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Who are immigrants to the US, where do they come from and where do they live?

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theconversation.com – Jennifer Van Hook, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography, Penn State – 2025-02-04 13:42:00

Who are immigrants to the US, where do they come from and where do they live?

Immigrants to the U.S. increasingly arrive like these people, seeking asylum at a formal border crossing, rather than trying to sneak across the border.
Carlos Moreno/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Jennifer Van Hook, Penn State

Undocumented immigration is a key issue in American politics, but it can be hard to nail down the basic facts about who these immigrants are, where they live and how their numbers have changed in the past few decades.

I study the demographics of the U.S. immigrant population and have seen how the data has changed over time. Here are some basics to set the stage as President Donald Trump begins his second term in office vowing to crack down hard on immigrants, including by conducting mass deportations.

Immigration status

My analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey data, in collaboration with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit immigration research group, finds that as of the middle of 2023, approximately 51 million foreign-born people lived in the United States.

Most immigrants are in the U.S. legally. About 49% have become U.S. citizens by a process known as naturalization. Another 19% hold lawful permanent resident status and are eligible to become U.S. citizens through naturalization. Still another 5% are in the country on temporary visas, like those for international students, diplomats and their families, and seasonal or temporary workers.

The remaining 27% – around 13.7 million people – are outside those categories and therefore generally considered to be undocumented.

My analysis shows that the number of undocumented immigrants held steady at around 11 million between 2007 and 2019. In the next four years, the numbers increased by nearly 3 million. This recent growth is mostly attributable to large increases in border crossings by migrants from Central and South America who were seeking asylum or other forms of humanitarian relief. Starting in June 2024, however, the number of people entering across the U.S.-Mexico border fell back to normal levels when the Biden administration implemented the Secure the Border rule, which suspends asylum applications at the border when crossings reach a seven-day average of 2,500.

These changes were accompanied by changes in the undocumented migration process itself. In the past, undocumented immigrants often entered the country by slipping undetected across the U.S. border with Mexico. But increased border enforcement made the journey more dangerous and expensive.

Instead of paying smugglers or risking their lives in the desert, growing numbers of undocumented immigrants now either directly approach immigration officials at airports or land-border crossings and seek asylum in the U.S. Others are initially admitted to the country legally on a temporary tourist, student or work visa – but then overstay the time period for which they have permission.

Additionally, growing numbers of undocumented immigrants occupy what might be called a “liminal” or “in-between” status. The Migration Policy Institute analysis estimates this encompasses a range of groups as of the middle of 2023, including:

  • About 2.1 million people awaiting a decision on their asylum claims.
  • 521,000 parolees, allowed into the U.S. for humanitarian or national security reasons, like those paroled recently from Afghanistan and Ukraine.
  • 654,000 people who hold temporary protected status because it would be unsafe for them to return home due to armed conflict, natural disasters and other emergencies.
  • 562,000 who are protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program because they were brought to the United States as children by their parents.

The report estimates that just over one-quarter of undocumented immigrants currently occupy this type of “in-between” status. These immigrants are protected from deportation. Some even have a legal right to work in the U.S. Yet they do not possess a durable legal immigration status, and their rights could be threatened by policy changes.

While Trump says he wants to deport as many as 11 million immigrants, analyses published by The New York Times and The Washington Post indicate that it may be difficult to remove many of them under existing U.S. law. The one group that is easy to remove – those with a criminal record – is relatively small, numbering about 650,000.

Shifting countries of origin

Since 1980, Mexicans have been the largest single national origin group in the United States. I found that 10.9 million Mexican-born individuals were living in the country in 2023, making up 23% of all immigrants. The second-largest group, immigrants from India, numbered just 2.9 million, or 6% of all immigrants living in the U.S.

However, immigrants’ origins have been shifting away from Mexico.

With the onset of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, work opportunities in U.S. construction and manufacturing evaporated. Many Mexican laborers had been working in construction at the time but went back to Mexico when the U.S. housing market collapsed.

