Sunflower Oil: Is It Bad for You? Regular vs. High-Oleic

Dr. Josh Axe · Free quiz

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Sunflower oil starts as the striped seeds packed into the big golden face of a sunflower. Once it's pressed, refined and deodorized, it pours out pale gold, with almost no smell or taste of its own.4 That light, neutral oil turns up in salad dressings, chips and restaurant fryers as well as on the grocery shelf.9

What's inside the bottle depends on which sunflower the seeds came from. Regular sunflower oil is about two-thirds linoleic acid, an omega-6 fat with two fragile double bonds, while high-oleic sunflower oil, pressed from sunflowers bred for it, is mostly oleic acid, the steadier fat that dominates olive oil.124 That one difference shapes how the oil handles a hot pan.

Through the '70s, '80s and '90s, Americans were sold the idea that seed oils like this one were heart-healthy. I remember when my mom tried to get my dad to switch over to margarine and more seed oils. My dad absolutely refused and said he was going to keep eating butter.9

Sunflower oil isn't automatically toxic, but regular refined sunflower oil shouldn't be your everyday fat. My list of refined seed oils to limit runs roughly from most to least: cottonseed, corn, soybean, regular sunflower and safflower, grapeseed, rice bran and peanut, then canola. Regular sunflower and safflower oil are among the highest in polyunsaturated fat, so they're among the most likely to oxidize when heated.4 Build your kitchen on extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil, and keep high-oleic sunflower oil as an acceptable backup.4

Did you know?

• High-oleic sunflower oil comes from sunflowers bred for a different fat profile, and it originated in Russia in the mid-1970s.10

• Refining strips nearly all the protein out of sunflower oil: in one lab study, protein in extracts taken from the oil fell from 13.6 to 0.22 micrograms per milliliter across the refining steps.8

• Potato chip servings bought from fast-food restaurants, fried in whatever oil each restaurant used, carried 10 to 25 parts per million of each class of frying aldehyde the researchers measured.7

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What is sunflower oil?

The sunflower seeds page walks through how the oil is made, step by step, and compares the whole seed with the oil.

Is sunflower oil a seed oil?

Yes. Sunflower oil is one of the common refined seed oils, along with soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, safflower oil, grapeseed oil and rice bran oil.4 How an oil is processed matters more than the word "seed." Cold-pressed flaxseed oil, sesame oil and black seed oil are seed oils too, but used unrefined, raw or at low heat, they're a different category, best saved for finishing dishes.4 Sunflower oil isn't on that list. A cold-pressed bottle is less processed, yet regular sunflower oil is still mostly linoleic acid, the fragile fat that sets it apart.1

Sunflower lecithin is a separate product, a phospholipid-rich extract separated from sunflower oil and used in small amounts. I count it a good soy-free source of phospholipids and choline, behind fatty fish, egg yolks, liver and fish roe.

Sunflower oil nutrition facts

Regular (high-linoleic) and high-oleic sunflower oil per tablespoon. Source: USDA FoodData Central, FDC IDs 171025 and 172338; per-tablespoon values calculated at USDA's tablespoon weights for each record (13.6 g and 14 g); % Daily Value uses FDA reference values.123

Vitamin E is the oil's main nutritional strength, at 41.1 mg per 100 grams in both USDA records.12 Its weak spot is balance. USDA's record for regular sunflower oil lists no omega-3 at all, so every tablespoon tips your omega-6 to omega-3 balance further toward omega-6.1 Omega-3 foods are the way to even it out.

Regular vs. high-oleic sunflower oil: what's the difference?

Fat per 100 grams of oil, from USDA FoodData Central records 171025 (regular, "linoleic, approx. 65%"), 172357 (mid-oleic, filed with USDA's industrial oils) and 172338 (high-oleic, "70% and over").1112

Is high-oleic sunflower oil healthy?

