The Avocado Oil Scandal Just Got 10x Worse.

Dr. Jay, I want to get a scientist's perspective on this, because this UC Davis thing is quite the scandal. They tested 54 avocado oil based products, they looked at like mayonnaise, they looked at chips fried in avocado oil, they looked at salad dressings, they found that 48 out of these 54 had basically adulterated oils in them, they didn't have avocado oil. What did the study do, what were they looking at, when we're actually looking under the microscope here? Yeah, they were looking at gas chromatographs, so they're running these fats through a separator basically so they can analyze the different components. It's like a fingerprint, right? Or maybe like a better analogy would be an animal track or something. So like, you know, if you're good at tracking animals, you look down, you see a deer track and then you look down, you see a wolf track or something. It's very obvious, right? But that's what they were doing, they're running these gas chromatographs on the fats, they're just running them through and looking at the differences. So you can actually see the fingerprint of seed oils, for example, versus olive oil versus avocado oil, right? And they're finding that basically these companies were cheating and adulterating their products with seed oils because it's cheaper, presumably, right? And it had to be more than 10%, I mean, they specifically said in the study that it had to be, you know, more than 10% variance in the direction of seed oils. So it wasn't like, oh, it was a 1% cheat, it wasn't 5% cheat, it was more than 10% and they didn't quantify the upper limits, but I'm sure some of them were 80, 90% seed oils, right? There's one, they haven't disclosed which brand it is, that ended up being 100% soybean oil. Yeah. The thing that's driving me crazy is that there's people probably that have paid interest working with some of these companies, right? Like they're just maybe, it's probably just like influencers like, oh, they're one of my sponsors, so I want to make sure that I protect them. They're literally out there saying that this study design was flawed and that like UC Davis did something wrong and that these, and then you see, I mean, this is what's really getting me and I get heated about this, is like Boulder Canyon like charges an arm and a leg for their chips fried in avocado oil. They were an offender. They didn't have avocado oil or as much avocado oil, but their blanket boiler plate responses to people in their comments, we stand behind 100% avocado oil. And then also these levels of mental gymnastics I've been seeing from these brands and just like word salad to make it sound like, well, we choose up. Yeah, you choose, but you're not acknowledging what's happening further up the food chain. Anyway, before I get too pissed off, like what were they look, so they look at, they looked at the fatty acid profile and then they were also looking at sterols. So sterols is like really the smoking gun. Like what does that mean when they're looking at sterols? Well you can do a blood test for sterols. You know, there's different plant sterols. So like humans have cholesterol and not LDL and HDL. I'm not talking about LDL particles. I'm talking about the actual cholesterol molecule. Plants also have cholesterol, but it's not called the cholesterol. It's called cytosterols, right? So there's like beta cytosterol and alpha cytosterol and camphesterol and there's all these different cytosterols and they're very unique. So you know, some people even have genetic mutations where they don't clear plant cholesterol very well. So this is relevant to human health in a lot of ways. If you're having the wrong types of plant cholesterol, um, soybeans, for example, because they're seeds, they're going to have widely diverse types of plant cholesterol compared to avocados, for example, or olives, for example, comes from a pulp with avocado and all of it's different. Yeah, it's well, and not to mention they're just squeezing of avocados and they're squeezing the olives to get the oil. It's not that hard. I mean, here in California, like I see these olive trees and you give them a squeeze and you get hands, get all oil. It's kind of cool because I'm not from here. So it's unique to me. But then these seeds, you don't get that. Like you have to use a bunch of chemicals and hyper processing to extract oils out of seeds. So it's more different than people think. People think that this, you know, the study results were kind of flawed or whatever. Well, yeah, maybe it's a preliminary study, meaning it's the first one on this exact topic, but you got to have somebody do something right to, to identify these things. It's actually very thorough. I like Selena Wang. She's the one that kind of was the principal investigator on this and she's been really good in the past. Um, and so, you know, it's ironic, right? When you get studies that are funded by big food and big pharma, you always have this like pro pro big food, big pharma crowd behind it saying how good the studies are. But then