What Is Sunflower Oil?

Sunflower oil is a common, inexpensive cooking oil and processed food ingredient made from the seeds of the common sunflower (Helianthus annuus). Home cooks and restaurants often use sunflower oil for sautéing and frying because of its low cost, easy availability, and relatively neutral flavor.

It’s also used in packaged snack foods and premade meals because fats raise the palatability of foods like potato chips, activating brain reward centers and increasing snack consumption. Sunflowers grown for sunflower oil extraction are a major global food crop, accounting for over 20% of vegetable oils produced worldwide today.

How Is Sunflower Oil Made?

In the past, as early as 1590, Indigenous people of the Americas and others made sunflower oil in small batches by grinding and pressing sunflower seeds to extract the oil. This unrefined or virgin form of sunflower oil was used in cooking, as a balm for hair and skin, and as a medicinal ingredient.

The first commercial sunflower oil production occurred in Russia in the early 19th century and set the stage for the widespread consumption of sunflower oil. As production became economically important in Europe and throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, farmers and inventors used selective breeding techniques and technological innovations to increase the oil yield from seeds.

Modern, industrial sunflower oil extraction uses the following steps to extract the maximum amount of oil from seeds:

• Seeds are cleaned, de-hulled, and ground into a coarse meal by machines.
• The sunflower meal is heated and fed into an extremely strong mechanical press to extract as much oil as possible.
• The remaining cake (pressed meal) is treated with a volatile solvent, usually hexane, to dissolve and extract the remaining oil. The solvent evaporates or is boiled out of the meal and is collected for reuse.
• The extracted sunflower oil is refined to remove color, odor, and bitterness. It’s heated, then mixed with sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate, which forms a soap mixture containing impurities. The remaining oil is separated from the soap using a centrifuge.
• Finally, the oil is treated with steam or acid and de-gummed, bleached, filtered, and deodorized using extremely high heat (440-2485°F), then packaged for transport or sale.

Is Sunflower Oil a Seed Oil?

Yes, sunflower oil is an industrial seed oil. Like other seed oils, it’s a major source of inflammatory omega-6 fats in modern diets. Previously, humans obtained these fatty acids in tiny amounts from whole foods, but omega-6 intake increased 10-fold in the U.S. and elsewhere during the 20th century due to the widespread use of seed oils.

Sunflower Oil Nutrition Facts

According to the USDA, one tablespoon (14 grams) of sunflower oil contains approximately:

1. 124 calories (kcal)
2. 0 grams of protein
3. 14 grams of total fat
4. 0 grams of carbs
5. 0 grams of fiber
6. 6 milligrams of vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol).
7. Sunflower oil is high in polyunsaturated omega-6 fats and low in monounsaturated and saturated fats. Per tablespoon, it provides:
8. 9.2 grams of omega-6 polyunsaturated fats
9. 2.7 grams of monounsaturated fats, and
10. 1.4 grams of saturated fats
11. Sunflower oil is naturally high in vitamin E, providing approximately 40% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for men and women 14 years of age or older in one tablespoon.

Unfortunately, evidence suggests that the manufacturing process of highly-refined sunflower oil may destroy or degrade the vitamin E content. Therefore, while cold-pressed sunflower oil is a good source of vitamin E, most commercially available sunflower oil used for cooking oil and in packaged, processed foods likely doesn’t contain much vitamin E.

Sunflower Oil Smoke Point and Heat Stability

The smoke point of refined sunflower oil is approximately 412-450°F. While sunflower oil has a moderate smoke point, this number doesn’t tell the full story — the oil actually isn’t very stable when heated and can produce harmful byproducts during high-heat cooking, even when it’s not smoking.

An oil’s smoke point is the temperature at which it begins to visibly smoke when heated. Chefs and home cooks often use smoke point information to decide whether a given cooking oil is appropriate for sautéing, pan-frying, or deep-frying foods.

In general, a smoke point represents the absolute upper limit of the usable temperature range of an oil. In other words, the smoke point of an oil is the maximum usable temperature for cooking, and you should avoid heating it past that point whenever possible.

However, a relatively high smoke point doesn’t mean oil is stable when heated. You might think that oils with higher smoke points would be better for high-heat cooking but this often isn’t the case.

The thermal stability or heat stability is how slowly or quickly a cooking oil breaks down when heated. And in fact, it doesn’t relate directly to an oil’s smoke point, but rather to the fatty acid composition of an oil.

Of the common types of fatty acids, saturated fats are the most heat-stable, followed by monounsaturated fats, while polyunsaturated fats are the least heat-stable.

Sunflower oil and other seed oils are high in unstable polyunsaturated fats, primarily omega-6 linoleic acid, that oxidize or break down when heated (including during manufacturing and cooking), forming unhealthy oxidation byproducts such as acrylamides, toxic aldehydes, hydroxylinoleate, free radicals, and trans fats.

Is Sunflower Oil Safe for Frying?

Sunflower seed oil is a poor choice for deep-frying and other high-heat cooking because it’s highly unstable when heated. As a result, it forms harmful byproducts, especially when reheated multiple times — a common practice in restaurants, where frying oil may be reused hundreds of times before being discarded.

Among these harmful byproducts are physiologically toxic unsaturated aldehydes, which have been linked to various health issues including inflammation, heart disease, and cancer. In a third-party analysis that compared the production of aldehydes in various cooking oils during pan frying, sunflower oil was exposed to 356ºF alongside other oils. The analysis focused on monitoring toxic aldehyde production over time.