At that same time, Mexico’s economic conditions improved, its population growth slowed, and many would-be migrants opted to stay home. For the first time in decades, from 2007 to 2022 the number of Mexicans who returned home exceeded the number coming to the United States.

This trend was especially pronounced among undocumented immigrants. I found that Mexicans made up about 51% of the undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country 10 or more years ago. Central Americans made up 20%, and the remaining originated from other regions.

However, undocumented migrants now come from across the globe. Among undocumented immigrants who arrived within the past 10 years, 19% came from Mexico. Larger shares came from Central America and South America. While some of these new migrants seek work, others flee crime, economic and ecological disasters, and political persecution in their home countries.

Duration of residence

Most immigrants, whether they are in the U.S. legally or illegally, have lived in the United States for many years. Just under half of foreign-born individuals have lived in the country for two decades or more, and more than two-thirds have lived in the country for at least 10 years. Only 20% arrived within the past five years.

This is a dramatic change from the early 2000s, when less than 10% of immigrants had been in the U.S. for more than two decades, and more than one-third had arrived within the previous five years.

That means many of the people who are likely to be targeted for deportation in the coming months are settled, long-term members of American society.

Place of residence

As of 2023, 6.6 million immigrants reported on the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey that they moved to the United States in the past five years.

However, the effects of these new immigrants on American communities has been uneven. Although most communities are more racially and ethnically diverse now than in the past, the numbers of newly arrived immigrants are relatively low in most places.

Fifteen states host fewer than 20,000 immigrants, and 33 states are home to fewer than 100,000. In contrast, over half of new arrivals live in just five states: California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas are the home of over half of new arrivals yet have only 37% of the U.S. population. Other states such as Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington also are home to large and growing immigrant populations.

The U.S. immigrant population is changing rapidly. In the early years of the 21st century, Mexican immigrants dominated undocumented immigration flows to the United States. Decades later, many of these people continue to live in the country.

In the past four years, however, the flow of undocumented people increased dramatically. These new arrivals tend to come from troubled nations in Central and South America, many of whom are protected from deportation and have a legal right to work in the U.S. Altogether, most undocumented immigrants either have lived in the country for decades or have legal protections.

Neither of these groups fit the profile of undocumented immigrants who are typically targeted for deportation.The Conversation

Jennifer Van Hook, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography, Penn State

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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A feasible idea to invest strategically, or a giant opportunity for waste?

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theconversation.com – Patrick J. Schena, Professor of Practice and International Business, Tufts University – 2025-02-08 06:18:00

US sovereign wealth fund: A feasible idea to invest strategically, or a giant opportunity for waste?

U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order to create a U.S. sovereign wealth fund on Feb. 3, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Patrick J. Schena, Tufts University

Could the United States soon be joining the likes of Norway, Kuwait and Mongolia in having a national reserve to invest on projects of strategic interest? If President Donald Trump gets his way, then perhaps so.

On Feb. 3, 2025, Trump issued an executive order calling for the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund.

This was not entirely unexpected. After all, the idea had been floated in September 2024 not only by the Trump team, but also by President Joe Biden’s Treasury Department.

Many at the time, including myself, deemed it far-fetched at best. But with the initiative now gaining traction, the time is certainly ripe to imagine what a U.S. sovereign wealth fund might look like.

What is a sovereign wealth fund?

In their most basic form, sovereign wealth funds are pools of government savings, usually accumulated over many years through the sale of commodities, traded goods, government-owned companies and land-use rights, among other sources.

They share a variety of objectives, such as stabilizing government finances, ensuring the funding of retirement or education programs, saving for future generations or even managing state-owned corporations.

They generally diversify investment across assets, geographies and sectors, including some, such as sports and entertainment in the case of Saudi Arabia, that are aligned with national development goals.

