The ‘Sustainable Oil’ That Michelin-Starred Chefs Are Obsessed With

Taylor Kate Brown
·12 min read

Photo Courtesy of Zero Acre.

In the past year Michelin-starred and high-profile chefs have been singing the praises of an alternative genre of cooking oil: so-called sustainable oils, created using microalgae and fermentation.

Daniel Humm, the executive chef who turned Eleven Madison Park vegan in 2021, is now club culinary officer for Algae Cooking Club. Zero Acre Farms, another brand that offers “cultured oil,” is used in the kitchens of Michelin-starred Single Thread in San Francisco, all three Bay Area restaurants of chef Stuart Brioza, Kaori in Miami, and Coqodaq and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, where the latter’s executive chef Dan Barber was an early investor in the company. The oils are spilling outside of fine dining too: Algae Cooking Club is stocked by Erewhon and Thrive Market. Zero Acre was piloted by Shake Shack in New York City and is now used across all Hopdoddy Burger locations in Texas. Recently, the very existence of algae oil shocked Drew Barrymore to her core.

These chefs are raving about the oils’ versatility, neutral flavor, and high smoke point, saying they’ve taken the place of some, if not all, traditional oils in their kitchen. They are especially nodding to the products’ pitch as an environmentally friendly alternative to commonly used cooking oils. Part of Eleven Madison Park’s mission is to bring attention to ways of creating “more sustainable food systems in the future,” Humm tells Bon Appétit. Algae oil “is a prime example of this ethos,” he says, adding that it “performs incredibly well in the kitchen.”

On its website, Algae Cooking Club declares algae-based oil is “better for the planet,” utilizing only “a fraction” of the resources. Meanwhile, Zero Acre says: “Switching to more sustainable oils and fats will have a significant impact on many of the largest environmental problems we face today.” Add some of-the-moment branding and it all paints a very slick, shiny future for Zero Acre and Algae Cooking Club, which cost $27 and $25, respectively, for a 16-ounce bottle on their websites. That’s significantly pricier than a standard supermarket price for soybean, canola, or olive oil, although on par or cheaper than more premium olive oils or specialty oils.

So what to make of this new crop of oils—could they really become, as headlines breathlessly exclaim, “a kitchen staple” and “the forefront of culinary innovation?” I took a closer look at the environmental concerns around cooking oil, how sustainable oils are made, and their eco-friendly claims.

How are these oils made?

Algae oil is produced using fermentation, microscopic-sized algae, and sugarcane. In a controlled environment inside fermentation tanks, algae are fed sugar, which encourages them to produce more oil inside each cell as they grow—as much as 80% by weight. The algae is then squeezed to remove the oil.

These products are made in Brazil, one of the world’s largest sugarcane producers. A similar process can also be used with certain yeasts, says Dr. Kyria Boundy-Mills, a microbiologist and curator of UC Davis’s Phaff Yeast Culture Collection. Though Zero Acre currently uses microalgae to produce its oil, its founders have a patent application in progress that mentions several different strains of these oil-producing yeasts with names like Rhodotorula toruloides or Yarrowia Lipolytica. (In fact, Zero Acre doesn’t specify “algae” in its branding—its website touts oil made from “microbes” in general, a broad term for any microscopic organism.)

These same processes can also be used to produce everything from biofuels to fish oil replacements. “Microbial oils have been studied for about 100 years now. So the science is actually pretty old,” Boundy-Mills says. There’s still plenty of opportunity for new discoveries, though: There are more than 150 known strains of yeast that can produce as least 20% of their weight as oil, but only several have been the focus of significant research, she adds.

But the economics are tricky, whether microalgae or yeast is being used. “Running a bioreactor is expensive,” Boundy-Mills says, and the costs have made it difficult for microbe-created biofuels to compete with the relatively low cost of petroleum. So some companies have turned to higher-value commodities: cosmetics, industrial lubricants, and—yes, premium cooking oil.

What are the environmental impacts of cooking oil, really?

More than 200 million metric tons of culinary oils are consumed worldwide each year—palm oil, soybean, and canola are the top three produced oils in the world. In the US, soybean, generally marketed as “vegetable” oil, is the most popular. Growth in all three of these oil crops have contributed to the destruction of tropical forests, savannas, and other native ecosystems, with palm and soy in particular contributing an estimated 18% of total deforestation each year, a land area about the size of Puerto Rico.

But each crop has a different mix of impacts. Palm oil uses relatively little land per metric ton but has high greenhouse gas emissions, while canola has higher land use but lower emissions. Even within each crop, there is a wide range of how water- and emission-intensive growing these plants can be, according to a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Deforestation contributes to more greenhouse gas emissions, local environmental impacts, and a loss of biodiversity, especially when ecosystems with a variety of plant and animal species are cleared and converted to producing a single crop—a monoculture. But oil crops are not the only driver of deforestation. Grazing lands for cattle makes up an estimated 41% of yearly destruction. Forestry products like paper and timber are also major contributors.

The environmental damage from oil crops depends on the ecosystems they displace, if they are farmed as a monoculture, and how they are managed, says Dr. Erik Meijaard, a forest conservation researcher and lead author on the IUCN report.

“We concluded, despite what many people think, there is no such thing as a bad or good oil crop,” he said. “Only good and bad ways to manage them. So the focus needs to be on improving management.”

While soybean production has grown rapidly in the past 50 years—and contributed to major deforestation in places like Brazil—more than three quarters of all production in the world is not destined for cooking oils, or even for human consumption, at least not directly. Instead that proportion of soybeans are being grown for animal feed, especially for poultry and pig, according to data compiled by the USDA.

What claims do these new oils make about their eco-friendliness?

