We have a rule in production: if we wouldn't feed it to our own family, it doesn't go in the tub. That's it. That's been the rule since day one and nothing has ever changed.
There's a lot of noise right now about what's in your food. How oils get processed. What those ingredient lists actually mean. Whether the stuff in your fridge is helping you or hurting you. Fair questions, all of them. We'd love to walk you through how we actually make this stuff and why we put in the things we do.
What Goes In (and What Doesn't)
Here's the full ingredient list for our original sauce: Water, Grapeseed Oil, Almonds, Lemon Juice, Soy Sauce (Water, Soybeans, Salt), Nutritional Yeast, Garlic, Spices, Sea Salt.
That's it. Every flavor of Bitchin’ Sauce we make follows the same general recipe.
No xanthan gum. No ANY gums. No citric acid. No artificial stabilizers or emulsifiers. No weird sugars. No moonlighting starches or industrially synthesized proteins. We should explain what leaving those out actually means, because creating and protecting this saucy souffle is the hardest part of making our product.
Most dips and sauces at the store use gums, like xanthan gum, which is a manufactured stabilizer made through bacterial fermentation. It keeps things from separating, extends shelf life, lets products sit at room temperature for months. Citric acid, most often derived from corn via black mold, also does preservation work, dropping the pH so bacteria can't grow. These are widely considered industrial shortcuts that have emerged with the rise of mass food production.
We chose to stick to a home-kitchen standard, making good food for families. We wanted something made entirely from kitchen ingredients. Almonds, oil, lemon, garlic, salt, pantry spices. That's what you'd use if you were making this at home, and we didn't want to add anything you wouldn't. Once you start putting in stabilizers and gums, you're optimizing for shelf life, instead of wholesome nutrition.
The tradeoff is real, though. Without gums, the sauce gets its texture from what happens naturally when you blend almonds and oil together. Natural emulsification. It takes better equipment, tighter process control, and the acceptance that this product is going to act like real food acts. Sometimes it separates a little. That's not a defect. That's what food without artificial binders does.
On the Seed Oil Conversation
We use grapeseed oil. Ours is cold, expeller-pressed from a family farm. It’s third-party tested for purity, too.
If you've spent any time on social media in the last few years, you've probably seen grapeseed oil lumped into the "hateful eight," a list of seed oils that critics say you should avoid entirely: canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and rice bran. That list doesn't draw any distinction between how these oils are sourced, processed, or consumed. It treats them all the same. We don't think that's accurate, and neither does the actual research.
The seed oil critique isn't one argument. It's several different ones that get mashed together online, and we think pulling them apart is a good way to have a useful conversation about it.
Processing Methods
This is the big one. It's also the one where the critics have the strongest case.
Here's what happens to most seed oils before they ever reach your kitchen. It is mass production of planted seeds, solely for commercial oil production. The seeds get crushed and soaked in hexane, which is a chemical solvent derived from petroleum. That pulls the oil out efficiently, but the oil then has to be refined at high temperatures to remove the hexane. The finished product is a far cry from what came out of the seed. Then someone pours it into a hot pan, or a fast food restaurant dumps it into a deep fryer and reheats it fifty times. At that point you've got oxidation byproducts building up, things like aldehydes and 4-hydroxynonenal, and those are legitimately worth worrying about. And the agricultural and environmental impact is excruciating.
On this point? The critics are right. We'll say it plainly.
What the online conversation usually skips over is where most of this oil actually ends up. It's not people drizzling it over salads. It's baked into ultra-processed food. Packaged snacks, fast food, frozen meals. Restaurant fryers where the same batch of oil gets cycled through again and again for days. Harvard Health called this out specifically. They wrote that restaurants and factories aren't changing their frying oil often enough, and that the resulting buildup of trans fats and other compounds is probably what's driving the well-documented link between fried food and heart disease. Not the oil in someone's pantry.
