Go for cold-pressed

Glover recommends looking out for oils that have been ‘cold-pressed’: “This means they have been produced with no chemicals or solvents which can be present in mass-produced products you may find in the supermarkets.”

Use in moderation

“Try to avoid overusing them when frying food at home and instead add to salad dressings or roasted vegetables”. That doesn’t mean avoiding oil when frying, but more avoiding deep-frying food and diversifying your diet so that your go-to means of cooking isn’t always using a frying pan.

The point here is that it pays to keep an open mind when reading alarming nutritional information on social media. Within the murky world of nutrition, you can just scrape together enough evidence to back whatever diet or philosophy you want to push – and most scares do contain a kernel of truth, even if it’s coated with a hefty dose of misinformation.

Don’t fall for the coconut oil hype

The irony of all this anti-seed oil sentiment is that most advocates seem to push coconut oil as a ‘healthy’ alternative. Again, it has some health properties and it’s great as a plant-based substitute for butter in baking, but it’s pure saturated fat that has been shown to raise cholesterol levels more than rapeseed oil. Even the British Heart Foundation warns people to only use small amounts and opt for unsaturated oils as an ‘everyday choice instead’. If you like coconut oil, eat it… but let’s bury the whole ‘coconut oil is natural, seed oils are dangerous’ rhetoric.

Do seed oils cause inflammation? Why experts are calling time on social media misinformation