2024 was undoubtedly the year that seed oils first swept the mainstream. Defenders of ultraprocessed foods are on their back foot, but the reality is that not much has changed on the ground.

It is still far too hard for restaurants to source real ingredients (buns, condiments etc) free of seed oils, and the grocery aisles remain a minefield of farmwashing and outright lying on labels.

How Real Change Happens - 2025

Seed Oil Scout has the audience and the platform to ensure, at the very least, that eager consumers are matched with the best restaurants in their cities and products on the market. Here are our key initiatives for the coming year:

• In the app - Improved coverage, UI, AI

• In the grocery store - A new standard for packaged foods

• For restaurant owners - From snitching to flipping

• Microplastics testing and beyond - Fighting the next war

• Building community - Bringing people back together

We can’t do this alone, we’ll send out a more formal careers post in the coming weeks, but you can submit this form if you think you can help us fulfill this mission.

Shoutout to Sweetgreen who just reformulated their ranch to be explicitly free of seed oils, and added even more PROTEIN.

You can see our seed oil free ordering guide here or in Seed Oil Scout.

In The Seed Oil Scout App

Seed Oil Scout is the best tool available for finding restaurants that care about sourcing and oil usage, we’re now ready to take the next step in modernizing the UI and increasing map coverage.

• Greatly increased map coverage, doubling the rate of restaurant reporting and accuracy

• Refreshed and simplified UI - SOS will be the best app on Earth for quickly and holistically investigating a restaurant, from ambiance and photos to food sourcing and menus.

• The very best of AI - It’s a cliche at this point, but we believe AI can greatly improve the way diners interact with restaurants, particularly around specific dietary questions, and menu suggestions. Stay tuned, we promise it will be worth it.

In The Grocery Store

Reading every single ingredient label for the same list of items makes going to the grocery store feel like a graduate research project.

We’ve been working hard for the past months on Seed Oil Safe, a badge for packaged foods signifying a new standard in transparency, and a rejection of ultraprocessed ingredients.

Our 8 launch partners are the best new brands in packaged food and cosmetics, and span Whole Foods, Sprouts and Costco. Stay tuned for more!

Restaurants: From snitching to flipping

2025 is the year we stop snitching in the shadows on cooking oils, and present restaurants with a plan and incentive to go seed oil free.

We are working to facilitate discounted group purchase orders on premium oils and fats from vetted suppliers (express interest here), as well as displaying the incredible benefits to customers and businesses of dropping these oils.

We will greatly be expanding support to our verified partners, as well as raising the bar for what it means to be verified, with more rigorous vetting and testing.

We’re hoping to inspire and support as many new entrepreneurs as possible in this area, you can learn more about the program at seedoilscout.com/verified

Guiding You Through Microplastic Mayhem

Many of you have probably seen the PlasticList.org announcement, and like us are quite stressed and confused. 

Plastics and phthalate testing continues to find alarmingly high levels of plastics nearly everywhere we look, including a grass-fed ribeye from Whole Foods that wasn’t wrapped in plastic.

We are partnering with laboratories and researchers to make sense of the harm being done by these chemicals as well as where they are coming from in our supply chains, and how concerned consumers can best avoid them.

We’ll do our best not to raise undue alarm, and present results in a digestible, unbiased way. 

We’ll be greatly increasing our general educational output on social media and in this newsletter as well.

Bringing People Back Together

Prioritizing your health often means losing a few friends along the way. Greatly cutting down what you’re willing to eat, and keeping a consistent bedtime can be isolating at first, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

With our network of over 1M of the healthiest people on the planet, we promise to do our best to bring people back together, through meetups and in-app initiatives.

We are also thinking about how to help new mothers navigate the “ultraprocessed-food on a playdate problem”, we think we have the network to connect likeminded people in every major city and suburb.

Get Involved

Your SOS subscription is what fuels these initiatives, so thank you to all paying subscribers. Filing a report in the app is always a way to pitch in, but if you think you can contribute more directly fill this form and we’ll review your experience.

We’ll send a more detailed careers blast in the next week or so. If you’re itching to get involved, please fill this form and we’ll be in touch if it’s a fit.

Happy New Year Scouts 🫡