The Avocado Oil Scam Is Worse Than We Thought
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If you have been paying $6 for “avocado oil” chips because you are trying to keep soybean, canola, sunflower, and other seed oils out of your family’s food, you have every right to be furious.
A new UC Davis study tested 54 packaged foods that listed avocado oil as their only edible oil.
48 of 54 failed authenticity testing.
It gets worse:
93% of avocado-oil chips failed.
71% of avocado-oil mayonnaise failed.
100% of avocado-oil salad dressings failed.
UC Davis described the products as “adulterated with cheaper oils.”
This is not some niche labeling technicality. These products are sold at a premium precisely because customers believe they are avoiding cheaper industrial oils.
They Actually Tested the Oil
Researchers extracted the fats from finished chips, mayo, and dressings and measured their fatty acids and sterols, basically the chemical fingerprint of the oil.
They also tested whether frying or emulsifying avocado oil could make authentic oil look fake.
The important markers barely changed, and researchers even allowed a generous 10% deviation for natural differences between avocado varieties and growing regions.
Eighty-nine percent still failed.
“Maybe There Was Still Some Avocado Oil” Is Missing the Point
Technically, the test cannot prove that every failed product contained zero avocado oil. Some may have contained avocado oil diluted with soybean, canola, sunflower, or another cheaper oil.
If a company sells you an expensive product whose ingredient panel says avocado oil, and the fat inside is materially inconsistent with avocado oil, you did not get what you paid for.
And outright substitution is not hypothetical. In an earlier UC Davis investigation, some bottles labeled “pure” or “extra virgin” avocado oil were found to be nearly 100% soybean oil.
There May Be Another Dirty Secret in Avocado Oil
We have also heard something troubling directly from someone in the avocado-oil supply chain: that some of the largest “better-for-you” food companies may be sourcing lower-grade avocado oil made using processing byproducts, including skins and pits, rather than simply oil from avocado flesh.
We have not independently verified that allegation, so we are not naming brands.
Avocado peel can carry much higher pesticide residues than the flesh. So if brands are using cheap peel-heavy pomace or other processing byproducts, consumers deserve to know:
What part of the avocado was used?
And was the finished oil tested for pesticide residues?
Right now, that transparency is largely nonexistent.
Meanwhile, Olive Oil Crushed It
The researchers also tested 20 processed foods whose only declared oil was olive oil.
19 out of 20 passed.
So in the same study:
Avocado oil products: 11% passed.
Olive oil products: 95% passed.
Olive oil has decades of established authenticity testing and scrutiny behind it.
Avocado oil is newer, expensive, rapidly growing, and clearly has a supply-chain problem, likely due to Mexican cartel control.
Bottom Line
Choose beef tallow or ghee, saturated fats that are rarely ever counterfeit.
Demand third-party purity testing from brands charging a premium for it.
We also want pesticide testing and sourcing transparency, especially if skins, pits, pomace, or other processing byproducts are being used.
Olive oil looked dramatically more trustworthy in this study.
If avoiding seed oils matters to you, the ingredient label alone may not be enough.
You shouldn’t need a chemistry lab to know whether your kids’ avocado-oil chips actually contain avocado oil.
Skip the app store and subscribe directly through Seed Oil Scout for just $19.99/year. Get full access for less and start finding seed oil–free restaurants today.
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