when you have good studies like this one, it's a very good study. Um, you get the exact same crowd saying suddenly those are bad studies and they're perfectly good studies. So I think there's a lot of bias and influence with that, but, but the, in terms of the actual plant cholesterol is again, they're a very unique fingerprint. You can identify them. And I think the pattern that was most frustrating to me, cause I've personally, you know, when I, when I was on Mark Sisson's podcast back when he owned the primal blueprint company, he used to send me olive oil or the, he used to send me the avocado mayo and it wouldn't separate. It was in glass jars, whatever. Um, now I used to, I've bought it in the past and it's like all separated and weird and looks different. So I know there's something different. I know they changed it just from my own experience. I don't even need a study to tell me like they did something different even when they claimed that there was no differences. And then you look at the other companies involved with the study. They were bought out by Hershey. One of them was bought by the Utz, U-T-Z potato chip company. I mean, I went through it on my YouTube video just because it was so astonishing how many of these used to be small companies that were family-based and then they got bought out by these large corporations. Something that might help you out is having your pantry stock, having your refrigerator stocked ahead of time. Thrive Market makes that super easy. And I put a link down below for $20 off for your first three orders with Thrive Market plus a free $60 gift. So what Thrive Market is, is it's an online membership-based grocery store. So think the coolest grocery store that you could imagine with all kinds of foods that are essentially Thomas approved, all kinds of foods that have already been vetted in terms of ingredient quality, in terms of sourcing, in terms of like not having preservatives and it's all right there and then it gets delivered to your doorstep in just a couple of days. So super easy, super convenient. But the thing that I like about it is it makes it super easy to stock my pantry, to stock my fridge, to stock just my house with the appropriate things. And one thing that I've learned is you never go to the grocery store hungry. When you shop at Thrive Market, it makes it easy because you're not like tempted to just grab a bunch of things you don't need because the food that's already there is already something that would probably be okay to have in your pantry or in your fridge. So that link down below gets you $20 off for not your first order, but your first three orders. So no matter what size your cart is at that point in time. So that link is down below in the top line of the description. So check them out after this interview. I think another one that's been pointed out, people are saying, well, they like maybe when you, I think the biggest claim that people are saying is that the database or the data set or the codex that they were using, uh, haven't been updated and that it doesn't account for newer varieties of avocados or older varieties of avocado. So they're trying to say like, Oh, well maybe it's the algorithm isn't actually detecting. So there, it could be skewed, which what I want to underscore here with you is just like, these are sterols. These cannot like an avocado is an avocado. There's only a few breeds of avocado and they're going to have the same sterols. They're ultimately going to have the same palmitoleic acid. They're going to have the same fatty acid profile. This isn't something, it doesn't matter if it's an avocado from 1961 or an avocado from, you know, 2026, right? Like, I mean, am I, I'm not incorrect in that assumption, right? No, exactly. I had the same problem as you. I, you know, I felt like people that were writing those articles, I've read the same articles as you, you know, against this study. And I felt like they were just off base, you know, again, it's, it's pretty obvious. I think, you know, for research, I used to do a lot of lipid research. You know, I used to use a technique called surface plasma and resonance, and I would flow these fats across these surfaces with oxidized LDLs and all types of different fats, palmitic acid, oleic acids. Um, it's, you know, again, this Selena Wong, who, who was the directing this study, she's an expert on this. You know, I think if there was some database problem she would have pointed out in the study, right? Um, these authors were very honest and they had integrity. I think, you know, again, the people that are writing these articles are probably less educated than she was. And usually that comes up in the discussion of the paper. If, if somebody sees a bunch of flaws, the peer reviewers will pick it up or she'll pick it up and actually admit that in the paper. So it's a good place to look, go to the direct source instead of going to other people's articles that are written on this. When they looked at the fatty acid profile, avocados signature fatty acids went down and things like steric