Sweetgreen, the Los Angeles-based salad chain, is eliminating seed oils from its menus and using products like olive and avocado oil instead, while Blue Collar Restaurant Group, which owns restaurants in Wyoming and Montana, is replacing seed oils with butter and beef tallow as well as olive and avocado oil.
Eric Gustafson, chief executive of California-based animal fat refiner Coast Packing Company, said he watched in the 1990s as fast food companies like McDonald's led a wholesale shift away from beef tallow to vegetable oils in response to medical research linking animal fats to heart disease.
Kennedy, recently confirmed as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has consistently promoted beef tallow, rendered beef fat, as a healthier alternative to canola and other seed oils.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, has said that seed oil opponents overstate the risks of inflammation, heart disease and obesity from seed oil, and that a diet rich in saturated fats such as those found in meats, butter and cheese poses a larger health risk.
He could also use the visibility of his new position to pressure companies to follow his lead on seed oils and beef tallow without having to enforce any changes in policy, she added.
