I am sitting at a diner with my father on 53rd and 1st in New York City. Scanning the laminated menu, I recognize there is almost nothing that I’d have been willing to eat a year ago. Phosphorescent eggs fried on the griddle with some neutral oil? No thanks. A bowl of yogurt? Maybe — until I remember the preservatives and the mystery stabilizers with names too difficult to pronounce.
I first heard the term “seed oils” in the summer of 2021 on a popular contrarian podcast that gained traction during the pandemic for its anti-woke commentary.
Seed oils are vegetable oils derived from plants like soybean, canola, sunflower, corn and safflower. Often found in salad dressings, and processed and fried foods, they’re used more frequently in many restaurants than olive oil or butter because of their lower costs, higher smoking points and neutral taste profile.
In their idiosyncratic vocal fry, the hosts discussed a book by a doctor who had helped to launch the seed oil-free movement in the early 2000s. The doctor claimed seed oils were among the worst things you could put in your body because they supposedly caused inflammation, interfered with cellular function and contributed to chronic illnesses.
I didn’t think much more about the podcast until a week later when I was sitting with 10 of my best friends in a dimly-lit restaurant on Henry Street for my birthday. I had ordered pancakes for dinner, but Jane, my friend sitting to my right, opted for crudite. Steam curled from the stack of buttery, fluffy pancakes on my plate, while a neatly assembled assortment of carrots, celery and peppers surrounded a bowl of hummus on hers.
I knew that Jane had joined the seed oil-free “movement” a few months earlier, and we had talked about the podcast I’d heard, but I had no idea she was taking it so seriously.
“You’re crazy, Jane,” I laughed, staring incredulously at her plate of raw vegetables.
“I’m telling you — I’ve never felt better. I’ve completely stopped getting period cramps and headaches,” she replied.
A few minutes later, another friend whispered in my ear, “Jane is looking really thin.”
After that birthday dinner, something in me began to shift. I still ate what I wanted, but not without a quiet calculation. Before each bite, a whisper crept in: What’s in this? Should I be eating it?
I slowly started to listen to that voice. Soon, Jane and I began to speak a shared language with our choices — one that signaled discipline, awareness and a subtle sense of moral high ground. Within months, I was severely limiting what I’d put into my body, but I was telling myself it was to protect my health. However, beneath my reasoning was a creeping fear. The more I heard about seed oils, additives and processed foods, the smaller my world became. My quest to “eat clean” gradually slipped into something more obsessive — something that bordered on orthorexia.
Orthorexia nervosa, a term introduced in the late 1990s, describes an extreme fixation on consuming only foods deemed pure, healthy or natural. While caring about nutrition isn’t necessarily harmful, orthorexia becomes dangerous when rigid food rules begin to dominate a person’s life.
Though not formally recognized in the DSM-5, orthorexia is receiving increased attention, especially as social media fuels disordered thinking and eating. A 2023 meta-analysis shows symptoms of orthorexia are rising across genders. For men, restrictive eating is often linked to achieving ideal physical performance. For women, it’s more commonly tied to a desire for purity — eating in a way that feels clean and natural. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have played a major role in normalizing this anxiety by cloaking misinformation in the language of “wellness.”
Courtesy of Ilana Amselem
It was disturbingly easy for me to fall into this world. It started with small, seemingly harmless choices. I bought a different brand of yogurt. I tried a new water filter. I skipped dining out. But over time, these tweaks accumulated into an identity. And the repetition, along with the sheer volume of content that continually reinforced the same messages, made it feel like the truth.
In fact, a 2017 study found that nearly half of Instagram users following health food accounts showed signs of orthorexia. TikTok and other short-form video platforms have only amplified the reach of obsessive food messaging, turning personal anxiety into a cultural script.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what changed in the years that followed. After an intense breakup left me feeling unmoored, I turned to food as a way to reclaim control. Health, however I defined it, suddenly took center stage. With so much in my life up in the air, leaving my health to chance didn’t feel like a real option. I had no clue where I was headed or who I was becoming, so I clung to something I could manage: my meals.
I mostly stopped eating in restaurants. My sisters thought that my stringent diet was bogus. I couldn’t disagree with them, because I literally did not know the facts. They would roll their eyes every time I exclaimed that a snack product was seed oil-free. I fell down a rabbit hole. I stopped touching receipts (due to forever chemicals). I bought a special water filter (to eliminate fluoride from my drinking water). I stopped drinking out of plastic bottles (to reduce my exposure to microplastics). I threw away my AirPods (bluetooth brain damage).