It's the better version of sunflower oil. With most of its fat as oleic acid, it resists heat and oxidation better than the regular kind.4 In a home-frying study, researchers cooked frozen foods 20 times over 10 days in the same oil without topping it up. Regular sunflower oil formed significantly more cyclic fatty acid monomers, a class of potentially toxic breakdown products, with every frying than high-oleic sunflower oil, and the authors concluded that frying with the high-oleic oil was the better choice.12

The cholesterol research points the same way. Across 26 randomized trials, diets built on high-oleic oils, mostly olive oil and high-oleic seed oils such as sunflower, canola and safflower, lowered LDL cholesterol by about 5 mg/dL (0.13 mmol/L) compared with diets lower in oleic acid.13 The FDA allows oils that are at least 70% oleic acid, high-oleic sunflower oil among them, to carry a qualified health claim: supportive but not conclusive evidence suggests that about 1½ tablespoons (20 grams) a day, in place of fats higher in saturated fat and without adding calories, may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.1014

Being better than regular sunflower oil is a low bar, though. High-oleic oils are still typically refined and stripped of many of the antioxidants you'd get from a cold-pressed oil, and they don't carry the human-research track record of extra virgin olive oil.4 So keep extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil as your daily fats, and save high-oleic sunflower oil for the times you need a neutral oil and nothing better is on hand. Use it fresh.

What is sunflower oil good for?

Sunflower oil benefits, ranked by evidence

Sunflower oil's best-supported benefits, strongest first, are vitamin E and a lower LDL than butter, followed by steadier liver fat during overeating, no rise in inflammation markers and a healthier skin barrier.

Is sunflower oil bad for you?

Sunflower oil sits in the middle of the seed-oil debate. Here's where I agree with the critics, and where they overreach.4

Where I agree with the critics

• It's heavily refined: The refining steps strip out many of the antioxidants a cold-pressed oil keeps, and leave an oil primed to break down further when it's heated again.4
• It breaks down under heat: Its fragile fat forms aldehydes, including 4-HNE, when it's heated, especially when the same oil is reused. The heat section below has the numbers.47
• It's everywhere in processed food: Refined seed oils are the signature fat of fried and ultra-processed foods.4
• It tilts the omega balance: As seed oils spread through the food supply over the 20th century, Americans' omega-6 intake climbed while omega-3 stayed flat. Our ancestors likely ate omega-6 and omega-3 in roughly a 1:1 to 4:1 ratio, and modern Western diets run closer to 15:1 or 20:1.4
• The heart benefit is shakier than it looks: Swapping saturated fat for these oils lowers LDL on paper. When researchers recovered the data from two randomized controlled trials, which used safflower oil (the Sydney Diet Heart Study, 458 men after a heart event) and corn oil (the Minnesota Coronary Experiment, 9,423 people), the extra linoleic acid didn't lower deaths. In Minnesota, the corn-oil diet cut serum cholesterol by 13.8% with no survival benefit, and in Sydney, 17.6% of the men on safflower oil died during the study against 11.8% of the comparison group.2425 Many of the trials compare seed oils with conventional butter, and some lump olive oil in with them.4

The modern problem is as much too little omega-3 as too much omega-6.4 In my episode on seed oils, I said it this way: "Generally, omega-6 fats can be very healthy if you're getting enough omega-3s from wild-caught fish oil, flax and chia, walnuts and seaweed."9 Put your effort there: wild salmon, sardines, walnuts, chia seeds and ground flaxseed are easy places to start.

Where the critics get out over their skis

Controlled trials don't support the claim that linoleic acid, sunflower oil's main fat, is inflammatory in itself. In a systematic review of 15 randomized trials in healthy people, adding linoleic acid to the diet didn't significantly raise CRP, fibrinogen, cytokines or other blood markers of inflammation in any of them.16 Linoleic acid from whole foods like nuts and seeds isn't something to fear, and the slogan that omega-6 is inflammatory is too simple.4

