The vest-wearing finance bro who waits in line to pick up his Sweetgreen order outside his Midtown office has a counterpart. He may too work in finance, in Midtown, wearing a vest. But when it comes to the food he consumes, he’s a bit more intense. Conspiratorial, even. It’s not just about hitting certain macros or knowing precisely where that chicken is sourced, though all that matters, of course. The bigger question is: what exactly are they cooking that chicken in? What’s the base of that dressing? In other words, does this restaurant use seed oils?
This guy does not eat at Sweetgreen. He eats at Springbone.
Springbone Kitchen is a fast-casual chain in New York City serving bowls of chicken, vegetables, rice and bone broth that is adamantly, proudly seed oil-free. And to be clear, the restaurant is popular among those who have never thought once about seed oils, those who are just generally health focused and those who simply enjoy chicken and rice. But among the anti-seed oil set, Springbone isn’t just one place for a clean meal—it’s one of the only places.
Springbone is the project of co-founders Jordan Feldman and Sam Eckstein, who opened the first location in 2016 in Greenwich Village. As Feldman explains, the duo were both working those aforementioned classic Midtown finance-type jobs while increasingly becoming involved in what they call the “CrossFit paleo movement.” According to Feldman, this is where much of the dialogue around seed oils began to take root.
“The two of us were trying to eat that way, but we kept finding that anywhere we were going to ordering lunch, or go out for dinner, when we would ask those annoying questions about what they’re using to cook their food in or where they’re sourcing their meat, we were always just disappointed in the answers,” he says. “It was just inevitably conventional feedlot meat, soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil. That was sort of the genesis for the idea that maybe there's an opportunity here to start something that's doing those things the right way, but still serving food that's fast and affordable and tastes good.”
So far, they’ve been right: Springbone just opened their 7th location, with an 8th in the works. “We've always talked about the fact that we don't use seed oils,” says Feldman. Their refusal to use them is listed right on their menus and signage outside of restaurants.
Seed oils, which include canola, sunflower, soybean, peanut, rice bran and “vegetable” (usually just another name for soybean, in this context) oils, have become a contemporary health villain among certain circles. These include “carnivore” or “ancestral” dieters, some keto practitioners, factions of the right who believe globalist big-agriculture is on a mission to get the world to eat processed soy slop and bugs, earthy-crunchy hippies, and increasingly, everyday eaters who just want to eat a simple diet that looks something like what most generations before them have eaten.
The basic idea is that seed oils are something most humans have never consumed before, that only became a major part of the American diet in the second half of the 20th century. Unlike say, olive oil, which is created simply by pressing olives, oil from soybeans or rice bran require significant chemical intervention. To create seed oils, seeds often must be heated to high temperatures and processed with hexane and then treated with chemical deodorants and colorants. People who avoid seed oils believe that not only are these chemicals worth avoiding, but that the heating process oxidizes the fat in these oils in a way that’s harmful to our health. Moreover, seed oils contain higher amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids like omega-6 than people have historically consumed. Still, most mainstream health practitioners assert that these processed oils are healthier than the saturated-fat-heavy oils from animal fats, such as butter or tallow.
For many, including Feldman, avoiding seed oils is better understood as a simple proxy for avoiding processed foods, which just about everyone agrees are bad for you. But it's also a way to avoid restaurant food—not usually great for you—and it’s possible to eat a largely seed oil-free diet that could be classified as “unhealthy” by other standards. On Seed Oil Scout, an app that helps eaters locate seed oil-free restaurants and identify which menu items are “safe,” some of the top-ranking restaurants wouldn’t necessarily qualify as clean-eating. Bobwhite Counter, for example, is rated four out of five stars on the app—because it uses beef tallow to cook fried chicken and french fries. Several five star spots only serve pizza. At a certain point, then, it’s not just about eating clean, but about avoiding an ingredient out of principle.
For some seed-oil averse people, you can eat more or less whatever you want besides the offending oils. Steven Arena, the New Jersey-based CEO of Ancient Crunch, is the creator of Masa Chips, a tortilla chip fried in beef tallow sold in stores like Erewhon in LA and Pop Up Grocer in the West Village. “The thing about seed oils that I find particularly interesting is that when you give up seed oils, your life becomes more enjoyable. Not from a health perspective, but from a hedonism perspective,” he says. When you’re not eating seed oils, you’re all the more empowered to go ahead and splurge on steak, sourdough bread, grass-fed butter, ice cream. These indulgences aren’t just allowed, they’re encouraged.
The finance bro, the biohackers, the downtown scenesters, the trads, and the otherwise vaguely health-conscious remain free to order a dozen oysters and knock them down with a negroni, in other words. And before then, the Springbone chicken and rice bowl or herb-roasted salmon probably won’t be too bad, either. At very least, they won’t have seed oils.
