Is "Seed Oil" a Thing?

 Four years ago I stopped eating bread and cereal. My blood sugar was out of control, my A1C was up to 11 and my doctor was threatening to put me on insulin. I had tried switching to whole grains. I had tried increasing veggies (I'm not a great meat eater). I had ditched sugar years before. 

One slice of healthy grain seed bread sent me crashing on the couch. I had been doing that for awhile. Cereal....sleep, bread....sleep. I already knew that beans and potatoes raised my glucose too high, but I never tested after cereal or bread. So I pried my sleepy eyes open and tested, after white bread, after healthy bread, after cereal. Same results, in the 300's. I was literally "passing out" from high blood sugar.

A friend pointed me to a facebook group that practices a way of eating to control blood sugar. No bread, no cereal, no potatoes or beans, no corn, (no starchy vegetables), no grains of any type, no sugar, no hidden sugar (milk, fruit, many processed foods), and no seed oil.

Seed oil....what? Is this a "thing?" What is it and why is it supposed to be different than other oils? The short answer is that the "bad" oils are manufactured in a way that cause inflammation in the body. The "good oils" don't cause inflammation. Inflammation in the body is a huge driver of disease. There is a long-winded explanation for this that I would need to look up and create a whole post to explain it. Here is a picture of the list.

I use olive oil and butter, and should add tallow. I am certain that fast food is not fried in expensive "good" fats.  

From the Internet:

"Commercially, the most common oils used for deep-frying are canola oil, soybean oil, and refined peanut oil 

due to their high smoke points and neutral taste."

$>{400}^{\circ }\text{F}$, neutral flavors, and cost-effectiveness. These refined vegetable oils are chosen for their stability at high temperatures, allowing for consistent, high-volume cooking without ruining the food's taste."

Cheese curds, more specifically, Kwik Trip cheese curds are OH SO YUMMY. My hubby would buy them and offer some to me. I would eat one. Then two. Eventually he would buy two packs, one for him, one for me. Life was good, or so it seemed.

Do you see where I'm going with this? My labs are now out of whack. My cholesterol as a whole, and my Triglycerides.

Triglycerides 298 (up from 251 in November 2025)

HDL (good cholesterol) 51 (down from 53 in November 2025)

CHOL/HDL Ratio 5.5 (up from 5.1) Should be below 4.5 

I gave up cheese curds the day my labs came back and my Triglycerides were even higher. Not from the cheese, from the coating and the seed oil. 

Anyway, my doctor put me on a statin. I usually have bad reactions to statins. The last one I took for any length of time was Rosuvastatin. I stopped when I was in so much pain I could hardly walk. This time I'm taking Pravastatin. I started on Friday. By Tuesday night my stomach hurt and I felt like I needed to throw up, almost. I hate throwing up, so I didn't. I skipped my pill last night. I feel better today. I will try again, even though I don't agree with statin therapy, I do agree that my numbers are off far enough that I need to take it, for now.

That's enough ramblings about food for tonight. I have more to write about later.

Catching Up

 I haven't been writing much so I'm not sure where to begin. January came and went. We had some awful cold weather, down to minus 22 on January 23rd. The apartment got freaking cold, down to 63 degrees, which is way too cold for me. The radiators were barely warm. I called maintenance and he said turn the thermostat up as far as it would go, which is 90 degrees. Not much help, so we bought a little space heater. When I plugged it in I realized a massive amount of cold air was coming inside through the air conditioner (through the wall A/C), which was over my head where I plugged in the space heater. We then went to ACE Hardware and bought an outside cover and an inside cover. They made a huge difference! The good thing about the apartment being so cold is a week or two later all my orchids began to spike, all but one. In case you were wondering, we keep the apartment about 72. My hubby likes it warm.

We didn't let the cold slow down our weekend adventures. We like to stop at antique stores and drive home on country roads, often stopping in at some random little town we had not seen before. 

January 5 - Redgranite. Stopped for coffee and then drove to the former quarry. Will visit in spring/summer for sure!

Love the light bulbs!

Cute coffee shop, Dauntless Soul Brew Co.

ACE Hardware actually has this light bulb

Redgranite quarry. The stones are dark red, but the light was fading so you can't tell

January 9 - drove down some of the roads through the White River wilderness area. My pictures are tagged "Berlin". One of the roads was icy. Hubby wanted to test the SUV. It drove perfectly.

The icy road

me...

Jan 10 - Fond du Lac. Stopped to eat at a supper club. Great food! Would like to go back sometime. Red Cabin at Green Acres, W2701 Fourth Street Road, Co Rd T, Fond du Lac.

Jan 11 - Neshkoro. Stopped by the river.

January 25 - Briggsville and Wisconsin Dells.

Briggsville. We had a cottage a few miles out of town. We used to go to Foxy's!

Wisconsin Dells

The dark entrance to the forest! Creepy! I held hubby's hand.

Inside wasn't so bad. LOL

Walking back to the parking lot, pine trees and blue sky.

January 31 - Pardeeville, Baraboo, Packwaukee. We stopped at a big antique store in Pardeeville, then went to the antique mall in Baraboo. On the way home we stopped at Packwaukee, because we never went there before. There were houses all along the Buffalo River so we followed the signs to the public access, which is a series of piers along a roadway that crosses the lake.

We parked on the side next to a pier.

The moon

Named after Winnebago Chief Packwaukee. Packwaukee is Ojibwa, meaning shallow land.

Heading home I suddenly yelled, "THERE'S A BALD EAGLE SITTING IN THE FIELD!!!" Hubby stops the car. You scared me! "I'm sorry but there's a BALD EAGLE sitting in the field!!!" He backs up. I took a picture as it was flying away.

I think that's enough stories for tonight.