Want to know the down-low about sunflower oil? Here’s 10 quick facts.

Should you use Olive Pomace Oil or should you use Sunflower Oil (or even safflower for that matter)? These are some of the important oil comparisons that procurement teams and R&D departments have to do as food manufacturers.

And if you’re a home chef? We’ll you probably equally debate this standing in the aisle of your grocery store. Whether you’re a home chef or if you are in industrial food manufacturing, we’ll look at the pros and cons of these two oils for each industry.

For easy comparisons’ sake, I’m going to look at sunflower grouped together with it’s counterpart, safflower oil. Sunflower oil has historically been more available and popular over the last 30 years, but in today’s natural food market, safflower oil is becoming equally used and in demand. For that reason, I think it’s only fair to compare using Olive Pomace Oil to using Sunflower OR Safflower Oil.

Why would any food manufacturer choose to go with a high oleic oil over a traditional one?

This is a hot debate right now, especially for snack food manufacturers. There’s a number of reasons that a food manufacturer would opt to go with a high oleic oil over a traditional oil.

For simplicities sake, we’re going to discuss this in terms of High Oleic Non-GMO Canola Oil vs. regular Non-GMO Canola Oil so that the only variable is the oleic value. Of course, the same discussion applies to both non-GMO and GMO varieties of oil, as well as many different types of oils — sunflower oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, etc.

This article was originally published by Centra Foods in 2014, and has been re-published with updated information here.

Sometimes, it's hard to know exactly what kind of oil is going to work best. If you're in the R&D stages of a new product, you'll be faced with decisions about choosing the right bulk ingredients. Sometimes, as you begin to narrow down your search, you may be presented with more and more challenging questions.

Let’s pretend you’ve finally made the decision to go with Sunflower Oil. Next, you’ll be immediately presented with a new question:

What kind of Sunflower Oil would you like?

Certain oils, especially seed oils, come in a few varieties. For sunflower oil, there’s three main types: high oleic, mid oleic and linoleic.

Ever wonder what all the fuss is about sunflower oil? In the last 2-3 years, the popularity of this oil has skyrocketed in the natural foods industry.

It just takes one stroll down the aisle of a Whole Foods Market — you’ll find tons of products that use sunflower oil as an ingredient.

The bigger question is why — what’s with the big push in popularity over the last few years? Well… lots of reasons.

The demand for non-GMO ingredients has been exponentially on the rise, and sunflower oil is one of few naturally non-gmo oils. It’s also priced reasonably, doesn’t have a strong flavor, and is considered by consumers to be one of the healthiest oil options out there. 

If you buy organic sunflower oil, do you remember what happened last summer?

Supplies were tight in the summer, companies scrambled for inventory all over the US — a lot of manufacturers came up short. Production was affected, ingredients were switched, and you probably paid a lot more for last minute organic inventory than you should have.

If you don’t remember (or you weren’t privy the drama at the time) let me give you a brief overview of what happened last year, so that you can plan ahead to put your company in the best possible position for summer and fall of 2015.

The popularity of sunflower oil has increased exponentially over the last couple of years.

If you walk down the aisles of Whole Foods and check the ingredient labels, you'll see that sunflower oil is a highly popular oil right now. Walking the Natural Products Expo West this year, I found the exact same results.

The question that this raises for natural food manufacturers is: Why is this particular oil so popular? And if it’s right for other brands (and my competition), is there a good chance it would be right for my product?

Safflower oil is being used more and more in food manufacturing in recent years. Many natural products are being made with safflower and/or sunflower oil.

As a result, many consumers are asking the question: Is safflower oil GMO or non-GMO?

Good question. We’d like to help answer it for you.

Sometimes, it's hard to know exactly what kind of oil going to work best.  If you're in the R&D stages of a new product, you'll be faced with decisions about choosing the right bulk ingredients.  Sometimes, as you begin to narrow down your search, you may be presented with more and more challenging questions.

For example, let's pretend you've been debating between Canola Oil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Sunflower Oil for some time.  You finally make the decision to go with Sunflower Oil.  Unfortunately, you're immediatly presented with a new question: what kind of Sunflower Oil would you like?

Certain oils, especially seed oils, come in a few varieties.  For sunflower oil, there's high oleic, mid oleic and linoleic.  And as you're making your ingredient decisions, it's helpful to know the differences before you begin testing-- not after.

High quality, non-GMO and organic oils are in high demand right now. 

If you use natural or specialty oils as a bulk ingredient in your manufacturing, you already are well aware.  You may even be feeling the market pressure.  Perhaps, even, you've wondered what other non-gmo or organic bulk oils you could be using as an alternative.  

Today we're going to focus on price-- always the giant elephant in the room.  Here's how the pricing of some of the most common healthy, non-GMO or organic oils compares: Extra Virgin vs. Safflower & Sunflower Oil (see graph with actual prices below).

Have you ever looked on the back of some products to find ingredient labels that list multiple potential ingredients?

Canola Oil, Sunflower Oil and/or Safflower Oil?  Soybean Oil and/or Corn Oil?  This is especially common when the ingredients are used for cooking or preparation-- you'll find this in chips and popcorn a lot because of that.

What this ingredient label means is that the bulk oil ingredients that may be used in the product could be Canola Oil... but it also might be Sunflower Oil or Safflower Oil.  Or maybe both, or all three.  Whatever the company happens to decide for to use that production run is a-okay, because they've already listed the possible choices on their ingredient list.

This trend is especially common with oil ingredients, since they are often commodities and, in some products, are easily interchangable.  

Ever wonder why companies list more than one possibile ingredient?  There's a good (and very self-preserving) reason behind it.  

The natural and specialty food markets have taken a turn towards using safflower and sunflower oil as their preferred oil ingredient in their products.  These healthier oils are now being used in place of soybean, canola and other mild, light-colored oils.

Why?  With safflower and sunflower oil, you get close to the same benefits of olive oil, without the color or flavor-- plus it comes at a lower price.

Have you noticed this trend?  Go into Whole Foods and look at the back ingredient label of a few of the chip and popcorn bags.  You're bound to find a whole bunch that use high-oleic safflower oil and sunflower oil that is non-GMO.  Or, even more popular right now-- organic sunflower and safflower oil.

If you happen to be a food manufacturer and you use these ingredients, I bet you've noticed a big trend in the last few weeks/months.  These oils are hard to come by right now, and in high demand!  If you're buying on the spot market outside of a contract right now, you may be hard pressed to find your ingredients.

You're probably wondering why this is happening and what's going on!  Good question.  We'll explain what's going on in the market right now.