82 Percent of Avocado Oil Adulterated, Mislabeled or Poor Quality, Study Finds

Food sci­en­tists from the University of California found that the major­ity of avo­cado oil sold in the U.S. was of poor qual­ity, mis­la­beled or exten­sively adul­ter­ated with cheaper oils.

The study on com­mer­cially sold avo­cado oil unveiled some shock­ing data. The research team found that 82 per­cent of the ​“avo­cado oil” sam­pled was actu­ally made up of a blend of other oils, and three of the eval­u­ated prod­ucts were almost entirely com­prised of soy­bean oil.

Selina Wang, co-author of the study told Olive Oil Times she was shocked by the high rate of adul­ter­ation. ​“I was expect­ing some per­cent­age of adul­ter­ants, but not 100 per­cent,” said Wang. The research team was less sur­prised by the wide­spread mis­la­bel­ing which they attrib­uted to a lack of stan­dards.

Wang said the study demon­strated an urgent need for the intro­duc­tion of enforce­able stan­dards in the avo­cado oil indus­try to pro­tect con­sumers, gen­uine pro­duc­ers and the indus­try as a whole.

“I think efforts to estab­lish stan­dards have been made by indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies, but not as an orga­nized group. A Standard of Identity from FDA or some­thing sim­i­lar would be very help­ful,” the researcher said.

Gary Hannam, CEO of Olivado, the world’s largest avo­cado oil pro­ducer and sup­plier to over 3,500 out­lets in the U.S. echoed Wang’s call for inter­na­tional stan­dards. He said he would like to see legal require­ments intro­duced for avo­cado oil on a par with those laid down for olive oil.

Hannam said he noticed that the researchers revealed no brand names in the test data, ​“but we noted that there were no tests done on any oils from New Zealand or Kenya, which indi­cates that our oils were not included in the tests.”

According to Hannam, fraud­u­lent avo­cado oil is pre­dom­i­nately an ​“American prob­lem,” as both Canada and Europe already have more estab­lished guide­lines in place.

“In the U.K. and Europe a super­mar­ket tests every prod­uct before it goes onto a shelf. This is not the case in the U.S. where the price is key to a list­ing deci­sion. A prod­uct being ​‘true to label’ is essen­tial in the U.K. and Europe. In the U.S., sales vol­ume is essen­tial.”

“Reassuring cus­tomers is dif­fi­cult in the U.S. mar­ket where the empha­sis on qual­ity and ori­gin of food is not as impor­tant to a con­sumer as in the U.K. and Europe,” Hannam said. ​“Buyers in U.S. super­mar­kets are not con­cerned about qual­ity or prove­nance either.”

Hannam told Olive Oil Times that wide­spread fraud in the avo­cado oil indus­try made it extremely dif­fi­cult for gen­uine pro­duc­ers to oper­ate as they could­n’t com­pete on price with fake avo­cado oil pro­duc­ers. He con­ceded that Olivado had lost accounts because they were unable to com­pete with cheap adul­ter­ated prod­ucts.

“We have seen a decrease in our sales of extra vir­gin avo­cado oil of up to 60 per­cent in some U.S. sales regions in the past two months. An extra vir­gin prod­uct is four times the price of these fraud­u­lent oils which are usu­ally refined (or not even avo­cado oil). As with olive oil, there is a mar­ket­place for extra vir­gin and refined avo­cado oils. But even refined avo­cado oils can­not com­pete with these fraud­u­lent oils on price.”

Wang said that, while some pro­duc­ers were finan­cially moti­vated to pass off cheaper blended prod­ucts as avo­cado oil, many bulk buy­ers who sim­ply pur­chased avo­cado oil from pro­duc­ers were unaware of the pro­duc­t’s risk of adul­ter­ation caused by the lack of stan­dards.

The UC Davis study con­firmed find­ings from avo­cado oil pro­duc­ers’ own inde­pen­dent sur­veys of the mar­ket.

Hannam explained his com­pa­ny’s strat­egy for tack­ling the chaos caused by avo­cado oil fraud.

“Olivado and a num­ber of other avo­cado oil pro­duc­ers and their national gov­ern­ments are work­ing to estab­lish a Codex Alimentarius stan­dard for extra vir­gin and refined avo­cado oils. This will give an inter­na­tional legal frame­work for ​‘true to label’ require­ments and analy­ses.”

“We are start­ing a process of test­ing all avo­cado oils our super­mar­ket cus­tomers are sell­ing so we can pro­vide them with sci­en­tific results,” he added. ​“Our hope is that they will rec­og­nize that high sales of fake prod­ucts are not a great ser­vice to their cus­tomers.”

The UC Davis food sci­en­tist advised shop­pers to pur­chase smaller bot­tles of avo­cado oil which can be con­sumed while still fresh and to store the prod­uct in a cool dark cup­board. She also rec­om­mended pur­chas­ing oil that’s clos­est to its harvest/production time rather than rely­ing on ​“best before” dates.

“Consumers should rec­og­nize the fla­vor of fresh vir­gin avo­cado oil, which can dif­fer by vari­eties and prod­uct ori­gins,” Wang sug­gested. ​“Grassy, but­tery, mush­room-like and avo­cado fla­vor are com­mon descrip­tors of authen­tic and fresh extra vir­gin avo­cado oil.”

Virgin avo­cado oil should be green in color while refined oil is light yel­low or almost clear as pig­ments are removed dur­ing the refin­ing process.

Wang also reminded con­sumers that even high-qual­ity avo­cado oil can turn ran­cid over time, which can be detected from its stale odor.

“I hope this report jump­starts impor­tant work around stan­dards devel­op­ment for the avo­cado oil indus­try so con­sumers can enjoy this prod­uct with con­fi­dence and the mar­ket is fair for hon­est pro­duc­ers and buy­ers to com­pete,” Wang said.

The research team from the UC Davis Department of Food Science & Technology has pledged to con­tinue inves­ti­gat­ing faster and afford­able meth­ods to detect avo­cado oil adul­ter­ation.

• Science Direct


• UC Davis