Large population studies, which follow what people eat over years, point the same way. In cohort studies following 811,069 people, those who ate the most linoleic acid, from all foods rather than sunflower oil alone, had a 13% lower risk of dying during follow-up than those who ate the least.26 In a pooled analysis of 39,740 adults from 20 cohorts, those with the highest blood and tissue levels of linoleic acid were about 35% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes; two of its authors received research grants from a large food company for the work.27

Overeating trials from Sweden show that the kind of fat matters when you eat more than you need. In the larger one, 61 adults with overweight or obesity added muffins baked with either refined sunflower oil or refined palm oil to their usual diet for 8 weeks, about 40 grams of oil a day, adjusted so both groups gained weight, and neither the people nor the researchers knew who got which oil. Weight gain was similar, 2.01 kg on sunflower oil and 2.31 kg on palm oil, yet liver fat rose 53%, or 1.54 percentage points, on palm oil and fell 2%, or 0.09 points, on sunflower oil. The sunflower oil group also showed no rise in blood markers of inflammation or lipid oxidation.15

An earlier randomized 7-week trial of 39 young, normal-weight adults, also run so that neither the people nor the researchers knew who got which oil, found the same pattern. Palm oil markedly raised liver fat compared with sunflower oil and doubled the rise in visceral fat, the fat packed around the organs, while sunflower oil produced a nearly threefold larger gain in lean tissue.18

So the trouble with sunflower oil lies mostly in the refining, the heat and the foods it comes in, more than in its linoleic acid. Here's how I summed it up in that same episode: "The molecule isn't the villain; the food matrix is."9

Sunflower oil and heat: smoke point, frying and reuse

An Australian lab that tests olive oil measured 10 supermarket oils before and during heating. Sunflower oil started with one of the highest smoke points, 254.67°C, against 206.67°C (about 404°F) for extra virgin olive oil. In a standard stability test, though, it lasted 6.10 hours before it began to oxidize, the shortest of the 10, against 32.70 hours for extra virgin olive oil. Held at 356°F (180°C) for 6 hours, sunflower oil reached 21.75% polar compounds, the breakdown products that build up in frying oil, the most of any oil tested, while extra virgin olive oil reached 10.5%. The researchers concluded that smoke point doesn't predict how an oil performs under heat.6

A second lab measured what forms as these oils break down. Researchers heated each oil at 180°C (356°F) for up to 90 minutes to mimic shallow frying, with 6 runs per oil. At 90 minutes, sunflower oil had formed about 62% more reactive aldehydes than extra virgin olive oil, 17.22 against 10.62, with corn oil at 15.67 and canola oil at 11.53 (all in millimoles per mole of fatty acids).7 The lab's lead researcher has received funding from the company behind an algae-based frying oil tested in the same study.7

Reuse makes it worse. Here's how the breakdown unfolds, from the fat in the bottle to the food on your plate:

Never reuse frying oil, since reheated oil builds up the most oxidation products, and the bigger win is simply deep-frying less often.4 If you do cook with sunflower oil, make it the high-oleic kind.12

Sunflower oil on your skin

Sunflower seed oil has a small but real research record on skin. In a randomized forearm study of 19 adults with and without a history of eczema, one group applied six drops of sunflower seed oil to one forearm twice a day for 4 weeks, with olive oil on the other forearm for comparison. The sunflower seed oil preserved the skin's outer barrier, caused no redness and improved hydration.17

In newborns, the picture is more mixed. In a pilot trial of 115 healthy full-term babies, randomly assigned to sunflower oil, olive oil or no oil twice a day for 4 weeks, both oils improved skin hydration, but the layered fats of the outer skin improved less than in babies who got no oil, and the researchers advised caution about recommending oils for newborn skin.19

The clearest results come from hospitals caring for very premature babies. In a randomized trial of 497 babies born before 33 weeks at a children's hospital in Bangladesh, those who got a daily massage with sunflower seed oil were 41% less likely to develop hospital-acquired infections than untreated babies, and the trial's report on survival found 26% fewer deaths with sunflower seed oil than with no emollient.2128

