What are seed oils? The full list, and the oils that aren't

Seed oils are cooking oils taken from the seed of a plant — soybean, canola, sunflower, corn, cottonseed, safflower, grapeseed, rice bran, peanut and flaxseed are the usual ten. Olive, avocado and palm oil come from the flesh of a fruit instead. No regulator defines the term, so each oil below is classified against named sources.

Two questions hide behind the phrase. One is botanical: does the oil come from a seed? The other is about usage: is it one of the oils people mean when they say they avoid seed oils? For most oils the answers agree. They split on a few — coconut, palm kernel and, at the edges, avocado.

Every common cooking oil, classified

The table applies both tests to sixteen oils. The middle column names the part of the plant the oil comes from, taken from the sources listed at the foot of this page; the last column records whether the Seed Oil Free Alliance, a private certifier, names the oil in its list.

The alliance’s own definition is broader than the botanical one: it counts any oil made from the seed or nut of a plant. That is why the two columns agree on almost every row and differ only where a kernel or a mixed extraction blurs the line.

Is avocado oil a seed oil?

Avocado oil is not a seed oil in the usual sense. The extraction methods reviewed in the scientific literature work from the pulp, and cold pressing recovers oil only from the pulp’s cells; the Seed Oil Free Alliance groups avocado with the fruit oils. There is one wrinkle worth knowing before treating that as final.

Mexico’s national standard, quoted in the same review, defines crude avocado oil as obtained by physical extraction of the pulp and the seed of the fruit. So a bottle labelled avocado oil is a fruit oil by default, but the botanical answer can shift with how a producer runs the press, and the name on the bottle does not say which parts went in.

Is olive oil a seed oil?

Olive oil is not a seed oil. EU law defines virgin olive oils as oils obtained from the fruit of the olive tree solely by mechanical or other physical means, and the Seed Oil Free Alliance lists olive oil among the fruit oils. Both tests agree, which makes olive oil the clearest no on this page.

Is sunflower oil a seed oil?

Sunflower oil is a seed oil. It is pressed or extracted from sunflower seed, which the USDA counts among the major US oilseed crops, and it is one of the ten oils the Seed Oil Free Alliance names. High oleic sunflower oil comes from sunflower seed too, so the classification does not change when that wording appears on a label.

Is palm oil a seed oil?

Palm oil is not a seed oil, but palm kernel oil is. The oil palm yields two oils from two parts of the same fruit: palm oil from the mesocarp, the fruit flesh, and palm kernel oil from the endosperm inside the seed. Both tissues are unusually oily — approximately 85% and 50% of dry mass respectively, according to a 2013 study of the plant.

A US ingredient list has to declare each oil by its specific name, so palm oil and palm kernel oil should appear as separate entries. The ultra-processed food checker on this site flags both as refined oils — a statement about processing, not an answer to the seed question.

Is peanut oil a seed oil?

Peanut oil is a seed oil. The USDA lists peanuts among the major US oilseed crops, alongside soybeans, cottonseed, sunflower seed, canola and rapeseed, and the Seed Oil Free Alliance names peanut oil among its ten most common seed oils. On both tests the answer is the same.

Is canola oil a seed oil?

Canola oil is a seed oil. US federal rules define it as low erucic acid rapeseed oil: the fully refined, bleached and deodorized edible oil from varieties of Brassica napus or B. campestris that produce oil-bearing seeds, with erucic acid no more than 2% of the fatty acids. On a label, rapeseed oil and canola oil point to the same crop; canola names the low erucic acid varieties.

Is soybean oil a seed oil?

Soybean oil is a seed oil, and soybeans dominate the American oilseed harvest. The USDA puts them at about 90% of US oilseed production, and the Seed Oil Free Alliance lists soybean oil first among its ten.

Is vegetable oil a seed oil?

Vegetable oil is usually one or more seed oils, but the phrase alone does not say which. Under 21 CFR 101.4(b)(14), a US label may call a blend vegetable oil only if the specific oils follow in parentheses — and it may list oils that are only sometimes used, joined by “and/or” or introduced with “contains one or more of the following”.

A parenthesis that reads soybean and/or canola oil is a list of candidates. The label has told you which oils might be in the pack, not which one is.

The rule tightens when fats and oils are the main ingredient: then no oil may be listed unless it is actually present. The Seed Oil Free Alliance makes the same point from the other side — fruit oils and seed oils can both be sold under the name vegetable oil.

Is coconut oil a seed oil?

Coconut oil sits outside the usual seed oil list. It is obtained from the kernel of the coconut, the white flesh inside the shell, and the Seed Oil Free Alliance groups it with olive, avocado and palm as a fruit oil. Whether a coconut kernel counts as a seed is a botanical argument the common list does not settle, so the plain answer is: not on the list.

How seed oils are extracted and refined

Two documents show how seed oils are commonly produced, and neither says anything about health. US rules define canola oil as fully refined, bleached and deodorized. EU law lists hexane as an extraction solvent permitted for the production or fractionation of fats and oils, with a maximum residue limit in the finished oil.

Corn oil adds a step before any of that: the germ is separated from the kernel during wet milling and sent on to oil mills. None of these processes is printed on most labels. Expeller-pressed and cold-pressed are claims a manufacturer chooses to make, and their absence does not show that a solvent was used.

How to spot seed oils on an ingredient label

1. Step 1

   Read every oil by name

   US rules require each fat or oil to be declared by its specific name, so soybean, canola and sunflower oil appear as written. Compare each one against the table above.

2. Step 2

   Open the vegetable oil parenthesis

   Vegetable oil must be followed by the oils it contains. Treat and/or as a list of possibilities rather than a statement of what is inside.

3. Step 3

   Watch for one or more of the following

   This phrase lists oils a manufacturer may use from batch to batch. Every oil after it is a candidate, and the package will not say which one this batch used.

4. Step 4

   Paste the list into a checker

   The ultra-processed food checker on this site flags refined oils among its 74 markers, including the label spellings of each oil, and reports any name it cannot read.

What this list does not tell you

This page classifies oils; it does not rate them. It takes no position on whether seed oils are good or bad for you, and a registered dietitian or clinician is the right person to weigh any oil against a whole diet. The rules this site follows for food claims are set out in our food methodology.

If the job is finding seed oils in a shop rather than understanding the term, seed oil scanner apps compared covers the tools that do it. More ingredient and additive guides sit in the food additives hub.