Our grapeseed oil is cold, expeller-pressed and 100% upcycled from winery grape marc (seeds, skins, and stems). Sourced from heritage European vineyards, the grapes are non-GMO, have always been non-GMO, and grown on perennial vines that produce fruit year after year - not mass commercial oil fields. This is a big call out, because it is not seed agriculture, it is a fruit.
We take that winery by-product and press the seeds into oil using mechanical pressure. Nothing added. No hexane. No chemicals. Never exposed to the heavy processing that raises concerns around seed oils.
Fatty Acids
Some critics skip the processing question entirely. They say the problem is linoleic acid, period. It's an omega-6 polyunsaturated fat, and the argument is that it oxidizes inside your body after you eat it, triggering a chain of inflammatory responses. The biochemistry behind this is real. Linoleic acid can oxidize, and oxidized lipids can contribute to inflammation. Nobody seriously disputes the mechanism.
The dispute is over whether this actually happens at normal dietary levels, in real people, eating real food. And on that question, the largest studies we have keep coming back with the same answer: it doesn't seem to. A 2024 umbrella review pulled together 150 cohort studies and found that people who ate more omega-6 had lower rates of cardiovascular disease, lower rates of cancer, and lower all-cause mortality. Not higher. Lower.
Science will continue to evolve and the debate will carry on. In the meantime, here’s what’s true of our grapeseed oil.
Our cold, expeller-pressed grapeseed oil is low in saturated fat, around 9% lower than many commonly used cooking oils. It’s a natural source of vitamin E (60-120mg per 100g), contains OPCs, antioxidants that have been studied for their potency in neutralizing free radicals, and has no trans fats or cholesterol.
And because it’s never exposed to chemical processing or destructive heat, the structure of the oil stays intact from its pressing to the tub in your fridge.
What's Actually in the Oil
This one matters if you read food labels and care about ethical supply chains.
UC Davis researchers have spent years testing oil purity in the U.S., and what they found is pretty wild. Some bottles labeled "pure" or "extra virgin" were mostly cheap soybean oil. The problem is that not every oil is backed by the same level of verification, and most consumers have no way of knowing.
Our cold, expeller-pressed grapeseed oil has international purity and composition standards through the Codex Alimentarius that have been in place for decades. We use third-party testing. We can trace it. We can prove exactly what's in the bottle. Our founders physically and regularly visit our suppliers, hold the grapeseeds in our hands and watch the oil-pressing in action. Cold expeller pressing is a mechanical process, and there's a clear chain of custody from the press to our production facility.
The Bitchin’ Way
When we first made this sauce, the idea was simple: Real ingredients. Nothing you'd have to Google. Food you'd actually feel good about eating.
Every decision, from the oil we put in, to the gums we leave out, to the cold chain we won't compromise on, traces back to that. We make food we're proud to put in front of our own family. Pick up any label. Ours included. You should be able to understand what you're eating and why it's there.
Have a Bitchin' Day.
The Bitchin' Sauce Family, Carlsbad, California
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is grapeseed oil a seed oil?
Grape seed, seed oil. Those words intercept each other. It's on the "hateful eight" list that floats around online. But that list doesn't care how the oil was made, which truly informs the quality of the oil. It also does not align with the agricultural process, where grapes are harvested as fruit just like olives and avocados. Our grapeseed oil is cold, expeller-pressed, no solvents, no chemicals. It’s 100% upcycled from heritage, European vineyards from non-GMO winery grape marc (seeds, skins, and stems) from that would otherwise go to waste. It is a beautiful and sustainable supply chain.
Is expeller-pressed grapeseed oil good for you?
There is a lot of argument about this, but the clinical data is pretty one-sided. In March 2025, Harvard researchers published a study in JAMA Internal Medicine that tracked 221,000 people for over three decades. People who ate more plant-based oils (seed oils included) had lower rates of death from basically everything they measured. A 2024 umbrella review covering 150 separate cohort studies found the same pattern with omega-6 specifically. The AHA and Harvard have both published pieces saying that at the levels people actually consume it, omega-6 is not the threat it's been made out to be online.