Community trials, in which whole villages were randomly assigned, found less. In rural India, where families knew which oil they were using, advising sunflower seed oil instead of the usual massage oil made no overall difference in newborn deaths across 26,587 babies, though deaths were 52% lower among the 589 babies born weighing 1,500 grams (about 3.3 pounds) or less, and 58% lower among babies whose families used only sunflower seed oil than among those whose families used only mustard oil.22 In Nepal, sunflower seed oil in place of mustard oil gave similar death rates, 30.5 and 31.8 per 1,000 among 32,114 births, and 79.2 against 90.4 per 1,000 among babies born early, a difference that could have been chance.23 A Cochrane review of 15 trials in 3,492 premature babies found that plant oils on the skin may lower serious infections by about 29% but have little or no effect on deaths, with low-certainty evidence for both.20

If you'd like to try sunflower seed oil on dry skin, use a few drops, patch-test a small area first and skip it if you're allergic to sunflower seeds.

Better swaps for sunflower oil

My default bottle is extra virgin olive oil, for dressings, drizzling and most cooking. For higher-heat searing and roasting, I reach for avocado oil. When a recipe wants a richer or more heat-stable fat, I'll use small amounts of grass-fed ghee, coconut oil or tallow. I keep oils in dark glass, away from heat, and I don't deep-fry at home.4

The full ranking of cooking fats, from the fruit oils at the top to the seed oils worth limiting, is in the guide to seed oils.

How to read labels and eat out

Most of the refined seed oil people eat comes in packaged and restaurant food rather than from a bottle at home.4 These are the words to look for on an ingredient list:

• "High-oleic": If a packaged food has to use a seed oil, high-oleic is the better version to see.4
• "Vegetable oil": Almost always a blend of refined seed oils, not olive or avocado oil.4
• Hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil: The real red flag, since these oils can contain trans fats.4
• Organic, expeller-pressed or cold-pressed sunflower oil: Pressed out rather than extracted with hexane.4 Pressed oil can still be refined afterward, so look for the word unrefined on the label if you want one that keeps more of what refining strips away.31 The type of fat is still set by the seed, so a cold-pressed regular sunflower oil is still mostly linoleic acid.1

One cracker made with sunflower oil won't hurt you. When seed oils show up in the first few ingredients of foods you eat every day, that's the pattern worth changing.4 Eating out, the simplest move is to skip deep-fried food and to let the oil in one salad dressing go without a second thought.4

Sunflower oil side effects and who should be careful

• Severe sunflower seed allergy. In a small challenge study, two people with severe sunflower seed allergy ate refined and cold-pressed sunflower oil without a reaction.32 Traces of an allergenic seed protein can survive refining, though, so ask your allergist before eating sunflower oil, and get emergency care for throat swelling, hives or trouble breathing.8

• Heated and reused oil. Breakdown products build up most in oil that's heated again and again, as in restaurant fryers; the heat section covers how to cook around that.47

• Calories. A tablespoon adds about 120 calories, so use it in place of other fats rather than on top of them.1

