There are a couple of issues I’ve seen associated with studies on the health effects of different fatty acids. Well-designed studies incorporate a “lead-in” with one type of fatty acid before switching to the one they want to study. For example, the mouse study I mentioned earlier in the article fed the mice saturated fats for a few weeks before testing the different amounts of linoleic acid. If you don’t incorporate such a lead-in, you might not get accurate results, because it might take the body a while to recover and for inflammatory markers to return to baseline after being fed unhealthy fats. The other problem with linoleic acid and other PUFAs is that you likely won’t see benefits if you reduce the consumption by significant amounts. In other words, if you get 20% of your calories from PUFAs and then you reduce your intake to 15%, you likely won’t see any positive effects because you’re still way above the threshold of what your body can handle.  To see a difference, you have to reduce your intake to levels that are consistent with what the human body can handle from an evolutionary perspective. As a rule of thumb, I recommend sticking with an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in your diet of 1:1 (or as close as you can get to that). Some studies even suggest even a ratio of 4-5:1, but I think that’s still too high.