Sovereign wealth funds are usually associated with great wealth – Norway’s “oil fund” is estimated to be worth US$1.7 trillion. With regard to scale, Norway is hardly alone. And Norway’s fund is typical in another respect: sovereign wealth funds are often based in smaller countries with outsized natural resources, like Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, or even tiny Guyana in the Caribbean.

In reality, most sovereign wealth funds are more modest in size relative to their gross domestic products.

How long have SWFs been around?

Sovereign wealth funds are hardly new. The so-called modern era of sovereign wealth funds dates to the early 1950s with the creation of the Kuwait Investment Board.

But some government investment funds, such as the Texas Permanent School Fund, established in 1854, long predate the Kuwait Investment Board.

As is evident in the case of Texas, there are many such funds already operating in the U.S., including those in Alaska, New Mexico and Wyoming – all of which identify as “sovereign wealth funds.” These, of course, are state funds, but the term “sovereign” is generously applied.

Sovereign wealth funds often invest outside of their geographies, not only to diversify returns but to avoid stimulating higher inflation that may result from investing at home.

In fact, the U.S. has benefited from investments by other countries’ sovereign wealth funds. Developed market economies like the U.S. are attractive destinations for investment, given the relative strength of their institutions and the scale and liquidity of their financial markets.

Still, over the last decade there has been a rapid expansion in the number of sovereign wealth funds investing domestically, particularly in support of strategic national goals. Some of these include funds in Ireland, India and Indonesia.

Their investment programs target critical sectors and national “champions,” with a goal to mobilize foreign capital for co-investment in local markets.

A man in a yellow jersey runs toward a ball.
Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo plays for Al-Nassr, in which Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has a controlling stake.
Abdullah Ahmed/Getty Images

The fundamental questions of a fund

What could a U.S. sovereign wealth fund look like? Would it be well funded? And if so, how? Through taxes, treasury bond proceeds, budget transfers, tariffs?

Would it invest globally or domestically? Could it be used to reinforce the Social Security system? Will it be used to tackle the dual deficits of budget and trade? Or will it have a strategic mandate – to enhance national security, energy security or climate security?

These are all fundamental questions that must be carefully examined; creating a sovereign wealth fund should not be a backroom exercise. It needs to be conducted openly, with expert input and public deliberation.

The process belies even more challenging organizational and governance decisions concerning the legal structure, ownership and management of the fund, the independence of its governing board, and its distance from government influence in its decisions.

After all, the history of sovereign wealth funds is not without failed attempts. Take Malaysia’s 1MDB, which was usurped for political and personal gain and became a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal, or Venezuela’s macrostabilization and development funds, which were both effectively exhausted.

In these cases – and others – the breakdown can be connected to failures in governance, both in design and culture, and ultimately traced back to politics.

Where does the US start?

It is interesting to note that it was George W. Bush’s Treasury Department during the financial crisis in 2008 that was most influential in encouraging sovereign wealth funds to define a framework of governance practices and principles.

Known as the Santiago Principles, this set of 24 precepts, agreed to in 2008, are intended to ensure transparent and sound governance with adequate operational controls, risk management and accountability.

To be successful and in line with the Santiago Principles, a U.S. sovereign wealth fund would have to be grounded in a functional governance structure that allows investment projects to be evaluated based on commercial merit.

It would also need to be free of political interference and operate openly, transparently and at arm’s length from any personal or professional interests of any related parties.

Where would it invest?

The next thing to consider is the fund’s investment objectives and strategy. Trump has suggested that such a fund could be used to buy TikTok. But would that represent a strategic investment that advances the national competitiveness of the U.S.?

Perhaps instead, a sovereign wealth fund might be better placed investing a majority of its capital in private markets and core infrastructure in the U.S. under a focused strategic mandate that directs money to key national priorities.

Essential here is for the fund to be “additional.” That is to say it would invest in projects that other investors would not be able to finance on their own due to scale, difficulty or duration. In essence, the fund would “crowd in” investors, rather than crowding them out.

And what about funding?

