Cut your seed oil in half this January
You don't have to quit cold turkey. Over four weeks, one easy change at a time, you can cut your seed oil in half. First you find out where it comes from. Then you slow it down.
New to seed oils? Start with what they are, then come back.
Why half, not zero
Going to zero overnight sounds clean and simple, right up until you're at a restaurant, a friend's kitchen or the snack aisle. Seed oil is in most restaurant fryers and in a lot of packaged snacks, dressings and sauces, so staying perfect is hard. Half is a number you can actually hold, and it's a real change.
Most of your seed oil probably comes from a short list: restaurant fryers, packaged snacks, dressings and sauces, and the cooking oil in your own kitchen. That's good news, because it means you don't have to fix everything. Change the few that matter most and half is a realistic goal.
The 4 week plan
One focus a week. Each week adds one change and keeps the last one going, so the changes stack up.
Week 1 Find your top sources
Don't change anything yet. For one normal week, log what you eat: restaurants, groceries and home cooking. The app turns each meal into grams of seed oil and fills your daily ring as you go.
At the end of the week, your Trends and weekly recap show how much came from eating out versus home, and which days ran highest. That's your usual, the number you're about to cut in half.
Week 2 Fix your usual restaurant order
Pick the place you eat at most and open its report card. You'll see the oil its kitchen cooks in, a grade from A to F, and the cleanest real order on the menu. The app has report cards for 2,500+ restaurant chains.
Then build your usual order in the app and change one thing: skip the mayo, pick a different side, drop the sauce. Watch the grams change. You keep the restaurant, you just tweak the order.
Week 3 Swap your kitchen oils
Now the pan at home. Swap the oil you cook with for butter, olive oil, avocado oil or tallow. None of those are seed oils. Start with whichever oil you reach for most.
Then peek at the label on your mayo and dressings. If it says "vegetable oil", that usually means soybean or canola. The swaps guide shows what to reach for instead.
Week 4 Shop smarter
Last week is the grocery store. Look up where you shop and see seed-oil-free picks at Walmart, Costco, Trader Joe's and more, one category at a time.
In the aisle, scan a barcode with the app and it reads the label for you. Labels change, so give the ingredients a quick look before you buy.
Half by February: do it in the app
Half by February is the app's January challenge. It handles the math so you can just follow the plan.
- A daily ring that fills as you log, so you always know where you stand today.
- A goal that steps down for you. Tap "Start my plan" and your goal drops a little each week until it reaches half of where you started.
- The January Reset 2027 badge for logging 20 days in January at or under half your usual.
The challenge card is on the Today screen from December 26 through January 31.
Download for iPhone Get it on Google Play
Free to download. Want the full tour first? See what the app does.
Common questions
Do I have to quit seed oils completely?
No. This plan is about cutting down, not quitting. Half is big enough to matter and small enough to keep. If you want to go lower later, you can always set a new goal.
What counts as a seed oil?
Seed oils are cooking oils pressed from seeds and refined: canola (rapeseed), soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, grapeseed and rice bran oil. On a label, "vegetable oil" usually means soybean or canola, and margarine and shortening are usually made from seed oils too. Olive, avocado and coconut oil come from fruit, and butter, ghee and tallow are animal fats, so none of those count. See the full seed oils list.
How do I know how much seed oil I eat?
You can't really eyeball it, because so much of it hides in fryers and sauces. The app does the math. It knows what oil each chain cooks in and how many grams of seed oil are in each menu item (measured as polyunsaturated fat, or PUFA), and the barcode scanner reads the label on packaged food. Log a normal week and you'll see your usual. The grams are worked out from each chain's own published nutrition and disclosed cooking oil, and an estimate is always labeled as one. See how the numbers work.
Does it cost anything?
The tracker is free. You can download Seed Oil Tracker for free, and logging your meals, the restaurant report cards, the order builder, the barcode scanner and your goal plan all stay free. Premium is optional. It adds a few extras and helps support the project.
More guides
Seed Oil Tracker doesn't tell you what to eat. It shows you the grams so you can pick your own number. Curious about the research? Read the studies on both sides.