Proper Hotels eliminates seed oils from all kitchens across its national portfolio, raising questions about wellness, class, and the cultural currency of purity in the post-pandemic era.
Seed oils are having a cultural reckoning, and Proper Hospitality is placing itself squarely at the center. The luxury hotel group has become the first national hospitality brand to eliminate industrial seed oils from every one of its kitchens. It’s an aggressive stance that reads, depending on your vantage point, as either pioneering wellness or performative paranoia.
Proper now fries its food in oil fermented by Zero Acre Farms and has replaced canola, soybean, and sunflower oils with what it calls more stable alternatives, like extra virgin olive, avocado, and coconut oils. The goal, says the company, is a lighter, more vibrant dining experience. But while Proper’s seed oil-free initiative may appeal to a wave of wellness-motivated diners, it also echoes a growing undercurrent of nutritional orthodoxy, one that shares more with RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign messaging than it might intend.
The science on seed oils isn’t nearly as tidy as the narrative suggests. Industrial seed oils — cheap, shelf-stable fats extracted from soybeans, rapeseeds, or sunflowers — have been a mainstay in food manufacturing and restaurant kitchens for decades. In part, they replaced animal fats after mid-century heart disease campaigns vilified lard and butter. Today, the average American gets about seven percent of daily calories from soybean oil alone, according to USDA data. The oils’ high omega-6 fatty acid content has become a favorite target of online health influencers who link them to inflammation and chronic disease.
But the reality is more complex. A 2017 study found no causal relationship between linoleic acid, the dominant omega-6 in seed oils, and inflammation in humans. A 2020 systematic review concluded that there is no convincing evidence that higher intakes of vegetable oils increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Still, public opinion is shifting. A 2025 Purdue consumer study found that while more than 50 percent of Americans still view seed oils as safe, concern about their impact on metabolic health is on the rise. The researchers found that 20 percent of Americans are now trying to avoid seed oils, up from 18 percent just a year ago.
That rise tracks closely with cultural shifts outside nutrition science. The seed oil panic isn’t fueled by peer-reviewed journals so much as podcasts, TikTok slideshows, and Substack newsletters. The movement’s talking points — industrial processing, chronic inflammation, gut health disruption — mirror the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO language that has flourished in the shadow of the pandemic. The throughline is control: over bodies, over choices, over purity.
It’s here that Proper’s announcement starts to feel less like a culinary upgrade and more like an algorithmic dog whistle. The brand insists otherwise. “This isn’t a marketing story, it’s a values decision,” Vincent LaRusso, Proper’s Vice President of Food & Beverage, said in a statement. The shift, he explains, is part of a broader wellness vision that prioritizes not only taste and sourcing, but how food makes people feel. “You shouldn’t have to choose between indulgence and integrity.”
But wellness itself is hardly a neutral concept. Particularly in high-end hospitality, wellness has become a proxy for virtue. Proper’s claim to nourish without compromise lands in a space already crowded with ideologies of optimization. At its best, the move away from processed oils can be a practical response to guest preferences. At worst, it risks moralizing menus and alienating those who don’t — or can’t — buy into the purity economy.
That economy is booming. Zero Acre Farms, the company behind Proper’s new frying oil, recently closed a $37 million funding round backed by Lowercarbon Capital and Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition. The startup ferments sugarcane into a cooking oil low in linoleic acid and markets it as an environmentally friendly, health-boosting alternative to industrial oils. It is also aggressively positioning itself as a disruptor in what it calls “The Hateful Eight” — a pejorative term some wellness influencers use to describe common seed oils.
Proper’s embrace of Zero Acre is a canny brand alignment. It taps into the anti-industrial, pro-ancestral health narrative that has taken root among a subset of affluent, health-conscious consumers. In practice, the change has significant implications for chefs. “Changing your cooking oil changes everything,” one Proper executive chef said in the announcement. “Not just how you prep or plate, it changes how food lands.” The company says its dishes now taste cleaner, brighter, and more balanced. At The Peacock in Austin, vegetables are hearth-roasted to emphasize clarity of flavor. At Caldo Verde in Los Angeles, vinaigrettes gleam without heaviness.
But whether this sensory upgrade translates to measurable health outcomes is far less certain. Most seed oil research focuses on excessive, not incidental, consumption — especially from processed snack foods and deep fryers. Swapping oils in an otherwise whole-food-focused restaurant meal may enhance digestion or personal preference, but the long-term physiological benefits remain anecdotal at best.
None of this seems to matter to diners increasingly primed to treat food like code. Proper’s dining rooms serve not just pasta or short ribs, but narratives — of clean sourcing, ancestral wisdom, and non-toxic living. The brand’s broader wellness platform, which includes low-temp cooking methods, gut-friendly ferments, and regenerative grains, aligns with this logic. Seed oil-free menus are simply the newest badge in a collection of curated choices aimed at controlling not just what you eat, but how you feel about eating it.
Brian De Lowe, Proper’s co-founder, is explicit about that intent. “Wellness isn’t an offering at Proper, it’s a mindset,” he said. The brand’s five pillars — Movement, Recovery, Nourishment, Rest, Connection — are structured less like hotel amenities and more like lifestyle doctrine. From infrared saunas to artisanal bone broths, Proper’s aesthetic of wellness hinges on a precise calibration of care and performance.
It’s worth asking who, exactly, this performance is for. The elimination of seed oils may make sense in a hotel where cold-pressed juice and oat milk cappuccinos are the default. But in a country where vegetable oil remains one of the cheapest and most accessible cooking fats, it also serves as a kind of soft elitism. This isn’t a health upgrade for everyone. It’s a symbolic gesture, targeted to those who already associate butter with biohacking and olive oil with longevity.
That symbolic heft is why seed oils have become a political flashpoint, particularly for the Secretary of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr., known for opposing vaccine mandates, has also warned about seed oils as a root cause of inflammation and disease. Though Kennedy’s theories have been widely discredited, his messaging resonates with those skeptical of mainstream health advice. In this light, Proper’s seed oil-free kitchens can read as more than a wellness tweak. They reflect a cultural alignment with individualist, often conspiratorial ideologies that prize purity over pragmatism.
The luxury dining world is also taking note. Daniel Humm, the chef behind Eleven Madison Park, recently made the switch away from industrial seed oils as part of his ongoing overhaul of the restaurant’s plant-based fine dining approach. Humm, known for his sharp pivots toward sustainability and culinary minimalism, has echoed similar concerns about seed oil’s impact on health. His shift signals how seriously chefs at the upper echelons of fine dining are treating the issue — even as mainstream science continues to equivocate.
To be clear, Proper is not promoting anti-science rhetoric. Its wellness claims are framed in the language of sourcing integrity, guest satisfaction, and culinary creativity. But in a media landscape where avocado oil is framed as liberation and soybean oil as sabotage, brand moves like this inevitably take on measurable weight.
There is a genuine opportunity here for hospitality to lead. Not through fear or wellness posturing, but through education. If Proper’s chefs can use this transition to invite diners into a broader conversation about fats — about where they come from, how they behave in the body, what balance really means — it could be a step toward demystifying food, rather than making it a performance of identity. But that would require shifting the discourse from what oils are eliminated to why those choices matter, for real people and not just aesthetic alignment. Because seed oil-free isn’t inherently healthier; it’s just cleaner branding.
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