Every Gardencup dressing is made in house with avocado oil, not seed oils like canola, soybean, or sunflower oil. It's one of the quietest but most meaningful differences between our salads and most of what's sitting in the grab-and-go aisle. Here's why we build our dressings this way, and what it actually means for your food.

First, What Are Seed Oils?

Seed oils are oils extracted from seeds. The most common ones are canola, soybean, corn, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and cottonseed. Getting oil out of a seed usually requires industrial processing, high heat, and chemical refining, which is part of why these oils are so inexpensive and flavor-neutral.

That combination of cheap and neutral is exactly why seed oils are the default in most commercial salad dressings. Flip over almost any bottled dressing at the grocery store, or ask what's in the dressing at your favorite fast-casual spot, and soybean or canola oil is usually the first or second ingredient.

Why Everyone Is Suddenly Asking About Them

Seed oils have gone from a niche wellness topic to a mainstream conversation. Seed Oil Free Certified products now represent hundreds of millions of dollars in retail sales, with SPINS data showing the category growing over 200% year over year. Major restaurant brands have publicly reformulated away from seed oils. Even the latest dietary guidelines expanded the list of acceptable cooking fats.

Here's where we'll be straight with you, because that's how we operate. The science on seed oils is genuinely debated. Some researchers argue the concern is overstated. Others point to how these oils are processed and how much of them we collectively consume. We're not going to tell you seed oils are poison, because the evidence doesn't support putting it that way.

What the evidence does clearly support is the foods seed oils typically show up in are ultra-processed, and diets built on ultra-processed food are consistently linked to worse health outcomes. Seed oils are often a marker of a product built for shelf life and margin rather than for you.

So we made a simpler choice. When your dressing is made from avocado oil, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, fresh garlic, and herbs, you don't have to litigate the science over lunch. Every ingredient is one you recognize.

What's Actually in Our Dressings

All of our dressings are made in house, in small batches, and every one of them starts with avocado oil or another whole ingredient base. A few examples straight from our kitchen

Dill Cream Dressing

Nonfat Greek yogurt, sour cream, lemon juice, avocado oil, fresh garlic, dill, and parsley. Creamy without being heavy.

Italian Tomato Vinaigrette

Tomato puree, avocado oil, red wine vinegar, honey, Dijon, garlic, and fresh herbs. Bright and bold.

Tangy-Sweet Dressing

Avocado oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, allulose, Dijon, and Greek yogurt. Sweet-tart balance with no added sugar load.

Our proteins follow the same philosophy. The herb chicken across our menu is marinated in extra virgin olive oil, fresh garlic, and herbs.

Why Avocado Oil

We didn't pick avocado oil to ride a trend. We picked it because it does the job better.

Avocado oil is rich in monounsaturated fats, the same category of fat that makes olive oil a staple of the most studied healthy diets in the world. Those fats also help your body absorb the fat-soluble vitamins in leafy greens, which means the dressing is actually helping you get more out of the salad underneath it.

Avocado oil has a clean, lightly buttery flavor that carries herbs and acid without fighting them, and it gives dressings a naturally creamy body without fillers, gums, or stabilizers.

It costs more than seed oils. Meaningfully more. We think that's the point.

The Bigger Picture

Our dressings are the clearest example of a philosophy that runs through the whole menu: we lean seed-oil-free across everything we make, we skip preservatives entirely, and we build meals from whole ingredients you can picture in a kitchen. It's the same reason our salads are hand-layered instead of pre-tossed and stay fresh for 5 to 6 days without a single preservative.

You shouldn't need a chemistry degree to read a salad label. With ours, you won't.

Taste the difference avocado oil makes. Build your pack today!

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Gardencup dressings seed oil free?

Yes. Every Gardencup dressing is made in house with avocado oil instead of seed oils like canola, soybean, or sunflower oil*. Our house mayonnaise is also built on avocado oil.

What oils does Gardencup use?

Avocado oil in our dressings and house mayonnaise, and extra virgin olive oil in our protein marinades.

Are seed oils bad for you?

The research is genuinely mixed, and we won't overstate it. What's well supported is that seed oils most often appear in ultra-processed foods, and ultra-processed diets are consistently linked to poorer health outcomes. We use avocado oil because it lets us make dressings from a short list of whole ingredients.

Does Gardencup make its dressings in house?

Yes. All dressings are made in small batches in our kitchen, which is also why our salads need no preservatives.

Why is avocado oil better for salad dressing?

It's rich in monounsaturated fats, helps your body absorb fat-soluble vitamins from leafy greens, and has a clean, lightly buttery flavor that creates a naturally creamy dressing without fillers or stabilizers.

*While our dressings and marinades are 100% seed-oil-free, you may occasionally spot trace amounts of sunflower oil used by our partners to roast our crunchy salad toppers.