The bottom line

Sunflower oil: frequently asked questions

References

1. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Oil, sunflower, linoleic, (approx. 65%). FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 171025 (NDB 4506). Published April 1, 2019.
2. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Oil, sunflower, high oleic (70% and over). FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 172338 (NDB 4584). Published April 1, 2019.
3. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels.
4. Axe J. Seed Oils: Are They Bad for You? What the Research Really Says. DrAxe.com. 2026.
5. Schwingshackl L, Bogensberger B, Benčič A, Knüppel S, Boeing H, Hoffmann G. Effects of oils and solid fats on blood lipids: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. J Lipid Res. 2018;59(9):1771-1782. doi:10.1194/jlr.P085522 · PMID:30006369
6. De Alzaa F, Guillaume C, Ravetti L. Evaluation of chemical and physical changes in different commercial oils during heating. Acta Sci Nutr Health. 2018;2(6):2-11. actascientific.com
7. Moumtaz S, Percival BC, Parmar D, Grootveld KL, Jansson P, Grootveld M. Toxic aldehyde generation in and food uptake from culinary oils during frying practices: peroxidative resistance of a monounsaturate-rich algae oil. Sci Rep. 2019;9(1):4125. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-39767-1 · PMID:30858398
8. Zitouni N, Errahali Y, Metche M, Kanny G, Moneret-Vautrin DA, Nicolas JP, et al. Influence of refining steps on trace allergenic protein content in sunflower oil. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2000;106(5):962-7. doi:10.1067/mai.2000.110229 · PMID:11080721
9. Axe J. You Were Lied To About Seed Oils! The Truth About Butter, Tallow & Olive Oil. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2026 (his parents and margarine, 0:14-0:33; seed oils in everyday foods, 0:36-0:42; the studies and reheated fryer oil, 13:40-13:57; the food matrix, 14:06-14:10; omega-3 and omega-6, 14:39-14:53; refined seed oils and fryers, 26:13-26:47).
10. US Food and Drug Administration. Letter of enforcement discretion: petition for authorized health claim for oleic acid in edible oils and a reduction in the risk of coronary heart disease (Docket No. FDA-2017-Q-0807). November 19, 2018. fda.gov
11. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Oil, industrial, mid-oleic, sunflower. FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 172357 (NDB 4642). Published April 1, 2019.
12. Romero A, Bastida S, Sánchez-Muniz FJ. Cyclic fatty acid monomer formation in domestic frying of frozen foods in sunflower oil and high oleic acid sunflower oil without oil replenishment. Food Chem Toxicol. 2006;44(10):1674-81. doi:10.1016/j.fct.2006.05.003 · PMID:16806629
13. Han Y, Hu M, Wang Y, Li R, Liax Y, Liu Z, et al. Effects of high-oleic dietary interventions on cardiometabolic outcomes in adults: a GRADE-based systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Diabetol Metab Syndr. 2026;18(1):110. doi:10.1186/s13098-026-02136-w · PMID:41918140
14. US Food and Drug Administration. Letter updating the qualifying level of oleic acid for the Oleic Acid from Edible Oils and Coronary Heart Disease qualified health claim. July 16, 2020. fda.gov
15. Rosqvist F, Kullberg J, Ståhlman M, Cedernaes J, Heurling K, Johansson HE, et al. Overeating Saturated Fat Promotes Fatty Liver and Ceramides Compared With Polyunsaturated Fat: A Randomized Trial. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2019;104(12):6207-6219. doi:10.1210/jc.2019-00160 · PMID:31369090
16. Johnson GH, Fritsche K. Effect of dietary linoleic acid on markers of inflammation in healthy persons: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012;112(7):1029-41. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2012.03.029 · PMID:22889633
17. Danby SG, AlEnezi T, Sultan A, Lavender T, Chittock J, Brown K, et al. Effect of olive and sunflower seed oil on the adult skin barrier: implications for neonatal skin care. Pediatr Dermatol. 2013;30(1):42-50. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1470.2012.01865.x · PMID:22995032
18. Rosqvist F, Iggman D, Kullberg J, Cedernaes J, Johansson HE, Larsson A, et al. Overfeeding polyunsaturated and saturated fat causes distinct effects on liver and visceral fat accumulation in humans. Diabetes. 2014;63(7):2356-68. doi:10.2337/db13-1622 · PMID:24550191