The center of the environmental pitch: Firstly, they are using sugarcane as a primary ingredient, one of the highest yielding crops in the world, meaning it grows more plants per acre than many oil crops. Secondly, algae under controlled conditions produces a lot of oil, quickly. This all means lower carbon emissions, less land, and less water use per metric ton of oil. Both brands are packaged in aluminum, which is easy to recycle and much lighter than glass for shipping.

Both Zero Acre and Algae Cooking Club compare their environmental impact against a wide variety of traditional oils. The most dramatic figures come from comparisons to olive oil, a land-intensive and exceptionally thirsty crop, especially in industrial production that uses irrigation. Zero Acre says it uses 99% percent less water than olive oil, and Algae Cooking Club employs some creative graph-making to avoid breaking the style of its website with a depiction of the immense difference. Olive oil uses more land per metric ton of oil than soybean and 10 times as much as palm. (Despite this, and its popularity in American restaurants and home cooking, olive oil production and total land use worldwide is still dramatically smaller than soy.)

Compared to soybean oil, Zero Acre says its algae oil production results in 86% fewer greenhouse gases, consumes 83% less water, and uses 90% less land, while Algae Cooking Club says it has a 47% lower carbon footprint than canola oil and produces seven times as much oil per acre of land.

Who’s backing these oils?

The companies behind these oils are based in the Bay Area, and there’s threads of Silicon Valley throughout, from founders to funders. Zero Acre was co-founded by tech entrepreneur Jeff Nobbs, and has raised about $40 million since 2020. In addition to Dan Barber, Chipotle’s venture capital arm, Cultivate Next, as well as a collection of climate-focused VC firms like Lowercarbon Capital and Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition have invested.

Algae Cooking Club’s co-founder, Kasra Saidi, worked in strategy at Twitter, consulted with Impossible Foods, and previously helped launch a pistachio milk startup. ACC came out of consumer product incubator Squared Circles and is backed by at least one venture capital firm.

Why do chefs love it?

Spotlight Foods, the food and nutrition division of bioscience company Checkerspot, licenses algae oil to Algae Cooking Club. It also sells its oil directly to food production businesses and restaurants, including the two Michelin-starred Saison, Foreign Cinema in San Francisco, and an upcoming bakery from Top Chef contestant Monique Feybesse, among others.

Spotlight has focused on selling to chefs and food production because algae oil “impresses people who know food,” says Emma Cooper-Mullin, lead of marketing and partnerships at Spotlight.

Richard Lee, executive chef at Saison, is one of them. “The right fat helps you have more control,” he says, adding he uses algae oil to capture smoke while grilling to create dressings and sauces cooked with embers.

Both Humm and chef Sebastián Vargas of Miami's Los Félix, who use Zero Acre, have noted the neutral flavor allows their menu ingredients to stand out on their own. Many chefs using these oils are replacing other neutral oils like grapeseed and canola and using algae oil for everything from deep fries to emulsions.

And what about home cooks?

Right now, reviews from regular home cooks are mostly positive, but sparse. Getting the average consumer excited about algae oil requires more education about its versatility and benefits, Cooper-Mullin says. Part of the education effort: challenging assumptions that the oil tastes or smells like algae (“I wondered if it would taste or look like pond scum,” said one reviewer, who was pleased to report it didn’t) and justifying its high price point (“I love the stuff but man oh man is it expensive,” said another). Home cooks on Reddit and seller websites enjoy its lack of flavor and mostly use it in high-heat cooking and frying. Tasting Table sampled the Shake Shack fries cooked with Zero Acre and approved— especially for “people who eat fries slowly”—and detected a “creaminess similar to coconut oil.”

Is this the future of cooking oil?

Sort of. Microbial oils will likely play a role in cooking in the future, but replacing traditional culinary oils wholesale “is not going to happen anytime soon,” Meijaard says.

“There have been lots of hyperbolic statements about microbial oils,” he said. Recent headlines have heralded algae oil as “redefining the future of food” and starting a “sustainable cooking revolution.” (Back in 2016, algae oil was already “the future of frying.”) The new companies say they ultimately hope to replace a significant portion of the culinary oil market.

As is frequently the challenge for startups, the key question is scale. Replacing the existing market would mean scaling up current production 5000%, the IUCN report estimates. The ability for this category to stay sustainable at larger scales depends on how companies continue to source the sugar used to make these oils—specifically, how and where the sugar is grown and processed, according to Meijaard. Sugarcane requires a high amount of water, which in places like South Africa means using up water resources through irrigation. How the sugarcane is processed matters too: Some places burn sugarcane leaves before harvest, a practice that leads to more carbon emissions and terrible air quality. Brazil’s sugarcane producers have largely shifted away from this practice; the US, not so much, where companies claim it cuts costs to burn sugar leaves. Without changes in costs or technological advancements, these oils may stay a relatively small part of the cooking oil world.

Currently, Algae Cooking Club and Zero Acre both source sugarcane from Brazil, where the vast majority of the crop is grown through rainfall, avoiding extra water use. Zero Acre also says its sugarcane harvesting area has not been identified with deforestation or protected ecosystem areas by Global Risk Assessment Services, an environmental consulting service. In a future full of microbial oils, companies may even one day move away from sugarcane, as these oils could potentially be made with any sugar source—for instance, modified yeasts that convert otherwise wasted agricultural byproducts like almond hulls. It’s an ongoing point of research for Boundy-Mills and others.

Both Boundy-Mills and Spotlight’s Cooper-Mullin are hopeful about the future of sustainable cooking oil, though. “These [microbes] have potential for fulfilling a lot of needs that consumers are looking for,” Boundy-Mills says.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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