You may have heard the avocado oil bandwagon barreling through a bitstream near you. It is a very special oil in terms of properties. It has an insanely high smoke point, upwards of 520°F if its refined, and a neutral flavor as though its not even there. The problem is, it might not really be there…. duh duh duuuuhh
A UC Davis study in 2020 found that 82% of the avocado oil sold in the US was either rancid or adulterated1. A 2023 follow up study didn’t show much improvement.2 Sheesh! A few samples labeled as pure avocado oil contained nearly 100% soybean oil! Yuck, my least favorite oil, besides crude oil. And get this – the telltale sign of the adulteration was the presence of sunflower or safflower oil, which is exactly what its being marketed against!
Besides that depressing reality, lets talk about a worse one – avocado oil comes with a lot of environmental concerns. Right now you could forgive it for being a useful byproduct of another market demand – eating avocados the old fashioned way. I mean come on, every piece of toast is just asking for it! Still, the avocado industry has contributed to fifteen thousand acres of deforestation in Michoacán, Mexico PER YEAR over the last ten! Not to mention the cartel extortion and kidnapping that comes with that. Now imagine avocado oil supplanted sunflower oil in world demand. You would need something like 10X the world’s avocado supply, and you’d have to grow them just for the oil, it would no longer be a byproduct.
Sunflower oil, by contrast, has a transparent and traceable supply chain, is grown domestically with well-established standards and no history of widespread adulteration. It doesn’t carry the environmental baggage of avocado production – no deforestation, no cartel involvement. And high-oleic sunflower oil has a fatty acid profile similar to olive oil, undermining the core health claims against it.
Which on that note. SEED OILS! AHHHHGGDDDDGGDHHGG!! Stay tuned for my next post which will include nothing controversial to speak of.
- 2020 study: Green, H.S. & Wang, S.C. (2020). First report on quality and purity evaluations of avocado oil sold in the US. Food Control, 116, 107328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2020.107328 ↩︎
- 2023 follow-up: Green, H.S. & Wang, S.C. (2023). Purity and quality of private labelled avocado oil. Food Control, 152, 109837. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2023.109837 ↩︎