Seed Oils Chart: Omega-6 Content of 18 Oils
A seed oils chart with real numbers: linoleic acid, oleic acid, saturated fat and ALA per 100 g for 18 oils, plus smoke points and how much you eat.
Omega-6 in 18 oils, highest to lowest
Seed oils are not one thing: safflower and grapeseed oil carry roughly 70 to 75 grams of omega-6 per 100 grams, while canola carries about 19 and high-oleic sunflower about 9. The chart below gives linoleic acid (the main omega-6), oleic acid, saturated fat and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA, the plant omega-3) in grams per 100 g of oil, with an approximate smoke point and the way each oil actually gets eaten.
| Oil | Linoleic (omega-6) | Oleic | Saturated | ALA (omega-3) | Smoke point | How it is usually eaten |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Safflower, high-linoleic | 75 g | 13 g | 6 g | 0 g | ~450°F | Dressings, older margarine blends; small amounts |
| Grapeseed | 70 g | 16 g | 10 g | 0.1 g | ~420°F | Dressings, quick sautés; small amounts |
| Sunflower, high-linoleic | 66 g | 20 g | 10 g | 0 g | ~440°F | Frying, packaged snacks; can be large |
| Hemp seed | 56 g | 11 g | 10 g | 17 g | ~330°F | Drizzled cold, not heated; small |
| Corn | 54 g | 28 g | 13 g | 1 g | ~450°F | Deep frying, margarine; can be large |
| Walnut (nut, not seed) | 53 g | 23 g | 9 g | 10 g | ~320°F | Finishing oil; small |
| Cottonseed | 52 g | 18 g | 26 g | 0.2 g | ~420°F | Commercial fryers, snack foods; often invisible |
| Soybean | 51 g | 23 g | 15 g | 7 g | ~450°F | The US default in restaurants and packaged food; large |
| Pumpkin seed | 50 g | 30 g | 18 g | 0.5 g | ~320°F | Finishing oil; small |
| Sesame, refined | 41 g | 40 g | 14 g | 0.3 g | ~410°F | Stir-fry and seasoning; small to moderate |
| Rice bran | 34 g | 39 g | 20 g | 1.6 g | ~450°F | Frying; moderate |
| Peanut (legume, not seed) | 32 g | 46 g | 17 g | 0 g | ~450°F | Deep frying; moderate |
| Canola / rapeseed | 19 g | 63 g | 7 g | 9 g | ~400°F | All-purpose cooking and baking; large |
| Flaxseed | 14 g | 19 g | 9 g | 53 g | ~225°F | Never heated, spooned onto food; small |
| Avocado (fruit) | 13 g | 68 g | 12 g | 1 g | ~480°F | High-heat cooking; moderate |
| Olive, extra virgin (fruit) | 10 g | 71 g | 14 g | 0.8 g | ~375°F | Nearly everything; often the largest single fat |
| Sunflower, high-oleic | 9 g | 82 g | 8 g | 0 g | ~440°F | Frying, snack foods, infant formula; can be large |
| Coconut (fruit kernel) | 2 g | 6 g | 87 g | 0 g | ~350°F | Baking, sautéing; small to moderate |
Five entries are here for contrast and are not seed oils at all: walnut is a nut, peanut is a legume, olive and avocado are pressed from fruit pulp, and coconut oil comes from the kernel inside a fruit. Which Oils Are Not Seed Oils? A Clear List draws that boundary properly, because the line is blurrier than most charts admit.
What the four fat columns mean
Every figure is grams per 100 g of oil, and since oil is essentially all fat, the numbers double as percentages of the fat. The four columns do not add to 100 because each oil also carries smaller fatty acids that would clutter a chart without changing the picture.
Linoleic acid is the omega-6 everyone is arguing about. It is an essential fatty acid, meaning the body cannot make it, and it is the raw material for arachidonic acid, which sits upstream of several signalling molecules involved in inflammation. Oleic acid is the monounsaturated fat that dominates olive, avocado, canola and the high-oleic seed cultivars. The saturated column groups palmitic, stearic, lauric and the rest.
ALA is the plant omega-3, and it is not interchangeable with the EPA and DHA in oily fish; the body converts only a modest and variable fraction. That is why flaxseed oil looks spectacular in the ALA column without being a straight substitute for eating fish. The ratio between the omega-6 and omega-3 columns is the number many people are hunting for, and it is a genuinely contested metric — see Which Cooking Oils Cause Inflammation? The Evidence.
The range inside the category is wider than the category
Read the chart top to bottom and the phrase "seed oil" stops describing a composition. Safflower at 75 g and high-oleic sunflower at 9 g are both seed oils. Canola is a seed oil that is mostly monounsaturated and carries more omega-3 than most fish-free foods in a typical kitchen. Cottonseed is a seed oil with more saturated fat than lard has in some columns.
Two seeds explain most of the confusion. Sunflower and safflower are each sold in high-linoleic and high-oleic versions that come from different cultivars of the same plant, and the bottles look nearly identical. A snack bag that lists "sunflower oil" could be either. When a food is fried commercially, high-oleic is increasingly the one used, because it survives repeated heating better.
What a high omega-6 number does and does not establish
A high linoleic acid figure tells you the composition of the oil. It does not, on its own, establish that the oil is harmful. This is the part most charts skip, and it is worth being precise about.
