oils supply far more omega-6 linoleic acid than humans historically ate and that high-heat refining produces oxidation products. Major nutrition bodies, including the American Heart Association, hold that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated oils lowers cardiovascular risk. No consensus exists, and Olive Detective does not claim one.How do you check if a product has seed oils?Scan the barcode with a food scanner app, which reads the parsed ingredient list and flags every seed oil by name in about a second. Reading the label manually works too, but you have to know all the aliases — rapeseed, colza, LEAR oil and generic 'vegetable oil' are all canola or a blend of seed oils.What is the best app to scan food for seed oils?A seed-oil scanner app should do four things: match a barcode against a database of at least two million products, detect every seed-oil alias including foreign-language labels, read the ingredients panel by camera when the barcode is missing, and show you how its score was calculated rather than returning an unexplained number.What is a good alternative to Yuka?Yuka scores food on nutrition (60%), additives (30%) and organic status (10%), and scans cosmetics too. The main alternatives are Olive Detective, which adds seed-oil detection, pet-food scanning and personalised scoring, and the free Open Food Facts app, which shows raw ingredient data without a proprietary score.What is the best food scanner app?There is no single best food scanner app; the right one depends on what you want flagged. Yuka is free and the best-known general nutrition scanner. Fig fits strict diets and allergies. Bobby Approved is a free yes-or-no ingredient checker. Olive Detective adds seed-oil detection, pet food and a personalised score. Open Food Facts is free and open-source.How is a food health score calculated?Olive Detective's 0–100 score is deterministic: nutrition quality per 100g carries the most weight, then additive load, then NOVA processing level, with a small organic bonus. Whole natural foods are not penalised for the salt or fat they inherently contain. The same product always returns the same score, and every deduction is shown with its reason.Which cosmetic ingredients should you avoid in pregnancy?The ingredients most commonly avoided during pregnancy are retinoids (retinol, tretinoin, retinyl palmitate), hydroquinone, formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, phthalates, thioglycolates in chemical straighteners, and high-dose salicylic acid peels. This is precautionary guidance based on EU CosIng and SCCS positions, not medical advice — ask your midwife or doctor about your own products.Which pet food ingredients are toxic to dogs and cats?The ingredients treated as genuinely toxic in pet food are xylitol (dangerous to dogs), onion and garlic in any allium form, propylene glycol in cat food specifically, and ethoxyquin as a preservative. Separately, by-products, added sugar, artificial dyes and BHA/BHT are quality concerns rather than toxins. Species matters: some are dangerous to cats but not dogs.How do you scan food that has no barcode?Point the camera at the ingredients panel instead of the barcode. Olive Detective reads the printed ingredient list with on-device text recognition and runs the same seed-oil, additive and allergen detection against it. Loose produce needs no scan at all — whole, unprocessed food scores well by definition — and restaurant food is covered by the seed-oil-free dining map.What is the NOVA classification?NOVA is a food classification system that sorts food by degree of processing into four groups: unprocessed or minimally processed (group 1), processed culinary ingredients (group 2), processed foods (group 3), and ultra-processed foods (group 4). It ignores nutrients entirely and asks only what was done to the food industrially.What are category-level contaminant flags?A category-level contaminant flag reports that a food category is monitored by regulators for a specific contaminant — cadmium in cocoa, methylmercury in large fish, inorganic arsenic in rice. It is anchored to FDA monitoring programmes and applies to the category, never to the individual product in your hand, which no app has tested.Which food additives should you avoid?The most-contested food additives are the artificial azo colours (tartrazine E102, sunset yellow E110, allura red E129), sodium nitrite (E250) in cured meat, BHA (E320), and the artificial sweeteners aspartame (E951) and acesulfame-K (E950). All are legally approved; the disagreement is over long-term exposure, not acute safety.Is canola oil bad for