The Truth About Fats: Part 1
posted on
November 15, 2025
How Seed Oils Took Over Our Tables
🧑‍🌾 A New Series from CT Ranch
Welcome to the first part of our three-part series, The Truth About Fats. Over the next three months, we’ll be walking through how our food — and our health — changed when the world turned away from traditional animal fats and toward industrial seed oils. It’s a story that goes back much farther than most people realize… all the way to the 1800s.
🕯️ From Candles to the Kitchen
It all started in 1837 when two enterprising men, Proctor and Gamble, began making candles out of cottonseed oil instead of animal tallow. It was a clever use of a cheap byproduct of the cotton industry, and for a while, it worked — until the lightbulb came along.
When Edison’s electric company lit up homes in 1882, the need for candles plummeted. Suddenly, Proctor & Gamble had barrels of leftover cottonseed oil and no place for it to go. But instead of throwing it out, they looked for another way to sell it — and that’s where everything began to change.
🥣 The Birth of Crisco
By 1903, scientists had figured out how to hydrogenate cottonseed oil — changing its color, texture, and smell to resemble animal fat. A few years later, in 1911, Proctor & Gamble launched their new product: Crisco.
It was marketed as “cleaner, lighter, and modern.” Ads showed smiling homemakers and happy families gathered around golden-fried foods. It was cheaper than butter or lard, and before long, kitchens across America were filled with tins of Crisco instead of jars of rendered fat.
By 1933, the company switched from cottonseed to soybean oil, an even cheaper option — and the rest is history.
🌾 A Shift Away from Tradition
Over time, the oils that were once considered cheap industrial byproducts became everyday staples. And somehow, the fats that nourished generations before us — butter, tallow, lard — were labeled as “unhealthy.”
But if you trace the story back, you’ll see that this wasn’t about health at all. It was about marketing, money, and convenience. The result? A nation that lost touch with the natural, stable fats that were part of God’s good design for nourishment.
🔍 Time to Look Deeper
Today, the debate continues — seed oils vs. traditional animal fats. But when you start digging into the history and science, the truth speaks for itself.
In the meantime, check out below of the traditional fats we offer here at CT Ranch to bring real nourishment back to your family table.
And be sure to keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter, where we’ll dive into Part 2: The Hidden Side Effects of Seed Oils — what they do inside the body, and why returning to time-honored fats can help us heal.
