In July 2026, researchers at UC Davis published a study in the journal Applied Food Research that should change how you read the front of a chip bag. The team, led by Professor Selina Wang of the Department of Food Science and Technology, bought 54 processed foods labeled as made with avocado oil — chips, mayonnaise, salad dressings — and ran their fat through authenticity testing: fatty acid and sterol profiles, the chemical fingerprints that make each oil what it is.
93% of the avocado-oil chips failed.
Not a rounding error. Twenty-six of twenty-eight chip samples had oil compositions inconsistent with pure avocado oil — and the testing was generous, building in a 10% margin to account for frying, blending, and natural variation. Across all 54 products, 89% failed. Every single salad dressing tested failed. By comparison, olive-oil products run through the same gauntlet failed at just 5%, one sample in twenty.
“They deserve to get what they pay for,” Wang said of consumers paying a premium for avocado-oil products.
Why this matters more for chips than anything else
A potato chip is three things: a potato, a fat, and a seasoning. The fat isn’t an ingredient in a chip — it’s a third of the product, and it’s the third you can’t see. When you pay $6, $8, $13 for a “better oil” chip, the oil is what you’re paying for. The UC Davis findings suggest that for the overwhelming majority of avocado-oil chips on the shelf, nobody can tell you with confidence what that fat actually is.
The study didn’t name which oils were standing in for avocado, and it didn’t say where in the supply chain the substitution happens — avocado oil is expensive, supply is tight, and adulteration can enter anywhere between the grove and the fryer. But the practical takeaway for a shopper is uncomfortable: the words on the front of the bag and the fat inside it are, most of the time, not the same thing.
The fallout has already started. The law firm Migliaccio & Rathod has opened an investigation into Siete’s avocado-oil potato and tortilla chips, examining whether products labeled as made with avocado oil contained other, undisclosed oils. To be clear: that is an investigation into allegations, not a finding of wrongdoing, and the study itself accuses no brand of intent. But “we’re not sure whose oil is in the bag” is not a sentence a premium category survives comfortably.
How Ghips answers the question
We started Ghips with a different bet: instead of a fashionable oil, an ancient one. Every Ghips chip is fried in 100% grass-fed ghee — clarified butter, the fat Indian kitchens have cooked with for generations. It was never chosen for marketing. It was chosen because it makes a richer, deeper, more golden chip than any neutral oil can, seed or otherwise.
It also happens to be an honest answer to the exact problem UC Davis just documented:
Ghee is a dairy fat, not a vegetable oil. Its fatty-acid signature is nothing like the seed oils used as silent substitutes — it isn’t a lookalike in a lineup of nearly identical liquid fats. Swapping cheap oil into ghee doesn’t get you ghee; it gets you something that doesn’t taste, fry, or read like ghee at all. You can taste the difference in one chip, which is more than a label can promise.
Our label is short enough to check. Sea Salt Original is three ingredients: certified organic potatoes, 100% grass-fed ghee, sea salt. There is nowhere in that sentence for a mystery oil to hide.
Small batches, shipped fresh. Our chips are fried in small batches and shipped to your door instead of sitting in warehouse inventory. Freshness isn’t just texture — stale oil is where off flavors live, whatever oil it is.
What to do with a chip label now
Read the back, not the front. Count the ingredients. Be suspicious of any bag whose premium oil claim is doing all the work while the ingredient list runs long. And when a category’s promise fails authenticity testing nine times out of ten, consider the alternative that was never in that category to begin with.
Potato chips made with grass-fed ghee are right here — and if you want the full case for why we fry in ghee and never seed oils, it’s on our Why page.
Sources: UC Davis News, “Most Avocado Oil Chips and Dressings Are Adulterated, Study Finds” (study published in Applied Food Research, 2026); Migliaccio & Rathod LLP investigation notice, August 11, 2026.