Since it opened in 2013, Carbone in New York City’s Greenwich Village has been a venerated hotspot for celebrities, social climbers, and anyone looking to see and be seen. Pop culture icons like Drake, Justin Bieber, the Kardashians and Adele have all graced the Italian-American haunt with their presence, and Ye even directed a photo shoot in the dining room. A three-star review from The New York Times and a spot on the coveted Michelin Guide surely demonstrate the use of the highest quality available ingredients, right?

Not so, according to Scout Master, the anonymous founder of the Seed Oil Scout app, who is waging war on what he and an increasingly vocal movement view as poisonous cooking fats. He believes Carbone and fine dining establishments like it are cloaking health destroying, low-quality food in strong branding and an Instagram-ready setting. His mission is to stop them.

Like many New Yorkers, Scout Master used to eat most of his meals out. When COVID closed down the city, he was forced to cook for himself, which meant taking a closer look at the ingredients in his diet. After going down the rabbit hole on Twitter, he became a “radicalized seed oil truther” and completely cut out ultra-processed foods and fats. Almost immediately, the new diet seemed to solve his longstanding digestive issues. Then, he had an idea.

Scout Master built Seed Oil Scout over a span of six months, initially gaining users by showing demos online and replying to large X accounts. The app provides an interactive map of restaurants where users, or “scouts,” can upload correspondence with restaurants about their seed oil use. Each restaurant has a profile, which the app rates from “Dine shamefully” to “Dine happily.” The map currently covers over 20,000 restaurants across several major cities, with over 600,000 scouts.

Claims about the health risks of seed oils are at the center of a heated debate that, with the nomination of RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, is only growing louder. But for Scout Master, the matter is clear: “Seed oils are made from waste products of the food industry. Over-subsidized soybeans or discarded rice hulls are passed through a literal oil refinery to create calories. They are the cheapest calories humanity can produce,” he says.

According to the NIH, nearly 74 percent of Americans are overweight, including 43 percent who are considered obese. Colon cancer among young people is sharply on the rise. Scout Master links these trends with seed oil use.

“Soybean oil has 10 times the polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) of beef fat, and five times [that] of a good olive oil,” he says. “These fats are extremely unstable and degrade when heated into toxic compounds called aldehydes and polar compounds, like formaldehyde and 4-HNE, which are proven to be obesogenic and carcinogenic.”

“Your average American gets 20 to 30 percent of their calories from soybean oil directly, which is 40 percent PUFA. Today, Americans’ body fat is 20 percent PUFA, and measurements back to World War II have it below 8 percent generally. Emerging theories are that this slows our metabolism like a squirrel fattened on acorns for the winter.”

Although RFK Jr. has famously criticized McDonald’s for ditching their tallow fries, not everyone agrees seed oils are dangerous. The New York Times reflexively published a piece in defense of the oils after his nomination, and while the public health establishment shares some of Scout Master’s concerns, it generally stands behind America’s current oil intake. Even anti-aging guru Bryan Johnson, certainly no establishment voice, said the “ill reputation of plant seed oils is unfounded.”

The seed oil debate is still far from consensus, but Scout Master is convinced, and sees high profile Carbone as central to changing hearts and minds on the issue. Last year, he launched a guerilla campaign against its signature dish by posting flyers that read “CARBONE PUTS SEED OILS IN THEIR SPICY RIGATONI” all over the city, with a QR code for his app.

Based on email correspondence Scout Master says is between a scout and the Carbone team, a screenshot uploaded to Seed Oil Scout claims the restaurant uses a pre-made chili oil that contains sunflower seed oil in the dish.

“The modern foodie scene is completely bought into the illusion that a restaurant is able to build with tasteful lighting, Instagram presence, and creative plating,” he continues. “The seed oils are like CGI, and the photogenic Asian-fusion dishes are like a Marvel movie. It’s all noise and no substance.”

“High end restaurants can afford better ingredients, but they don’t believe diners care, so they don’t make the investment.”

After the Carbone campaign went viral, Carbone’s parent company, Major Food Group, responded with a cease and desist letter, which denied some of the app’s claims and demanded that it “immediately remove any signs that include false claims and refrain from making any further false statements — including claims that Carbone uses seed oil in its spicy rigatoni.” Seed Oil Scout had his lawyers respond in kind.

The legal situation is ongoing, but Scout Master sees it as a key step in raising awareness of the issue. “We are going to try to highlight their admission of guilt and double down if our lawyers let us. We think we can get them to change the dish,” he explains.

Scout Master’s campaign was one of the first incursions of the seed oils debate — one that had largely been very online — into the physical world. A niche interest on a vaguely right-wing corner of Twitter, where anonymous accounts promote the benefits of sunning your balls and slonking raw eggs, is now making its way into the national zeitgeist.

Scout Master sees the pivot on the discourse as more than a successful marketing stunt, but rather part of a larger trend of major establishments taking cues from the culture. Notably, Sweetgreen reached out for advice on using healthier cooking fats, which resulted in a switch to extra virgin olive oil. And while he mostly advises smaller restaurants, some larger chains have noticed the trend on their own: Chipotle has invested in a new type of healthier cooking oil, which Shake Shack is also currently trialing.

Seed Oil Scout plans to launch a “Seed Oil Safe” badge for packaged food, and continue to apply pressure to restaurants while carving out a distinct voice for himself in the debate.

“Anything with legitimacy is too far in the mainstream medicine camp (seed oils are good)” he explains, while “the vitality/natural health accounts are often alienating or confusing.” He aims to cut through the political noise of both and “present an unbiased mix of science and ancestral and common sense wisdom.”

Whether or not seed oils are as destructive as Scout Master and his followers believe, the conversation does seem to be making its way into the mainstream. With the Make America Healthy Again movement well underway, the discussion will continue, and a more rigorous investigation will have to take place. Until then, be cautious on your next date night: if you go chasing clout at a downtown hotspot, you might end up with a plate of industrial sludge.

— Kevin Chaiken