I worked out constantly on little food, running my body ragged trying to be the “healthiest version of myself.” I pushed my body to its limits chasing an illusion of wellness shaped by influencers who profited off my health anxiety.
My Instagram feed became a relentless procession of wellness evangelists, each pushing their own supplement and preaching that everything else was toxic. If I wanted to be truly healthy, I needed to buy in. Americans now spend an estimated $32 million per day shopping on TikTok, with more than 79% of purchases falling under health and beauty.
This booming industry includes everything from vitamins and herbal tinctures to protein powders, drink mixes and adaptogenic gummies. In 2023, the U.S. supplement market was valued at $57 billion; by 2028, it’s projected to reach $239 billion. There’s serious money to be made by stoking fear about everyday foods and then selling the so-called solution.
At Whole Foods, I’d drift through the aisles, scrutinizing labels like they were sacred texts. I lost nearly 30 pounds. And the truth is I thought I looked better. That’s the part I still struggle with. It’s hard to untangle the health anxiety from the thrill of being thin. I had never really cared before, but now that I was smaller, I liked it. My quest for purity and optimization quietly morphed into something more familiar and more insidious: a desire to keep looking the way I did.
By September of 2024, my hair was falling out. I asked my friend, a dermatologist, what could be going on.
“It’s probably just stress,” I reasoned.
“You have lost a lot of weight, Ilana,” she responded.
At a party the following month, three friends, independently, mentioned my weight loss. It was obvious they’d talked about it behind my back, and the realization stung. What were they seeing that I couldn’t?
Still, their comments felt offhanded — there were no serious confrontations and nothing that felt like true concern. Though they noticed my weight loss, my eating habits had changed so gradually that even those closest to me barely registered how intense my restrictions had become.
Then, I started grad school, and I suddenly had to explain my eating habits to strangers at lunch. It was embarrassing. Unlike my friends, these new people hadn’t been slowly desensitized to what I was doing — or not doing. I started to examine the content on my feed with a new lens, and I began to scrutinize the videos in a way I hadn’t before.
The more I saw, the more uneasy I became. I wanted to escape the algorithm, so I began reading, at first out of defensiveness — desperate to validate what I already believed. I was hoping to find studies that confirmed everything I’d absorbed from social media: that seed oils were toxic, that fluoride was dangerous, that microplastics were slowly poisoning me. But the deeper I went, the harder it became to ignore the cracks in what I’d been told.
I combed through nutrition studies, public health reports, interviews with registered dietitians, and medical reviews. I tried to trace the origins of some of the most viral claims. Who first said seed oils were inflammatory? Why were certain additives labeled as carcinogens by influencers but deemed safe by every major health organization?
I started to realize that much of what I’d internalized had no grounding in science. The sources cited in wellness content were rarely peer-reviewed studies, and when legitimate research was referenced, it was often inconclusive, outdated, or so narrowly focused that drawing such sweeping conclusions felt irresponsible. When studies were cited, they were almost always stripped of context. The most alarming or sensational detail was pulled out, inflated, and repeated for maximum engagement.
What stunned me, more than anything, was how thin the foundation was — how much of my belief system had been built on fragments, not facts. But when you’re inundated with content that insists you’re being poisoned by your food, your water, your environment — and that you’re being lied to by the organizations who are supposed to protect you — it starts to feel irresponsible not to listen.
Slowly, I started to let go. I saw a therapist and opened up about my eating habits. She helped me see that demonizing entire food groups was rarely productive and pushed me to eat foods I had previously deemed “unhealthy.” I ate out more. I let myself have a French fry now and then. However, it took time and significant energy to loosen the grip, and I’m still not entirely free.
I can count on one hand the number of receipts I’ve touched in the past several years. I still hesitate before eating something greasy, wondering what long-term damage it might do. But I take a breath, acknowledge the thought, and try not to let it lead or linger. I’ve blocked the influencers I used to idolize and stopped scanning every ingredient list I encounter.
It’s not easy. Even now I still worry about what I’m putting in or near my body. But I’m trying to base my actions on science, not social media.
As I sit here in this diner, my legs sticking to the vinyl seat, the waitress drops off our food. I stare at the overcooked scrambled eggs, topped with square slices of glossy, plastic-looking American cheese. This cannot be healthy, I think while taking a bite.
Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the identity of individuals mentioned in this essay.
Ilana Amselem is a graduate student and journalist who often writes about art, architecture and pop culture.
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