Avocado oil claims coming under fire

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Ken Paxton, attorney general for Texas, has launched an investigation into companies that market and sell products labeled as “made with avocado oil” after a study from the University of California, Davis found that such products may contain seed oils or other ingredients not identified on ingredient lists.

“Consumers should not have to worry if they are being deceived by labels when trying to choose healthier options at the grocery store,” Paxton said Aug. 20. “I will not allow companies to fraudulently mislabel products. My office will hold accountable any company that violates the law and misleads Texans about what is actually in their food.”

The study was published online July 11 in Applied Food Research. It evaluated 74 products, including chips, mayonnaise and salad dressings, that were labeled as containing avocado oil or olive oil. Among the avocado oil-labeled products, 89% exhibited compositional patterns that were inconsistent with authentic avocado oil. Ninety-three percent of the chips, 71% of the mayonnaises and 100% of the salad dressings were inconsistent.

“These findings suggest that ingredient-level oil claims may represent an underexamined source of economic adulteration in processed foods,” the researchers said.

Among 20 olive oil products, one failed the authenticity test. While the authenticity of olive oil has been studied, tested and scrutinized for decades, avocado oil has not been monitored at the same level, according to the researchers.

Products cost more

Products promoted for containing avocado oil or olive oil tend to cost more than other products in their respective categories.

In the study, chips labeled with avocado oil ranged from 30¢ to $2 per oz, which compared with 43¢ to $1.70 for olive oil chips and 44¢ to 62¢ for vegetable oil chips. Avocado oil mayonnaises ranged from 30¢ to $1.63 per oz, which compared with 53¢ to $1.07 for olive oil mayonnaise and 24¢ to 75¢ for vegetable oil mayonnaise. Salad dressings labeled with avocado oil ranged from 60¢ to $1.12 per oz, while olive oil dressings ranged from 42¢ to $1.12 per oz.

“Consumers are increasingly paying a premium for products made with avocado oil or olive oil,” said lead author Selina Wang, PhD, a professor of cooperative extension in the UC, Davis Department of Food Science and Technology. “They deserve to get what they pay for, and food manufacturers deserve confidence that the ingredients they purchase from suppliers are authentic.”

While the authenticity of olive oil has been studied, tested and scrutinized for decades, avocado oil has not been monitored at the same level, according to researchers at the University of California at Davis.

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Products exhibited compositional patterns inconsistent with authentic avocado oil, characterized by reduced palmitic acid, palmitoleic acid, cis-vaccenic acid, beta-sitosterol and clerosterol as well as elevated stearic acid, campesterol, stigmasterol, delta-7-stigmastenol and delta-7-avenasterol. Laboratory frying and emulsification experiments showed minor shifts in authenticity markers, indicating that typical processing conditions did not explain the magnitude of deviations observed in the products, according to the researchers.

“In our experience we’ve noticed natural variables, such as geographic origin and avocado variety, can change these fingerprints,” Wang said. “So, we gave the samples some wiggle room, giving them a 10% margin of deviation to account for that, but 89% of the avocado products still failed.”

Supplier complexity

She said food manufacturers may not know their products contain adulterated oil since they source oils from third-party brokers or from several different suppliers.

Texas has issued civil investigative demands (CIDs) to Primal Kitchen, Siete Foods and Chosen Foods. The office of the attorney general will investigate to determine if the three companies and potentially other companies violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA).

“A recent UC Davis study suggests that two of our mayos and two of our dressings contain seed oils, which is simply not true,” Chosen Foods said. “We never add seed oils of any kind. We believe the testing procedures used in this recent study do not fully account for the unique characteristics of finished products such as condiments and dressings.”

Primal Kitchen and Siete Foods did not respond to request for comment.