Grapeseed oil also happens to be one of the richest dietary sources of vitamin E (a single tablespoon delivers 27-47% of the recommended daily value) along with other antioxidants that support cardiovascular and cellular health. Cold pressing also means none of the processing-related concerns apply, since there's no hexane, no high heat, and no chemical refining involved.
Does Bitchin' Sauce contain seed oils?
It does. It contains Non-GMO, cold expeller-pressed oil free from chemical solvents. The full ingredient list for Original: Water, Grapeseed Oil, Almonds, Lemon Juice, Soy Sauce (Water, Soybeans, Salt), Nutritional Yeast, Garlic, Spices, Sea Salt.
No gums, no stabilizers, no preservatives, no emulsifiers.
What's the difference between cold-pressed and refined seed oils?
Night and day. Cold-pressed oil gets squeezed out mechanically at low temperatures. What comes out is pretty close to what was in the seed. Refined oil goes through a totally different process: chemical solvent extraction (usually hexane) and high heat treatment. By the time it's bottled, it's been through a lot. That refining is what produces the oxidation byproducts that critics are most concerned about. Our oil doesn't go through any of that.
Is there hexane in seed oils?
Most conventional ones, yes. Hexane is used to extract the oil from the seeds. It's effective but it's a petroleum product, and that understandably makes people uncomfortable. Our oil is cold expeller-pressed. Mechanically-processed only. Hexane is never part of the equation.
Does Bitchin' Sauce contain hexane or chemical solvents?
No. We use cold, expeller-pressed grapeseed oil. Mechanical extraction, low temperatures. No solvents.
How much omega-6 is in a serving of Bitchin' Sauce?
4.4 grams of polyunsaturated fat in a 2-tablespoon serving, from the grapeseed oil and almonds together. For perspective: one tablespoon of pretty much any cooking oil has more than that.
Why grapeseed oil instead of olive oil or avocado oil?
Flavor and function! Grapeseed oil is neutral. It doesn't compete with the almonds, garlic, lemon, and nutritional yeast. Olive oil and avocado oil would both take over the taste, unless ultra-refined, and we learned this firsthand from our customers after using cold-pressed versions of both in various flavors. We also like that our grapeseed oil has international purity standards through the Codex Alimentarius, which gives us full traceability from source to bottle. And, we believe grapeseed oil is GOOD for you!
Why is Bitchin' Sauce refrigerated?
Bitchin’ Sauce is cold-processed. It is perishable. No preservatives, no gums, no acids. No shortcuts. Real food, so it needs to be kept cold. A big upside is that refrigeration also keeps the oil protected. Heat, light, and air can all degrade polyunsaturated fats. Our sauce never sees any of those between the press and your fridge. More on shelf life in our FAQ.
What does the latest research say about seed oils?
The AHA, Harvard, and Mass General have all published on this in the last year. The common thread: seed oils are not inherently harmful. It's the processing and the ultra-processed food context that matter.
References
Farvid MS, et al. “Erythrocyte linoleic acid, but not oleic acid, is associated with improvements in body composition in men and women.” Molecular Nutrition & Food Research.
Natella F, et al. “Grapeseed Oil Increases High Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Levels in Dyslipidemic Subjects with Initially Low Levels.” Arteriosclerosis, American Heart Association.
Natella F, et al. “Grapeseed Oil, A Natural Agent Which Raises Serum HDL Levels.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Celik DA, et al. “Cytotoxic and antioxidant effects of grape seed oil on the treatment of leukemia with methotrexate.” European Journal of Chemistry.
Rubio M, et al. “In depth study of phenolic profile and PTP-1B inhibitory power of cold-pressed grape seed oils of different varieties.” Food Chemistry.
