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The seed oil backlash: How food and beverage brands are adapting

There is a small but growing anti-seed oil movement, with some consumers perceiving seed oils – such as rapeseed oil and sunflower oil – as harmful for human health, despite the advice of nutritionists and assurances from dietary authorities.

This seed oil scepticism aligns with a broader consumer shift towards greater scrutiny of food ingredients and demands for clean labels.

“No seed-oil” certifications, restaurant apps helping people choose dishes free from seed oils, and even some product reformulations that replace seed oils have followed as some brands seek to cater to anti-seed oil sentiment.

As with other food trends, hypes, and scares, there are various ways brands are choosing to navigate a difficult balance between scientific evidence and consumer perceptions.

Supporting a seed-oil free lifestyle

In the past year, several brands and apps have emerged explicitly catering to the anti-seed oil sentiment. The UK’s Primal Kitchen, a CPG brand with a range of condiments, sauces, cooking oils, salad dressings, and pantry staples that primarily targets consumers of a ‘paleo’ diet, offers a range of dipping sauces that prominently feature the "no seed oils" claim.

In a press release announcing its latest range of sauces earlier this year, the brand claimed that the products are “made with real ingredients like avocado oil—no seed oils (no soybean or canola)”.

Similarly, organic baby food company LittleSpoon markets its kid-friendly ‘puffs’ as "carefully avoiding seed oils".

Meanwhile, the Seed Oil Free Alliance, founded in 2023, offers a certification scheme for CPG brands and restaurants that want to make the claim that their food is free from seed oils. It offers a “simple, memorable, trademarked seal that appears on product packaging and in marketing materials [as] both a statement of fact and a provocative conversation starter”. It is not clear if any brands have successfully completed their certification process as of mid-2024.

At least two apps have also been released that help individual consumers identify seed-oil-free sources of nutrition. The Seed Oil Scout app – with the slogan “Dine like your life depends on it” enables consumers to locate restaurants that do not use seed oils. Competitor Seedy has a similar approach, claiming to be “the one stop source for a seed oil-free lifestyle”.

Seedless reformulation

However, the number of brands and resources that have gone all-in on seed oil free claims remains notably niche; the ambition of achieving the same adoption and visibility as ‘non-GMO’ or ‘gluten-free’ thus far remains far out of reach.

Nonetheless, some major brands are responding to broader consumer trends towards clean labels and concerns about ultra-processed foods in ways that occasionally overlap with the anti-seed oil agenda. For example, when Beyond Meat launched its ‘fourth generation’ of the Beyond Burger earlier this year, it replaced canola and coconut oils with avocado oil in its products. The company claims that the change enhances the fat profile and appeals to consumers seeking healthier options.

Similarly, Sweetgreen, a US-based restaurant chain known for its health-focused menu, has transitioned away from using a variety of mainly seed oils in their kitchens to focusing exclusively on extra virgin olive oil for cooking. “[W]e take into account how every ingredient is prepared, down to the oil it’s cooked in,” said Nicolas Jammet, its chief concept officer.

The Oatly strategy: Choice and counternarrative

Oatly is a brand that has a more complicated relationship with seed oils. The plant-based company, known for its oat milk products, recently introduced new formulations in response to broader consumer trends towards clean labels and ultra-processed food concerns.

Oatly Unsweetened Oatmilk and Oatly Super Basic Oatmilk are both marketed as having fewer and simpler ingredients than their traditional offerings. The Super Basic version contains just water, oats, sea salt, and citrus zest fiber. Rapeseed oil – a significant ingredient in most other Oatly products – is notably absent from these new options.

According to Mike Messersmith, president of Oatly North America, “[Oatly’s] new oatmilks were crafted to cater to different consumer preferences, like less calories, no sugar, or fewer ingredients.”

But despite these new offerings, Oatly continues to vigorously defend the nutritional value of the rapeseed oil used in their traditional products, which remain available on the market. On a website designed to feature a large selection of the (online) hate directed at the company, the brand deploys a mixture of humour, transparency, and nutritional science to counter what it calls “‘amateur nutritionists’ – aka people who make catchy TikTok videos and Twitter threads slamming Oatly’s ingredients”.

A significant proportion of the site is dedicated to a tailored selection of Oatly’s community managers’ patient responses to online comments about their use of rapeseed oil – or as one upset customer called it: “rancid oxidised poison”.

Oatly’s strategy of offering consumers a choice between a product with fewer ingredients, while investing significant time and resources into communicating the nutritional justification of maintaining a product line that contains ingredients that are out of favour with the so-called ‘amateur nutritionists’ offers an interesting approach that other food and beverage companies struggling to adapt to the ever more rapidly evolving consumer fears and preferences could draw inspiration from.