Perhaps the most critical question still remains: Where will the money come from?

Increased taxes are a nonstarter due to political will and, of course, Trump’s campaign commitments.

Treasury bond issuances would only increase U.S. debtedness and likely lead to higher inflation. Allocations from the government’s own budget also seem to be a non-starter, as U.S. budget deficits have long been well-entrenched.

The president has suggested that a fund could use tariff payments – but the reality of the tariff rollout is itself questionable and apparently open to negotiation.

A tower is seen lit up against a city at night.
Malaysia’s 1MDB financed the Tun Razak Exchange tower, the tallest building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But it was also the source of the biggest corruption scandal in Malaysian history.
Ore Huiying/Getty Images

A more practical option may be a take on the traditional private equity limited partnership. In this model, the U.S. serves as general partner and joins other institutional investors – including other sovereign wealth funds – to invest in the fund.

As general partner, the U.S. would appoint a management team that would select and manage the investments – for a fee, of course. Its mandate would be to target strong market returns, while advancing the strategic national interests of the U.S.

The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund in India is one such example. This approach would require a smaller initial capital commitment from the U.S. and give the manager discretion over where and how to deploy capital. Needless to say, the call for strong foundational governance is reinforced under such a plan.

To be clear: The challenges, constraints and risks of launching a U.S. sovereign wealth fund are orders of magnitude greater than similar endeavors in Guyana or Suriname.

Imagining the creation of a fund is certainly feasible. But ensuring the fund will genuinely enhance the intergenerational welfare of all Americans may still be far-fetched.The Conversation

Patrick J. Schena, Professor of Practice and International Business, Tufts University

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Efficiency − or empire? How Elon Musk’s hostile takeover could end government as we know it

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theconversation.com – Allison Stanger, Distinguished Endowed Professor, Middlebury – 2025-02-07 12:53:00

Efficiency − or empire? How Elon Musk’s hostile takeover could end government as we know it

Elon Musk, right, has moved to take the reins of the U.S. government.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Allison Stanger, Middlebury

Elon Musk’s role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, is on the surface a dramatic effort to overhaul the inefficiencies of federal bureaucracy. But beneath the rhetoric of cost-cutting and regulatory streamlining lies a troubling scenario.

Musk has been appointed what is called a “special government employee” in charge of the White House office formerly known as the U.S. Digital Service, which was renamed the U.S. DOGE Service on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term. The Musk team’s purported goals are to maximize efficiency and to eliminate waste and redundancy.

That might sound like a bold move toward Silicon Valley-style innovation in governance. However, the deeper motivations driving Musk’s involvement are unlikely to be purely altruistic.

Musk has an enormous corporate empire, ambitions in artificial intelligence, desire for financial power and a long-standing disdain for government oversight. His access to sensitive government systems and ability to restructure agencies, with the opaque decision-making guiding DOGE to date, have positioned Musk to extract unprecedented financial and strategic benefits for both himself and his companies, which include the electric car company Tesla and space transport company SpaceX.

One historical parallel in particular is striking. In 1600, the British East India Company, a merchant shipping firm, began with exclusive rights to conduct trade in the Indian Ocean region before slowly acquiring quasi-governmental powers and ultimately ruling with an iron fist over British colonies in Asia, including most of what is now India. In 1677, the company gained the right to mint currency on behalf of the British crown.

As I explain in my upcoming book “Who Elected Big Tech?” the U.S. is witnessing a similar pattern of a private company taking over government operations.

Yet what took centuries in the colonial era is now unfolding at lightning speed in mere days through digital means. In the 21st century, data access and digital financial systems have replaced physical trading posts and private armies. Communications are the key to power now, rather than brute strength.