acid went up. And then when they looked at the sterols, some of the signatures like beta-cytoserol went down and other things went up. They essentially ran two very different tests and both tests drifted away from avocado oil in the same direction. That's what makes this very compelling and hard to really dispute. It's exactly the kind of thing that you would see if seed oil was blended in. Now, UC Davis did not specifically say they added seed oils and they did not say who did this, but they did raise a pretty serious red flag. And I think it highlights some things we need to look at, but now let's go deeper into the science because I get pretty passionate about this. What's even interesting, there's two other parts of this study that I think people need to know cause they might just be looking at their Instagram feed and getting a short blurb on it. But they also took one portion of the study and they took avocado oil that was tested in confirmed avocado oil, heated it to the nth degree and then tested it to see if it would change at all because they actually even wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe just maybe when you're testing chips that have been fried in avocado oil, maybe the high heating changed the structure. So they took regular avocado oil, heated it up. The Wizzow stayed the same state of avocado. So it's like, okay, even when we, so that's section number one. But then they tested olive oil brands. They tested olive oil. Uh, I think chips or not really all of them. Yeah. Mayo and stuff like that. And no issues. They didn't have an issue with olive oil not passing or failing the test. And it's so simple when you look at the regulations, like olive oil is regulated, avocado oil, not really in just a little bit in the last couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you, man. It's a problem. Where do you think this comes from? Where do you think it's happening? I think it just was, I think it just comes from people. It's just cheating, right? It's just people cheating the system because they can get away with it. I think it's an ethics problem or a morality problem. Um, I mean, that's what I said on my YouTube channel, because you know, it's pretty obvious if you're going to say you're using a hundred percent of avocado oil and then you're cutting it with seed oils, that's just unethical. But people are doing things. If they can get away with it, they're doing it a lot of times in the food industry. How are they not in jail? Like that's like, isn't that false advertising or can they say like, I didn't know that the supplier is giving me this. I mean, I know you're not a food industry expert, but how on earth is that legal? I don't think it should be. Yeah. It's, I think what the, I mean, I don't know, again, from the avocado oil world, like maybe there's only a few suppliers and they're all just getting it from the same, you know, two or three. Could be. And remember when they did the chocolate consumer reports, tested chocolate cacao, and most of them had lead and cadmium above the safety limits. And then that's exactly what they found is they went back to the source and found there was only a couple suppliers and they were all getting their cacao from the same source. And somehow they'd contaminated it when they were isolating it with a bunch of heavy metal. So certainly possible. They're cheating at the, at that level, right. At the early stages. And then everybody's buying it from them. Yeah. And there's such a demand for it. Right. There's such a, like a, I was at sprouts yesterday and I'm like, look, and I'm like, well, first of all, I found it. This is sound bad, but I, I, I shouldn't have laughed because it sucks because like, I don't want this to happen to the people and what it represents. But like every avocado oil chip, 75% off. Exactly. I saw that too. Crazy. I was like, Oh my God, Costco. I saw pulled a bunch of them. Like people are taking it seriously. You still have like, I'm going to just, are they shills? Like what the heck? Like defending this. It's like, well, how long are we, how far are we going to take this? And like people it's a, but yeah, they were all buy one, get one free. Or it's like, they're clearly trying to clear them out. And I just want to, that's the, that's the reason we're trying to raise awareness on this. Because like, remember when the subway sandwiches had the, the bread material had yoga, yoga mat material. It had azo dicarbonamide. And I think what's her name? Yanni, Yanni Hari. She was the one that put together a petition, raised a bunch of awareness and they pulled it out of there and they made a big public scene about it because they had to. So that's the good thing about this study and about raising awareness in general is it makes it is the best way to force these giant companies to make changes. Molecularly speaking, what's the difference between, because they tested the two things they tested. They tested the, um, you know, the actual like fatty acids and then the, the sterile. So like what, what's just, just for people