You Can't Make America Healthy If You Can't Trust the Label

I’m walking down the aisle of one of my favorite grocery stores. It is slightly out of the way from my normal commute, but I make the trip because I know I can usually find the quality products I am looking for. I pick up my gluten-free potstickers and organic milk, knowing full well that the words “gluten-free” or “organic” usually come with a higher price tag. This is the reality of trying to be intentional about what you eat, especially for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) consumers who have woken up to how broken our food system really is.

Eating and preparing with whole foods, à la the Eat Real Food pyramid, can sometimes be cheaper when looking for ingredients, but for some minimally processed foods and condiments, the healthier option is not always the cheaper option. In many cases, consumers are willing to pay more because they believe they are getting something different, something better. Sometimes it’s gluten-free, sometimes organic, sometimes it contains fewer additives, and more commonly, to the MAHA-minded consumer, it is made with olive oil or avocado oil instead of seed oils.

The entire transaction depends on one basic assumption: the package is telling the truth.

I stop in front of the mayos in the condiment aisle: “Made with OLIVE OIL!” the bottle proudly states on the front. I flip it to the back and read the list of ingredients, including olive oil, along with soybean oil, canola oil, etc. I can’t help but roll my eyes and put it back on the shelf with a little more frustration than I stepped into the store with. You can pull the wool over some consumers’ eyes with the use of marketing tactics like “weasel wording,” but not everyone. Not in today’s health-awakened America.

So I turn to other bottles, I find brands I have come to trust, and I read their ingredient labels as a palate cleanser. “Avocado Oil, Organic Vinegar, Organic Eggs…” simple enough. It goes right into my cart. Checking the ingredients and making your decision should be the easy part. Except what happens when the ingredient list itself does not tell the whole truth? This question became way harder to ignore this summer.

On July 15, 2026, researchers at the University of California, Davis published a study examining the authenticity of avocado oil use in processed foods, like chips, mayonnaise, and salad dressings. The researchers tested 54 products that were labeled as containing 100% avocado oil, the “real deal” products that were reflected in higher prices too.

UC Davis chemically analyzed the oils from these products, examining the fatty-acid and sterol profiles that can be used to distinguish avocado oils from other oils. The results were startling, and to the MAHA base, devastating. A whopping 48 out of the 54 products labeled as containing avocado oil had chemical compositions inconsistent with authentic avocado oil. That is an 89% failure rate overall, with chips failing at 93%, mayonnaise at 71%, and salad dressings failing at 100%. The researchers found that products marketed as containing avocado oil contained chemical signatures of other, cheaper seed oils.

The FDA has a name for this kind of deception: economically motivated adulteration, or food fraud. Food fraud has appeared across the food system plenty before, and has been documented in everything from honey and seafood to spices and juices. This type of fraud matters because the American grocery bill is not exactly getting simpler to manage, and avocado oil is not exactly a budget ingredient. When someone pays a premium because they believe they are buying a better product, that premium should actually mean something.

The bigger problem is that consumers cannot always detect it themselves. The FDA uses inspections and lab testing, including chemical analysis, to determine whether a product actually contains the ingredient it claims to contain. I should not need a laboratory in my kitchen to figure out whether the expensive avocado oil I just paid for is actually in my food.

This is exactly why the UC Davis study findings felt like such a betrayal. Consumers are doing what the MAHA movement aims to do for Americans: take responsibility for what they eat, know the better options, and make better choices. When a product marketed as a healthier alternative turns out not to contain what consumers thought they were paying for, that trust is broken.

I don’t think the answer is for the MAHA movement to become more cynical. The Trump administration’s MAHA Commission has specifically called for greater transparency, stronger research, and better information for Americans. If anything, it’s inspiration for us to keep asking the questions we should have been asking all along: What is actually in our food? Why are Americans getting sicker, fatter, and more chronically ill? And why should consumers have to wonder whether the products they pay a premium for are what the label says they are?

Americans are already doing the work: reading labels, cooking at home with whole foods, and seriously considering what they put in their bodies. They deserve honesty in return, and the confidence that the choices they make are based on the truth. That’s what we keep fighting for.

Summer Jennings is a Graphic Designer at Connector, Inc., where she focuses on political communications, creative strategy, and digital media. Her background includes political design, digital marketing, and work with the New York State Senate.