A man in a uniform and a badge holds out his arms, palms outstretched.
A security officer blocks U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, right, from entering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters on Feb. 6, 2025, in an effort to meet with DOGE staff.
Al Drago/Getty Images

The data pipeline

Viewing Musk’s moves as a power grab becomes clearer when examining his corporate empire. He controls multiple companies that have federal contracts and are subject to government regulations. SpaceX and Tesla, as well as tunneling firm The Boring Company, the brain science company Neuralink, and artificial intelligence firm xAI all operate in markets where government oversight can make or break fortunes.

In his new role, Musk can oversee – and potentially dismantle – the government agencies that have traditionally constrained his businesses. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has repeatedly investigated Tesla’s Autopilot system; the Securities and Exchange Commission has penalized Musk for market-moving tweets; environmental regulations have constrained SpaceX.

Through DOGE, all these oversight mechanisms could be weakened or eliminated under the guise of efficiency.

But the most catastrophic aspect of Musk’s leadership at DOGE is its unprecedented access to government data. DOGE employees reportedly have digital permission to see data in the U.S. government’s payment system, which includes bank account information, Social Security numbers and income tax documents. Reportedly, they have also seized the ability to alter the system’s software, data, transactions and records.

Multiple media reports indicate that Musk’s staff have already made changes to the programs that process payments for Social Security beneficiaries and government contractors to make it easier to block payments and hide records of payments blocked, made or altered.

But DOGE employees only need to be able to read the data to make copies of Americans’ most sensitive personal information.

A federal court has ordered that not to happen – at least for now. Even so, funneling the data into Grok, Musk’s xAI-created artificial intelligence system, which is already connected with the Musk-owned X, formerly known as Twitter, would create an unparalleled capability for predicting economic shifts, identifying government vulnerabilities and modeling voter behavior.

That’s an enormous and alarming amount of information and power for any one person to have.

A man in a business suit stands at a lectern and gestures.
Candidate Donald Trump speaks at a key cryptocurrency industry conference in July 2024.
AP Photo/Mark Humphrey

Cryptocurrency coup?

Like Trump himself and many of his closest advisers, Musk is also deeply involved in cryptocurrency. The parallel emergence of Trump’s own cryptocurrency and DOGE’s apparent alignment with the cryptocurrency known as Dogecoin suggests more than coincidence. I believe it points to a coordinated strategy for control of America’s money and economic policy, effectively placing the United States in entirely private hands.

The genius – and danger – of this strategy lies in the fact that each step might appear justified in isolation: modernizing government systems, improving efficiency, updating payment infrastructure. But together, they create the scaffolding for transferring even more financial power to the already wealthy.

Musk’s authoritarian tendencies, evident in his forceful management of X and his assertion that it was illegal to publish the names of people who work for him, suggest how he might wield his new powers. Companies critical of Musk could face unexpected audits; regulatory agencies scrutinizing his businesses could find their budgets slashed; allies could receive privileged access to government contracts.

This isn’t speculation – it’s the logical extension of DOGE’s authority combined with Musk’s demonstrated behavior.

Critics are calling Musk’s actions at DOGE a massive corporate coup. Others are simply calling it a coup. The protest movement is gaining momentum in Washington, D.C., and around the country, but it’s unlikely that street protests alone can stop what Musk is doing.

Who can effectively investigate a group designed to dismantle oversight itself? The administration’s illegal firing of at least a dozen inspectors general before the Musk operation began suggests a deliberate strategy to eliminate government accountability. The Republican-led Congress, closely aligned with Trump, may not want to step in; but even if it did, Musk is moving far faster than Congress ever does.

Destroy the republic, build a startup nation?

Taken together, all of Musk’s and Trump’s moves lay the foundation for what cryptocurrency investor and entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan calls “the network state.”

The idea is that a virtual nation may form online before establishing any physical presence. Think of the network state like a tech startup company with its own cryptocurrency – instead of declaring independence and fighting for sovereignty, it first builds community and digital systems. By the time a Musk-aligned cryptocurrency gained official status, the underlying structure and relationships would already be in place, making alternatives impractical.

