Before the 1950’s, soybean oil and linseed oil were used to make paint. These are drying oils that combine spontaneously with the oxygen in the air to form a hard film.

Then the paint industry figured out how to make their products from petroleum distillates. The seed oil industry remarketed their product as vegetable oil, and hired some scientists to tell us the saturated fats we’d been eating for thousands of years were actually the cause of the new wave of cardiovascular disease.

At least we can still use vegetable oil as biodiesel.