We Question Our Neighbors, but We Trust Long Supply Chains

Commentary

Recently, I was walking through Costco with my kids when I overheard a conversation that made me laugh.

My son picked up a bag of chips and said to his brother, “Mom will probably let us get those because they’re organic and seed oil free.”

Children are always listening. They absorb our values, our habits, and our concerns. Whether we intend to or not, we are all programming our kids.

The comment also reminded me how quickly the food landscape has changed. A decade ago, hardly anyone talked about seed oils. Today, avoiding them has become one of the biggest trends in the health world. It was also one of the things that caused me to rethink my own restaurants years ago. As a vegan chef, I eventually realized that no matter how carefully I sourced ingredients, seed oils found their way into almost everything.

When we opened our restaurant in Texas, we made the decision to be seed oil free. We cook primarily with olive oil, ghee, and tallow. There are very few packaged products that make their way into our kitchen, but when they do, avocado oil has often been the alternative.

Standing in Costco, I noticed something else. Almost every chip seemed to be advertising avocado oil. Some said “seed oil free.” Others said “made with avocado oil.” Some highlighted “100% avocado oil.” The message was clear: Avocado oil has become the newest health halo.

As someone who once farmed avocados in California, I understand part of the story. There are always seconds, damaged fruit, and cosmetically imperfect avocados that cannot be sold fresh. Those avocados have long been used for products such as frozen guacamole and food service. Still, I found myself wondering: Have we really scaled avocado oil production this quickly?

That question sent me down a rabbit hole.

Researchers at the University of California–Davis found that many avocado oils sold in the United States and Canada failed quality or purity standards. In a 2023 study of private-label avocado oils, only 31 percent of samples tested were pure avocado oil, and only 36 percent met their advertised quality claims. An earlier UC–Davis study found widespread issues with rancidity, adulteration, and mislabeling, including several products that contained little or no avocado oil.

To be clear, these studies do not prove that every avocado oil product is fraudulent. They do suggest that consumers should be more cautious about assuming a label guarantees authenticity.

The findings surprised me, but what surprised me even more was what they implied.

The issue is not necessarily dishonesty by the company selling avocado oil mayonnaise or avocado oil chips. Imagine you are an entrepreneur who genuinely wants to create a healthier product. You source avocado oil from a supplier. The paperwork says avocado oil. The invoices say avocado oil. The testing says avocado oil. You build an entire brand around that promise.

But what if the problem occurred three steps earlier in the supply chain? What if your supplier was deceived? What if their supplier was deceived? What if all the people involved genuinely believed they were selling avocado oil?

That question reminded me of something that happened years ago during my vegan restaurant days.

We were widely known for our soft serve ice cream. I had spent years testing recipes, making nut milks from scratch, and experimenting with ingredients. Eventually, we settled on a powdered coconut milk that made incredible soft serve. The ingredient list was simple: coconut milk and an anti-caking agent whose name I no longer remember.

The ice cream became one of our most popular products.

Then one day, a customer told us she had suffered an allergic reaction. She had a dairy allergy.

At first, I assumed the problem must have come from somewhere else. We had no dairy in our restaurants. None. We were a vegan restaurant. Dairy simply was not part of our operation.

Then it happened again.

A second customer with a dairy allergy reported a reaction after eating the ice cream. At that point, we decided to send the powdered coconut milk to an independent laboratory for testing.

The results shocked me.

The product contained milk powder—not much; less than 1 percent.

The manufacturer believed it was likely cross-contamination rather than intentional adulteration. But for someone with a severe dairy allergy, the distinction hardly mattered.

Two people had gone to the hospital.

I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. The manufacturer, as far as I know, wasn’t trying to deceive anyone either. The package said dairy free. The ingredients didn’t list milk. I had done my due diligence.

And yet the label was wrong.

That experience fundamentally changed how I think about food.

Most conversations about food fraud focus on bad actors. We imagine a dishonest company intentionally cutting corners. Sometimes that happens. But sometimes the problem is much more complicated. Sometimes everyone in the supply chain is acting in good faith. Sometimes everyone believes the paperwork. Sometimes, everyone trusts the label. And everyone is still wrong.

When I read the avocado oil studies, I didn’t think about avocado oil. I thought about coconut milk.

Because the larger question is not whether avocado oil is good or bad. The larger question is how much we really know about anything that arrives through a long supply chain.

When I walk through a grocery store today, I find myself asking more questions than I used to. Do I trust organic blueberries from China? Do I trust organic tomatoes imported from Mexico? Do I trust labels printed thousands of miles away by people I will never meet?

Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe the answer is no.

What I know is that every additional step between the producer and the consumer requires another layer of trust.

For years, we have tried to solve food problems with labels. Organic. Natural. Non-GMO. Grass-fed. Regenerative. Seed oil free.

Some of those labels provide real value. Some are better than others. But all of them share the same limitation.

A label can only tell you what someone wrote on a package. It cannot create a relationship.

There is another irony I cannot help but notice.

We live in an age of profound distrust. People lock their doors, install cameras, protect their passwords, and worry constantly about being deceived. Many people do not trust their neighbors, politicians, the media, large corporations, or even their own institutions.

Yet when it comes to food, we routinely place enormous trust in people we have never met, in factories we have never seen, and in supply chains so complex that even well-intentioned companies may not fully understand them.

We question our neighbors but not our labels.

Of course, I know what some people will say. Food is already expensive. We need cheaper food. We cannot expect everyone to buy directly from a farmer.

I agree with part of that.

We cannot get every single thing we eat from a local farm. We live in a modern world. Most of us will rely on grocery stores, processors, distributors, and supply chains to some extent. But there is a difference between recognizing reality and blindly trusting it.

Somewhere along the way, we started believing that a label could replace a relationship. That a certification could replace knowing a farmer. That a package could tell us everything we needed to know about how a food was grown, raised, processed, and handled.

I no longer believe that.

The answer is not to retreat from the modern world. The answer is to move closer to the source whenever and wherever we can.

For decades, we have outsourced more and more of our food production to places with the cheapest labor, the cheapest land, and the lowest costs. In return, we have gotten food that is cheaper in dollars, but often far more expensive in ways that never show up on the receipt. We have outsourced production, accountability, and increasingly even our ability to verify what is in our food.

I am not arguing that everyone should own a farm. I am not arguing that every avocado oil company is dishonest.

I am arguing that we should move closer to the source whenever and wherever we can. Buy from local farmers when possible. Know who grows your food. Ask questions. Shorten the distance between producer and consumer.

I may not be able to grow olives or avocados in Texas.

But I can continue moving my family closer to the people who produce our food and farther away from supply chains that require blind faith.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that real food was never supposed to be this complicated. Food was created by God. We are the ones who turned it into a system so complex that nobody can quite tell where it came from, how it was made, or sometimes even what is in it.

Maybe the solution is not another label.

Maybe the solution is finding our way back.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.