you?The evidence is contested. Controlled trials consistently show canola oil lowers LDL cholesterol compared with butter or lard, and major health bodies treat it as a heart-healthy fat. Critics object to how it is refined — hexane extraction, bleaching, deodorising — and to omega-6 intake generally. Olive Detective flags canola because many users choose to avoid it, not because a health harm is established.Is Red Dye 40 bad for you?Red Dye 40 (Allura Red AC, E129) is approved in the US and the EU, but Europe requires foods containing it to carry a warning that it 'may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children'. That label follows a 2007 UK trial linking dye mixtures to hyperactivity. The finding is about behaviour in children, not cancer, and its strength is still debated.What foods are ultra-processed?Ultra-processed foods are NOVA group 4: industrial formulations containing ingredients not found in a domestic kitchen. The categories are soft drinks, packaged snacks, confectionery, mass-produced bread, reconstituted meat products, instant noodles and soups, ready meals, sweetened breakfast cereals, flavoured yoghurts and dairy drinks, and most meat and dairy substitutes.How do you read a food label?Read the ingredient list before the nutrition panel. Ingredients are listed by weight, heaviest first, so the first three tell you what the product mostly is. Then check the serving size before any nutrition number, because per-serving figures are only comparable once you know the serving. Front-of-pack claims are marketing and are regulated separately from both.Is peanut oil a seed oil?Botanically, no. A peanut is a legume, and peanut oil is pressed from a legume rather than a seed, which is why it is absent from the canonical seed-oil list. Nutritionally the distinction is weaker than it sounds: refined peanut oil is roughly a third linoleic acid, so the omega-6 argument applies to it, just less than it does to sunflower or safflower.Is avocado oil a seed oil?No. Avocado oil is pressed from the pulp of the avocado fruit, not from its stone, which places it with olive oil rather than with canola or sunflower. It is roughly 65-70% oleic acid and about 12% linoleic acid. The live issue with avocado oil is not botany but authenticity: independent testing has repeatedly found bottles diluted with cheaper oils.Is olive oil a seed oil?No. Olive oil is pressed from the flesh of the olive fruit, not from its pit, and extra virgin olive oil is mechanically pressed with no solvent or heat refining — the opposite of how seed oils are made. It is about 73% oleic acid and 10% linoleic. One exception sits on the same shelf: olive pomace oil is solvent-extracted from the leftover pulp.Is sesame oil a seed oil?Yes, botanically. Sesame oil is pressed from the seeds of Sesamum indicum and is about 41% linoleic acid, which is higher than peanut or olive oil. It is nonetheless absent from most seed-oil avoid-lists, because it is usually sold unrefined or toasted and used by the teaspoon as a finishing oil rather than as a frying medium.Is coconut oil a seed oil?No. Coconut oil is pressed from the white flesh of the coconut, the fruit of a palm, so it is not a seed oil and it is very low in omega-6 — about 2% linoleic acid. It carries a separate and unrelated controversy: it is roughly 80-90% saturated fat, and heart associations advise limiting it while others dispute that reading.Is sunflower oil a seed oil?Yes. Sunflower oil is pressed from the seeds of Helianthus annuus, which makes it a seed oil under every definition the term is used with — botanical, industrial and dietary. What the name does not tell you is the cultivar: conventional sunflower oil is roughly 68% linoleic acid, while high-oleic sunflower oil is around 80% oleic and closer to olive oil in composition.Is palm oil a seed oil?No. Palm oil is pressed from the pulp of the oil palm fruit, which puts it in the same botanical group as olive and avocado oil rather than with the seed oils. Palm kernel oil is the exception: it comes from the seed inside that fruit, so it is a seed oil, and it is a substantially different fat — around 80% saturated, mostly lauric acid.Is canola oil a seed oil?Yes. Canola is a rapeseed cultivar bred in Canada in the 1970s to remove erucic acid, and canola oil is pressed from its seeds — a seed oil by every definition. Its composition is not what its reputation suggests: roughly 61% oleic acid, 19% linoleic and 9% alpha-linolenic, which is the lowest omega-6 share of the common seed oils.Is soybean oil a seed oil?Yes, by universal convention. A soybean is botanically a legume seed, and soybean oil is pressed from it — the same category peanut oil belongs to, yet soybean oil appears on every seed-oil list while peanut oil usually does not. Composition is the likely reason: soybean oil is roughly 51% linoleic acid, against peanut oil's 32%.Is vegetable oil a seed oil?In practice, yes. 