Converting more of the world’s financial system into privately controlled cryptocurrencies would take power away from national governments, which must answer to their own people. Musk has already begun this effort, using his wealth and social media reach to engage in politics not only in the U.S. but also several European countries, including Germany.

A nation governed by a cryptocurrency-based system would no longer be run by the people living in its territory but by those who could could afford to buy the digital currency. In this scenario, I am concerned that Musk, or the Communist Party of China, Russian President Vladimir Putin or AI-surveillance conglomerate Palantir, could render irrelevant Congress’ power over government spending and action. And along the way, it could remove the power to hold presidents accountable from Congress, the judiciary and American citizens.

All of this obviously presents a thicket of conflict-of-interest problems that are wholly unprecedented in scope and scale.

The question facing Americans, therefore, isn’t whether government needs modernization – it’s whether they’re willing to sacrifice democracy in pursuit of Musk’s version of efficiency. When we grant tech leaders direct control over government functions, we’re not just streamlining bureaucracy – we’re fundamentally altering the relationship between private power and public governance. I believe we’re undermining American national security, as well as the power of We, the People.

The most dangerous inefficiency of all may be Americans’ delayed response to this crisis.The Conversation

Allison Stanger, Distinguished Endowed Professor, Middlebury

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Seed oils are toxic, says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – but it’s not so simple

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theconversation.com – Mary J. Scourboutakos, Adjunct Lecturer in Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto – 2025-02-07 07:26:00

Seed oils are toxic, says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – but it’s not so simple

Seed oils have become a mainstay of the American diet.
d3sign/Moment via Getty Images

Mary J. Scourboutakos, University of Toronto

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is expected to clear the final hurdles in his confirmation as President Donald Trump’s health secretary, and a host of health influencers have proclaimed that widely used cooking oils such as canola oil and soybean oil are toxic.

T-shirts sold by his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign now include the slogan, “make frying oil tallow again” – a reference to the traditional use of rendered beef fat for cooking.

Seed oils have become a mainstay of the American diet because unlike beef tallow, which is comprised of saturated fats that increase cholesterol levels, seed oils contain unsaturated fats that can decrease cholesterol levels. In theory, that means they should reduce the risk of heart disease.

But research shows that different seed oils have varying effects on risk for heart disease.
Furthermore, seed oils have also been shown to increase risk for migraines. This is likely due to their high levels of omega-6 fatty acids. These fats can increase inflammation, a heightened and potentially harmful state of immune system activation.

As a family physician with a Ph.D. in nutrition, I translate the latest nutrition science into dietary recommendations for my patients. When it comes to seed oils, the research shows that their health effects are more nuanced than headlines and social media posts suggest.

How seed oils infiltrated the American diet

Seed oils — often confusingly referred to as “vegetable oils” — are, as the name implies, oils extracted from the seeds of plants. This is unlike olive oil and coconut oil, which are derived from fruits. People decrying their widespread use often refer to the “hateful eight” top seed oil offenders: canola, corn, soybean, cottonseed, grapeseed, sunflower, safflower and rice bran oil.

These oils entered the human diet at unprecedented levels after the invention of the mechanical screw press in 1888 enabled the extraction of oil from seeds in quantities that were never before possible.

Between 1909 and 1999, U.S. consumption of soybean oil increased 1,000 times. This shift fundamentally changed our biological makeup. Due to increased seed oil intake, in the past 50 years the concentration of omega-6 fatty acids that Americans carry around in their fatty tissue has increased by 136%

Evaluating the omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio

Omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids are essential nutrients that control inflammation. While omega-6s tend to produce molecules that boost it, omega-3s tend to produce molecules that tone it down. Until recently, people generally ate equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. However, over the past century, this ratio has changed. Today, people consume 15 times more omega-6s than omega-3s, partly due to increased consumption of seed oils.

In theory, seed oils can cause health problems because they contain a high absolute amount of omega-6 fatty acids, as well as a high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Studies have linked an increased omega-6 to omega-3 ratio to a wide range of conditions, including mood disorders, knee pain, back pain, menstrual pain and even preterm birth. Omega-6 fatty acids have also been implicated in the processes that drive colon cancer.