that are listening, like what is the, what's kind of the difference in those two things that they test? Yeah. Huge difference, right? So fatty acids, they have a carboxyl group and a tail, right? So it's like a couple of oxygens and a carbon and then this long tail and the tail gets very diverse. The carboxyl group is pretty much the same. It would be like this water bottle. This would be a carboxyl group, this cap and this actual glass part is the tail. This part changes a lot between different fatty acids, right? Like you've heard of short chain, fatty acids, medium chain, triglycerides, MCTs. That's all the tail. All of those have the same cap on them. They have the same carboxyl group, but some of them have kinks in them and the kinks are very different and unique. So between all of olives and avocados and seed oils, you're going to find a lot of variation here. Just like with coconuts, if they would have tested coconut oil, they'd be looking for 12 carbon chains. They'd be looking for eight carbons, 10 carbons, 12. They're always in odd numbers. Almost most of them found in nature found in odd numbers, just the way the enzyme makes them. So unique fingerprint right here. With cholesterol, it would be more like this placemat. It's a huge molecule relative to a fatty acid. It's a big, it's got big benzene rings. It's got like five of them. So they're like completely structurally different. And then there's a difference between the different types of sterols. The different cholesterols have unique fingerprints, usually on the tail, and they actually have fats connected to them sometimes. So you have the cholesterol molecule, which is called a cytosterol, but then you'll actually have a fat attached to that too. So there's multiple layers of differences between the side of the sterols and the fatty acids. And each individual one, again, they have differences between themselves too. Okay. So it's not like, it's just like a broad fingerprint. It's like, when you say fingerprint, it is almost like a fingerprint. Like it's just like, because you've got these different tails that come off of that. You've got the, correct. Okay. Yeah. So that is the part that nobody's really talking about when people, because it's so easy. Like, Oh, we just tested. You just stick a, like a little like strip in there and it tells you what fat it is. And we're like, Oh, like UC Davis, you're just manipulating. Like this is like real. It's like going to a crime scene and it's as close as you can get. But gas chromatograph does. I've run a whole bunch of gas chromatography. They have copper tubing. It's cool. You can open up the machine. You'd look at it cause it's always breaking down. So you got to open it up all the time. Um, it's got miles of copper tubing, just thin line. It looks like fishing line, but it's actually hollow copper tubing. And it's all wound up like this in a spool. And you actually fire these fats through that stuff. And through the process of going through all of those miles of copper tubing, they come out at the different end at different times. So it's super easy. You just fire it in on one end and then you just pick it up on the next end and you'll see a fingerprint on the next side. It'll be a boom here comes on. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And then you can compare that to a different type of fat and it'll come out and give you a different fingerprint. It's literally a fingerprint. That is so wild. I mean, I just, I appreciate this. I just thought it was good to have someone that's studied lipids and understands this whole process to describe this. And I think the takeaway from this is my opinion, like brands, if they're going to say this, they need to be consistently doing third-party testing and they need to publish the damn results because like, they can say that they do third-party testing and that means nothing because when did you, what batch did you and show me the results, like show us. And I just love sometimes Instagram is funny because like it irks me because people are so like vengeful and there's, but this is one of those cases where I'm like, yes, you know what? Demand this stuff because like, like we need to take our food back. Like this is ridiculous. Like how long have we been eating this stuff? Like it pisses me off because I think of like my wife, I think of like my wife's friends with like their little kids, they're trying to do the right thing. Right. They're like, my kids want chips. Maybe like there's like, really, they can't afford this, but they're going there spending $10 on a bag of chips because they're trying to do something right to get. And it's not, it's not like avocado oil. Like avocado oil is significantly different from seed oils because yes, you can fry in it. It's going to be much more stable, not as stable as tallow. But anyway, before I have an aneurysm, where can everyone find you, man? Ajconsultingcompany.com. Where can everyone find your books? Just Amazon. Just check Amazon. I'm also on Instagram. Right on, man. I appreciate it, bro. Appreciate it.