19. Cooke A, Cork MJ, Victor S, Campbell M, Danby S, Chittock J, et al. Olive Oil, Sunflower Oil or no Oil for Baby Dry Skin or Massage: A Pilot, Assessor-blinded, Randomized Controlled Trial (the Oil in Baby SkincaRE [OBSeRvE] Study). Acta Derm Venereol. 2016;96(3):323-30. doi:10.2340/00015555-2279 · PMID:26551528
20. Cleminson J, McGuire W. Topical emollient for preventing infection in preterm infants. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2021;5(5):CD001150. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD001150.pub4 · PMID:33961715
21. Darmstadt GL, Saha SK, Ahmed AS, Chowdhury MA, Law PA, Ahmed S, et al. Effect of topical treatment with skin barrier-enhancing emollients on nosocomial infections in preterm infants in Bangladesh: a randomised controlled trial. Lancet. 2005;365(9464):1039-45. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)71140-5 · PMID:15781099
22. Kumar A, Mishra S, Singh S, Ashraf S, Kan P, Ghosh AK, et al. Effect of sunflower seed oil emollient therapy on newborn infant survival in Uttar Pradesh, India: A community-based, cluster randomized, open-label controlled trial. PLoS Med. 2021;18(9):e1003680. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1003680 · PMID:34582448
23. Katz J, Khatry SK, Shrestha L, Summers A, Visscher MO, Sherchand JB, et al. Impact of topical applications of sunflower seed oil on neonatal mortality and morbidity in southern Nepal: a community-based, cluster-randomised trial. BMJ Glob Health. 2024;9(2):e013691. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2023-013691 · PMID:38423547
24. Ramsden CE, Zamora D, Leelarthaepin B, Majchrzak-Hong SF, Faurot KR, Suchindran CM, et al. Use of dietary linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death: evaluation of recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and updated meta-analysis. BMJ. 2013;346:e8707. doi:10.1136/bmj.e8707 · PMID:23386268
25. Ramsden CE, Zamora D, Majchrzak-Hong S, Faurot KR, Broste SK, Frantz RP, et al. Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis: analysis of recovered data from Minnesota Coronary Experiment (1968-73). BMJ. 2016;353:i1246. doi:10.1136/bmj.i1246 · PMID:27071971
26. Li J, Guasch-Ferré M, Li Y, Hu FB. Dietary intake and biomarkers of linoleic acid and mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. Am J Clin Nutr. 2020;112(1):150-167. doi:10.1093/ajcn/nqz349 · PMID:32020162
27. Wu JHY, Marklund M, Imamura F, Tintle N, Ardisson Korat AV, de Goede J, et al. Omega-6 fatty acid biomarkers and incident type 2 diabetes: pooled analysis of individual-level data for 39 740 adults from 20 prospective cohort studies. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2017;5(12):965-974. doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(17)30307-8 · PMID:29032079
28. Darmstadt GL, Saha SK, Ahmed AS, Ahmed S, Chowdhury MA, Law PA, et al. Effect of skin barrier therapy on neonatal mortality rates in preterm infants in Bangladesh: a randomized, controlled, clinical trial. Pediatrics. 2008;121(3):522-9. doi:10.1542/peds.2007-0213 · PMID:18310201
29. Axe J. Coconut Oil Benefits: Heart Health, Uses, vs. Butter & MCT Oil. DrAxe.com. 2026 (ApoB line: coconut oil raised ApoB compared with unsaturated oils; favor olive oil if ApoB is high).
30. Axe J. What Is Tallow? Beef Tallow Benefits, Nutrition, Cooking & Skin Uses. DrAxe.com. 2026 (Dr. Axe's September 30, 2026 position on tallow and olive oil).
31. Fellows P, Axtell B, Dillon M. Quality assurance for small-scale rural food industries. FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin No. 117. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; 1995. Section 2.1.2, Oilseeds.
32. Halsey AB, Martin ME, Ruff ME, Jacobs FO, Jacobs RL. Sunflower oil is not allergenic to sunflower seed-sensitive patients. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 1986;78(3 Pt 1):408-10. doi:10.1016/0091-6749(86)90025-4 · PMID:3760399
33. Axe J. You Were Lied To About Fat — Your Cells Are Paying the Price. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2026 (olive oil as the go-to oil, 17:45-17:57).

Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DNM, CNS

Doctor of Natural Medicine · Founder, DrAxe.com

Dr. Axe is a certified doctor of natural medicine, clinical nutritionist, and multiple New York Times bestselling author. He has spent 20+ years in clinical practice helping people heal at the root cause and founded one of the most-visited natural-health platforms in the world.

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