Avocado Oil Is in the News. Here’s What the Data Actually Shows — and How to Prove Yours Is Clean

Avocado oil purity has become a national story. A UC Davis research team led by Dr. Selina Wang, Professor of Cooperative Extension in the Department of Food Science and Technology, found that a large majority of packaged foods labeled as made with avocado oil — chips, mayonnaise, and salad dressings — showed compositional patterns inconsistent with authentic avocado oil. In August, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an industry-wide investigation into avocado oil labeling, issuing civil investigative demands to three major brands named in the study. 

For anyone working in fats and oils, this is a moment worth understanding clearly — and worth acting on. 

Two studies, two different questions 

Dr. Wang’s lab has published two distinct pieces of work, and it’s important not to collapse them into one story. 

The earlier study, on bottled avocado oil itself, was a straightforward purity and freshness assessment: is the oil in the bottle what the label says it is, and is it fresh? That research was rigorous and well-designed, and it holds up. 

The newer study is a different and harder problem: testing avocado oil as an ingredient inside finished, processed foods. Once avocado oil is blended, emulsified, or fried into a chip, mayonnaise, or dressing, the chemical fingerprint researchers rely on — fatty acid and sterol profiles — can shift. Natural variables like growing region and avocado variety already move those fingerprints before processing even starts. Wang’s team built in a margin for that variability, and most tested products still failed. But the finished-food matrix genuinely makes authenticity testing more complex than testing neat oil, and any responsible reading of the results should carry that caveat. 

That nuance doesn’t undercut the findings — if anything, it points exactly where the industry’s testing gap is. 

Why this is a supply chain problem, not just a labeling problem 

Wang has noted that brands may not even know their oil has been adulterated. Oil moves through brokers and multiple suppliers before it reaches a manufacturing line, and without independent testing, a substituted or diluted ingredient can pass through several links in that chain undetected. That’s true whether you’re the company selling bottled oil, the supplier providing bulk oil to a food manufacturer, or the manufacturer putting your name on the finished product. 

It’s also precisely the kind of problem external, standardized testing is built to catch. 

The detection science is genuinely catching up 

That difficulty is backed up in the literature, not just this one study. A systematic review just published in the Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society — “Adulteration of Edible Oils: Additives and Detection Methods,” by Dinithi Sakalasuriya, Nimanthi Jayathilaka, and Kapila Seneviratne of the University of Kelaniya — worked through six decades of published research (1965–2025) on edible oil adulterants and how they’re detected. Its conclusion, in short: chromatographic, spectroscopic, and molecular detection methods each have real strengths, but also real limits on reliability and sensitivity depending on what’s being tested and how it’s been processed. 

In other words, this isn’t a solved problem waiting for someone to apply the right test. It’s an active area of methods development — and one where AOCS’s own journal is setting the research agenda. 

Where AOCS’s Laboratory Proficiency Program fits in 

Reliable authenticity testing depends on labs that can consistently produce accurate, comparable results — and the only way to confirm that is to check a lab’s performance against other labs testing the same material. That’s what AOCS’s Laboratory Proficiency Program (LPP) exists to do. 

AOCS has launched an avocado oil LPP series, open to both oil manufacturers verifying what they’re selling and food producers verifying what they’re buying and using as an ingredient. Participating labs receive blind samples on a regular cycle and get back an objective read on how their results compare to the field — the same kind of independent verification this news cycle is putting a spotlight on. 

Enrollment is open now through November 20, 2026, covering two quarters of testing to start in 2027. Given the current level of scrutiny — from researchers, from regulators, and increasingly from consumers — this is a practical, low-drama way to have documented, third-party evidence of testing rigor before anyone asks for it. 

Learn more and enroll in the avocado oil LPP at aocs.org. Use code 2627HALF during enrollment to secure a reduced half year rate.  

Related reading: Why External Proficiency Matters for Fats and Oils Labs · Adulteration of Edible Oils: Additives and Detection Methods, JAOCS (open access)