For more than three decades, loaves of crusty French bread were transformed into crunchy croutons at Olivia’s Croutons.
The croutons, sold at supermarkets nationwide, were already produced to be free of preservatives and with low levels of sugar and sodium.
But a few months ago, the grocery store chain Sprouts Farmers Markets had another request: Could the croutons be made without canola oil or other seed oils?
Seed oils have become a hot topic over the last couple of years after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly vilified them. The future U.S. health secretary claimed they were a primary cause of the obesity epidemic in the United States. Last year, Louisiana passed a law requiring restaurants to disclose their use of seed oils to customers by 2028.
Along with ultraprocessed foods and artificial dyes, the “hateful eight” — canola, corn, sunflower and other oils derived from the seeds of some plants — are blamed by some in the Make America Healthy Again movement for playing a key role in chronic disease in America.
“Industrial refining reduces micronutrients” in seed oils, making them ultraprocessed, according to the 2025 White House MAHA report, which added that seed oil was “a topic of ongoing research for its potential role in inflammation.”
But many scientists argue seed oils are not harmful to health. They point to decades of research that not only shows they are safe, but in some cases the unsaturated fats they contain have been linked with reduced risks for cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
A variety of chips, salad dressings and snacks made with avocado or olive oil or even beef tallow (rendered beef fat) are showing up on shelves at Whole Foods, Target and other national retailers, driven by growing consumer demand.
“Shoppers have become more ingredient aware, for sure,” said Brian Hillins, senior vice president of merchandising at Sprouts, which since 2023 has expanded its mix of seed-oil-free products by 30 percent, albeit from a modest start.
“Condiments were one of the first to move away from seed oils, but now we’re seeing chips and snacks, like beef tallow chips,” he said. “Those have been doing really well with us.”
Even large players like PepsiCo are wading into the no-seed-oil market in response to consumer demand. Last year, PepsiCo acquired Siete Foods, including its popular line of chips made with avocado oil, for $1.2 billion. This year, PepsiCo released some versions of its Lay’s, Ruffles and Miss Vickie’s potato chips made with avocado and olive oil. (Lay’s and Ruffles chips are typically made with vegetable oils, like canola, sunflower or corn oil.)
“As consumer interests evolve, PepsiCo remains focused on offering more options, including different oils,” a company spokesperson said in an email.
The food industry is experiencing softening demand for many products as consumers tighten their wallets. The rising use of weight-loss medications has also caused a slowdown in sales. Switching to olive or avocado oil can be two to three times as expensive as seed oils for many businesses, and those additional costs may be tough to pass along to consumers already under financial strain.
Beef tallow is not only more expensive than seeds oils, but difficult to come by in bulk quantities.
“Most beef fat is not rendered into edible tallow because there has been low demand for it over recent decades,” said Seth Goldstein, a co-founder of Ancient Crunch, which fries its Masa corn tortilla chips in beef tallow.
Still, consumers appear to be seeking out products made with avocado and olive oils and even beef tallow because they believe they are better for them, according to some analysts.
“There have been some brands touting their use of avocado oil for years, but now it is a major selling point,” said Scott Dicker, a senior director of market insights at SPINS, a research firm for the natural products industry. “A couple of years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find a potato chip that was cooked in beef tallow in stores.”
For Ancient Crunch, which was founded in 2022, interest in its Masa beef tallow chips has skyrocketed. After selling directly to consumers on its website for a couple of years, Masa Chips landed on shelves at Sprouts last October and then in Wegmans Food Markets in January. Its beef tallow chips will be available regionally in Target by June and in Whole Foods nationwide by August.
At first, the company worked directly with ranchers to source its 100 percent grass-fed tallow, but as demand for its chips grew, it teamed up with a rendering plant to obtain more. But the price of beef tallow has risen over the past four years.
Today, Ancient Crunch spends $300,000 to $500,000 for 100,000 pounds of beef tallow, enough to make about 300,000 bags of chips each month. It is adding higher-capacity equipment at its manufacturing facility in New Jersey to ramp up to several million bags per month.
For small manufacturers, the question is whether the interest in non-seed-oil products is a passing fad or will stick around for a while.
“In 1991, when we started Olivia’s Croutons, canola oil was all the rage. It was the next best thing,” said Francie Caccavo, who started the company in her kitchen in Charlotte, Vt., about 12 miles south of Burlington, and named it after her daughter. “Now, it’s like you’re putting poison in your product.”
She said she warily watched interest in seed-oil-free products grow over the last couple of years. But she held off on reformulating, largely because she believed her product — croutons — wouldn’t move the needle for anyone in terms of health consequences, good or bad.
“You’re putting four or five of these on your salad. I was using a non-GMO, clean seed oil, so I thought, ‘We’ll get away with this. People will leave us alone,’” Ms. Caccavo said. “But there’s some people out there who don’t want even a minute amount of seed oil in their products.”
Reformulating the product to be free of seed oil was relatively easy. The butter and garlic flavor croutons were made with a combination of canola oil and butter. She simply eliminated the canola oil and added more butter. For the Parmesan pepper croutons, the seed oil was swapped with more olive oil.
But butter and olive oil cost significantly more than canola oil, which is derived from the seeds of the rapeseed plant. So Ms. Caccavo raised prices by 8 cents a box to cover her costs.
She said the cholesterol levels in the croutons went up slightly with the new ingredients as well.
“I would not call them necessarily healthier,” said Ms. Caccavo. “Croutons are a topping or a garnish. As my mother always said, ‘Everything in moderation.’”
Julie Creswell is a business reporter covering the food industry for The Times, writing about all aspects of food, including farming, food inflation, supply-chain disruptions and climate change.
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