Over the past few days, I’ve been cooking with Algae Cooking Club’s new chef-grade algae cooking oil in everything from seared salmon to air-fried potatoes and chicken thighs. The startup joins a new class of sustainable cooking oils such as Zero Acre Farms amidst a growing backlash against seed oils due to environmental and health concerns. Such trends have caused chains like Sweetgreen to switch all cooking oils over to extra-virgin olive oil and Chipotle to invest in Zero Acre.

The flavor-neutral algae oil boasts one of the highest smoke points of 535°F, contains 93% Omega-9 monounsaturated fatty acids, and is responsible for about half the carbon emissions of avocado, canola, or canola oil. Whereas Zero Acre Farms sources its oil from fermented sugarcane plants, ACC sources oil derived from microalgae that has been fermented indoors without the need for any sunlight. Thus, algae oils have been shown to consume over 250x less water than olive oil with 12x the land efficiency.