Update 2023-11-29: Ziki Kitchen claims to have switched back to beef tallow, but their website doesn’t reflect this change. Read below
What is Cultured Oil?
Ziki Kitchen, a startup restaurant in Austin, has been using Cultured Oil to prepare various items on their menu. Cultured Oil is a novel cooking oil product made by Zero Acre Farm’s GMO microbes consuming sugar and producing monounsaturated fatty acids (bug oil for short).
They say it’s natural because fermentation is natural, which avoids the question entirely, as the microbes from which the oil is extracted are genetically modified.
Cultured Oil is sold without a Bioengineered label, because they shred and filter out the GMO bug bodies, but the production process is dependent on genetically modified organisms – so it’s a GMO as far as I’m concerned.
“It’s microbe oil from genetically modified bugs, but it’s not seed oil!” is the bit they’re going with.
Ziki Kitchen asks: Beef Tallow or “Cultured Oil”
October 7th, Ziki Kitchen posted a poll on Instagram asking whether they should switch to beef tallow or continue using Zero Acre Farms GMO Cultured Oil.
The results weren’t favorable to Zero Acre Farm’s new frankenfood.
Results showed 92% of their following want them to switch back beef tallow, while only 8% want Ziki to continue using the bug oil. Turns out, “seed oil free” isn’t a golden ticket, foodies want real food.
Have they switched?
2023-11-29 – Ziki Kitchen posted on Instagram that “all fried items are now cooked in beef tallow.”
Ziki Kitchen’s website still says they use Zero Acre. Maybe their web developer hasn’t cleared the ticket yet, it happens, hopefully that will change too.
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