However, the absolute omega-6 level and the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in different seed oils vary tremendously. For example, safflower oil and sunflower oil have ratios of 125:1 and 91:1. Corn oil’s ratio is 50:1. Meanwhile, soybean oil and canola oil have lower ratios, at 8:1 and 2:1, respectively.

Scientists have used genetic modification to create seed oils like high oleic acid canola oil that have a lower omega-6 to 3 ratio. However, the health benefit of these bioengineered oils is still being studied.

The upshot on inflammation and health risks

Part of the controversy surrounding seed oils is that studies investigating their inflammatory effect have yielded mixed results. One meta-analysis synthesizing the effects of seed oils on 11 inflammatory markers largely showed no effects – with the exception of one inflammatory signal, which was significantly elevated in people with the highest omega-6 intakes.

To complicate things further, genetics also plays a role in seed oils’ inflammatory potential. People of African, Indigenous and Latino descent tend to metabolize omega-6 fatty acids faster, which can increase the inflammatory effect of consuming seed oils. Scientists still don’t fully understand how genetics and other factors may influence the health effects of these oils.

A small bottle of soybean oil beside a bowl of soybeans, on a wooden table
Soybean oil is the most highly purchased oil in the United States.
fcafotodigital via Getty Images

The effect of different seed oils on cardiovascular risk

A review of seven randomized controlled trials showed that the effect of seed oils on risk of heart attacks varies depending on the type of seed oil.

This was corroborated by data resurrected from tapes dug up in the basement of a researcher who in the 1970s conducted the largest and most rigorously executed dietary trial to date investigating the replacement of saturated fat with seed oils. In that work, replacing saturated fats such as beef tallow with seed oils always lowers cholesterol, but it does not always lower risk of death from heart disease.

Taken together, these studies show that when saturated fats such as beef tallow are replaced with seed oils that have lower omega-6 to omega-3 ratios, such as soybean oil, the risk of heart attacks and death from heart disease falls. However, when saturated fats are replaced with seed oils with a higher omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, such as corn oil, risk of death from heart disease rises.

Interestingly, the most highly purchased seed oil in the United States is soybean oil, which has a more favorable omega-6 to 3 ratio of 8:1 – and studies show that it does lower the risk of heart disease.

However, seed oils with less favorable ratios, such as corn oil and safflower oil, can be found in countless processed foods, including potato chips, frozen dinners and packaged desserts. Nevertheless, other aspects of these foods, in addition to their seed oil content, also make them unhealthy.

The case for migraines – and beyond

A rigorous randomized controlled trial – the gold standard for clinical evidence – showed that diets high in omega-3 fatty acids and low in omega-6 fatty acids, hence low in seed oils, significantly reduced the risk of migraines

In the study, people who stepped up their consumption of omega-3 fatty acids by eating fatty fish such as salmon experienced an average of two fewer migraines per month than usual, even if they did not change their omega-6 consumption. However, if they reduced their omega-6 intake by switching out corn oil for olive oil, while simultaneously increasing their omega-3 intake, they experienced four fewer migraines per month.

That’s a noteworthy difference, considering that the latest migraine medications reduce migraine frequency by approximately two days per month, compared to a placebo. Thus, for migraine sufferers — 1 in 6 Americans — decreasing seed oils, along with increasing omega-3 intake, may be even more effective than currently available medications.

Overall, the drastic way in which omega-6 fatty acids have entered the food supply and fundamentally changed our biological composition makes this an important area of study. But the question of whether seed oils are good or bad is not black and white. There is no basis to conclude that Americans would be healthier if we started frying everything in beef tallow again, but there is an argument for a more careful consideration of the nuance surrounding these oils and their potential effects.The Conversation

Mary J. Scourboutakos, Adjunct Lecturer in Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto

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