The mechanistic argument is real: more dietary linoleic acid means more substrate for arachidonic acid and the eicosanoids made from it. The trouble is what happens when that argument is tested directly. Controlled feeding trials that raise linoleic acid and then measure inflammatory markers in blood have generally not found the consistent increase the mechanism predicts. Large pooled analyses of long-term dietary data have generally not found higher linoleic acid intake tracking with worse cardiovascular outcomes, and several have found the association pointing the other way. Major dietary guidance bodies have looked at the same evidence and not concluded that linoleic acid should be restricted.
What remains genuinely open is narrower and worth stating plainly. Intake of these oils rose sharply over the last century, which is a change without a long observational record. Repeatedly heated frying oil produces oxidation products that are a separate issue from the fatty acid itself. And almost none of this has been tested against the outcome most people actually care about, which is how they feel day to day. "Not established as harmful" is not the same as "proven safe", and anyone selling you either sentence with confidence is ahead of the evidence.
Smoke point is a separate axis
Smoke point and omega-6 content are unrelated columns, and conflating them is common. Refining raises the smoke point of nearly any oil, so a refined high-linoleic sunflower oil takes more heat than extra virgin olive oil while carrying six times the omega-6. Meanwhile polyunsaturated fats oxidize more readily than monounsaturated or saturated ones during long heating, storage in a clear bottle, or a warm cupboard next to the stove, all of which happens well below the smoke point. The full comparison is in the Cooking Oil Smoke Point Chart for 20 Oils.
The column nobody prints: how much you eat
Fifteen grams of grapeseed oil in a vinaigrette contributes about ten grams of linoleic acid. A restaurant portion of fried food cooked in soybean oil can contribute several times that without appearing anywhere you would think to look. This is why the last column of the chart matters more than the first for most people: the oils with the highest percentages are frequently the ones eaten in the smallest quantities, and the moderate ones are eaten by the ladleful.
Most intake is invisible rather than poured. Mayonnaise, salad dressings, packaged baked goods, crackers, restaurant sauces and anything deep-fried carry the bulk of it. US ingredient lists usually name the oil, but a declaration like "vegetable oil (soybean and/or canola oil)" is permitted, so the exact oil in a package can change between batches. If you want to move the number in either direction, the fryer and the dressing bottle are where the leverage is, not the teaspoon you cook an egg in.
Why your bottle may not match this chart
Published fatty acid figures are averages. Cultivar, growing climate, harvest year and refining all shift the numbers, and blends are labelled loosely. Cold-pressed and refined versions of the same seed can differ by several grams per 100 g. Treat every row here as a typical value with a real range around it rather than a specification, and treat a single-digit gap between two oils as noise. Grapeseed is the clearest case of a bottle whose reputation runs ahead of its data, which Is Grapeseed Oil Healthy? The Omega-6 Question works through row by row.
Watching oil in your own log
If you want to know whether any of this matters for you specifically, the honest answer is that a chart cannot tell you. NutriAI takes a photo of a meal, estimates what is in it, and gives it a letter grade for estimated inflammatory potential, then lets you log symptoms afterwards and surfaces possible patterns between the two over time. Oil is candidly the weakest input in that estimate: a photograph cannot see how much oil a dish absorbed, and dressings and sauces are the hardest items to read. The grade is an estimate from a consistent framework rather than a measurement, a surfaced pattern is a correlation in your own log rather than a diagnosis, and the app is not a medical device. Used that way, over weeks, it answers a question no chart can.
What this is based on
- Government and academic food composition databases that publish fatty acid profiles per 100 g of edible oil
- Controlled feeding trials measuring circulating inflammatory markers after changes in dietary linoleic acid
- Pooled analyses of long-term observational cohort data on polyunsaturated fat intake and cardiovascular outcomes
- Food oil chemistry literature on refining, smoke point determination and oxidative stability during repeated heating
- National dietary guidance reviews addressing polyunsaturated fat and linoleic acid intake
Frequently asked questions
- Which seed oil has the most omega-6?
- High-linoleic safflower oil is typically the highest at roughly 75 g of linoleic acid per 100 g, followed by grapeseed at about 70 g and high-linoleic sunflower at about 66 g. High-oleic versions of sunflower and safflower are far lower, which is why the label wording matters more than the seed.
- Is a high omega-6 percentage bad?
- Not established. Linoleic acid is an essential fat, and controlled trials that raise it have generally not shown the rise in inflammatory markers the mechanism predicts, while long-term dietary data has generally not linked it to worse cardiovascular outcomes. Open questions remain around heavily reheated frying oil and the scale of the historical increase in intake.
- Which cooking oil is lowest in omega-6?
- Coconut oil is lowest at about 2 g per 100 g, though it is mostly saturated fat. Among the more versatile options, high-oleic sunflower is near 9 g, extra virgin olive oil near 10 g and avocado oil near 13 g.
- Is canola oil a seed oil?
- Yes. Canola is pressed from rapeseed, so it belongs in the category, but its composition is closer to olive oil than to safflower: roughly 19 grams of linoleic acid, 63 of oleic acid and 9 of ALA per 100 g. It is the clearest example of why the category name predicts very little.
- Does a higher smoke point mean an oil is more stable?
- Not reliably. Smoke point mostly reflects how refined an oil is and how many free fatty acids it contains. Resistance to oxidation tracks more closely with how polyunsaturated the oil is and with how it has been stored and reused, which is why a high smoke point polyunsaturated oil can still degrade in a fryer.
- How much omega-6 is in a tablespoon of oil?
- A tablespoon is roughly 14 g of oil, so multiply any row by about 0.14. That is around 10 g of linoleic acid for safflower, 7 g for soybean, 2.7 g for canola and 1.4 g for olive oil.