'Vegetable oil' is a commercial label rather than a plant, and in United States retail it is usually 100% soybean oil or a soybean and canola blend — both seed oils. The term is legally permitted to cover a range of plant oils, which is precisely why it tells you so little about what is in the bottle.Is safflower oil a seed oil?Yes. Safflower oil is pressed from the seeds of Carthamus tinctorius, a thistle-like plant, which makes it a seed oil under every definition. Conventional safflower oil is roughly 75% linoleic acid — among the highest of any culinary oil — while the high-oleic cultivar sold under the same two words is roughly 75% oleic instead.Is corn oil a seed oil?Yes. Corn oil is extracted from the germ — the embryo of the corn kernel — and appears on every seed-oil list. Botanical pedantry does not rescue it: a corn kernel is a caryopsis, a fruit whose wall is fused to the single seed inside, so pressing the germ is pressing a seed. Corn oil is roughly 54% linoleic acid.Is rice bran oil a seed oil?Yes. Rice bran oil is extracted from the bran and germ removed when brown rice is milled white, and both are parts of the seed, so it belongs in the seed-oil category. Its composition is milder than the category average: roughly 33% linoleic acid and 40% oleic, with a high smoke point that makes it popular for frying.Is grapeseed oil a seed oil?Yes, unambiguously — the seed is in the name. Grapeseed oil is extracted from the seeds separated from grape pomace after winemaking, making it a by-product rather than a dedicated crop. It also carries roughly 70% linoleic acid, one of the highest shares of any culinary oil, higher than conventional sunflower.Is sucralose bad for you?Regulators in the US and EU have approved sucralose and reaffirmed that approval, and most of an ingested dose passes through unabsorbed. Three questions remain genuinely open rather than settled: what heating it above roughly 120°C produces, a 2023 finding on the impurity sucralose-6-acetate, and its effect on gut bacteria. None of that establishes harm at ordinary intakes.What is maltodextrin?Maltodextrin is a carbohydrate made by partially breaking down starch, usually from corn, rice, potato, tapioca or wheat. Its chains are longer than a sugar molecule, so US labelling does not count it toward total sugars, yet it is rapidly digested and commonly measured with a glycemic index at or above that of table sugar.Is titanium dioxide safe in food?Regulators disagree, and that disagreement is the honest answer. EFSA concluded in 2021 that titanium dioxide could no longer be considered safe as a food additive because genotoxicity could not be ruled out, and the EU ban took effect in 2022. The US FDA still permits it as a colour additive, having not reached the same conclusion from the same data.Is carrageenan bad for you?The evidence most often cited against carrageenan used degraded carrageenan, also called poligeenan, which is not permitted in food and is used in animal studies specifically because it induces inflammation. Food-grade carrageenan is a different, higher molecular weight substance, and the honest position on it is unresolved rather than damning.What fast food restaurants use beef tallow?On our map of venues reported to cook without seed oils, four chains account for most of the beef-tallow locations: Buffalo Wild Wings at 789 locations, Outback Steakhouse at 528, Steak n Shake at 388, and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen at 39. Those figures describe reports from contributors, not corporate confirmations, and chains change suppliers.What oil does Five Guys use?Five Guys fries in peanut oil, which the chain states openly and which is why free peanuts sit in the lobby. On our restaurant map, 1,212 Five Guys locations are listed for that reason — the single largest block of any brand, and all of them in the peanut-oil group rather than the beef-tallow one.Does Buffalo Wild Wings use seed oils?789 Buffalo Wild Wings locations appear on our seed-oil-free map as frying in beef tallow, the largest block of any chain. That covers the fryer only. Wing sauces and dressings are formulated products bought in by the case, and soybean or canola oil is a common base for them regardless of what the fryer holds.
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