Sweet almond oil is simply the fats extracted from the widely beloved culinary almond nut (Prunus amygdalus dulcis), the same fats which make almond such a filling food. It’s a popular health product, but why?
Firstly, almond is incredibly rich in vitamin E, translating the massive content in the actual nut into a versatile oil. One tablespoon of almond oil contains 26% of the RDI (5.3mg) for vitamin E, beating the already incredible olive oil at 10%. The existence of this oil threatens to put supplement companies out of business. Almond oil contains more vitamin E than corn oil (10%), grapeseed oil (19%), canola oil (12%), and coconut oil (0%).
Secondly, cold-pressed almond oil contains far fewer free radicals, trans-fats and chemical byproducts (more specifically none) compared to soybean oil or canola oil. It’s therefore an acne friendly way to preserve your all-important salad dressing or recipe oil, with a slight nutty taste. Almond oil’s high concentration of oleic acid is also heart healthy, and can lower inflammation, rather than the omega 6 mayhem of soybean oil.
As for almond oil’s topical powers, I recommend mixing almond oil with a low oleic acid oil such as grapeseed oil first, but almond oil’s monstrous vitamin E content will prevent the pore-clogging squalene peroxide from materialising on your face. Almond oil was also found in one study to increase the skin’s resistance to sunlight.
That’s why today, we will discuss the top 7 sweet almond oils available, excluding any impure, diluted, or chemically processed products.
One – Sky Organics
A truly perfect sweet almond oil. Sky Organics has every feature a natural and nutritious almond oil needs.
Firstly, this is a large 16oz bottle, giving you months of supply, whether as a food or a topical treatment. Secondly, Sky Organics is pure and undiluted, with sweet almond oil being the sole ingredient.
Sky Organics comes in a plastic bottle which is BPA free, while the oil itself is free from the neurotoxic chemical solvent hexane. Sky Organics extracts the oil by pressing the nuts in an expeller machine, a traditional method where no chemicals are needed.
The raw almonds are grown in India, the correct climate for maximising the nuts’ nutrition, with the oil being bottled and packaged in the USA. Sky Organics is also officially certified organic by the USDA; the almonds are never blasted with harsh pesticides.
Better yet, Sky Organics is explicitly confirmed to be food grade, suitable for human consumption. Want to cook your potatoes with almond oil, or bake an acne-friendly cake using banana flour, raw honey as a sweetener, and almond oil instead of sunflower oil? With Sky Organics, you can experiment to your heart’s content.
The final advantage is the great smell report: users describe the scent as either non-existent or faintly nutty, in line with almond oil’s natural properties. Tales of rancid smelling oils are extremely rare among the hundreds of happy reviews Sky Organics has received.
Sky Organics beats almost every other sweet almond oil on the market today.
Amazon link: Sweet Almond Oil by Sky Organics.
Two – Erbology
This is another certified organic sweet almond oil, with an official USDA seal on the bottle. It’s therefore guaranteed to be free from the toxic pesticides and herbicides sprayed onto cheaper nuts.
Erbology’s almonds originate from small farms in Italy, which handpick them during harvest season in August and September. As with Sky Organics, the sole ingredient is Prunus amygdalus dulcis oil, which arrives in a dark amber bottle to stop penetrating UV rays dead in their tracks.
Erbology’s almond oil is confirmed to be cold-pressed, with the fats pressed out in a high strength expeller without any chemicals like hexane, mimicking the hand crushing used by traditional farmers for hundreds of years. Reviewers are delighted with the quality of the oil, though a few complain about a short use-by-date.
Erbology is another sweet almond oil to be confirmed as food grade; many almond oils which are marketed as topical treatments are in fact suitable for consumption as well, but Erbology confirms it.
This oil isn’t cheap, but the higher price confirms this almond oil’s legitimacy. Does Erbology have any flaws? Only that its 3.4/8.5oz bottles are smaller than Sky Organics’ 16oz bottle, but Erbology also features a recyclable glass bottle, making it equal to Sky Organics overall.
If purity is your number one priority, Erbology is your number one almond oil.
Amazon link: Erbology Organic Sweet Almond Oil.
Three – Lekithos
A relatively recent almond oil to appear. Lekithos seems to have learnt from all previous manufacturers’ mistakes, to produce a near perfect bottle. Lekithos consists solely of cold-pressed, hexane-free sweet almond oil, with no blending with cheaper refined oils to save money. The bottle contains 8oz for a lengthy supply, and has official USDA organic certification, confirming freedom from any chemicals, artificial preservatives and pesticides.
The bottle doesn’t explicitly state the words “food-grade”, so there’s some confusion. But according to Lethikos, “This amber colored slightly nutty tasting oil enhances mediterranean dishes and desserts“. It’s cold pressed and unrefined, so all signs point to it being food-grade. Being so new, there are few reviews, but those so far are entirely positive. What should an acne-friendly sweet almond oil smell like? Mildly nutty at best – it should never be pungent like cold-pressed tamanu oil.
Normally, a completely odourless oil is a bad thing, a sign of chemical refinement which has stripped away its natural properties, but almond oil is naturally mild smelling. Consider an actual almond. They barely smell at all, and it’s the skins which have the strongest flavour, and no material from the skin makes it into the oil.
The main sign to watch out for is a foul smelling and rancid oil, which indicates overly harsh processing and an oil which is swimming with free radicals. Elsewhere, Lethikos uses an unscrewable can rather than a glass bottle.
Lethikos defeats most almond oils with ease, succeeding with both purity and value for money.
Amazon link: Lethikos Organic Sweet Almond Oil.
Four – US Organic
US Organics comes in a 2oz or 4oz bottle. This is slightly more expensive than some, but that’s more proof that this oil is legitimate. US Organics is a trustworthy company, which has been around for years. Another advantage is its dark amber bottle, the colour which keeps the greatest number of UV rays out. The bottle is made from glass and fully BPA free.
US Organic contains only one ingredient: cold-pressed, hexane-free sweet almond oil. If you’ve never bought almond oil before, you might be wondering about this sweet name. Simply put, there are two subspecies of almonds: the sweet almond enjoyed as a food by billions (prunus dulcis amygdalus), and the bitter almond (prunus dulcis amara), a wild, undomesticated almond.
While having a shorter broader shape, and pink flowers on the tree compared to the sweet almond’s white flowers, bitter almonds are also laced with poisonous compounds like cyanide and benzaldehyde which make them inedible when unprocessed. Bitter almond oil exists, but it’s an essential oil, a distillation of its essence which is mainly used for flavourings in special soaps and perfumes.
You should never consume bitter almond oil. Sweet almond oil can be either: a fully food grade oil, or designed for external use only. Unlike Sky Organics, US Organic isn’t a food grade oil, but is perfect as an experiment topical treatment only.
US Organic is a great almond oil for guaranteed freedom from pesticides.
Amazon link: US Organic Sweet Almond Kernel Oil.
Five – Molivera Organics
Is this brand certified organic? No, for Molivera Organics is simply the brand name, but it’s a pure and clean oil, with no traces of hexane and even the bottle being BPA free. Additionally, Molivera Organics sources their almonds from Turkish, Greek and Spanish farms, which will be free of the villainous chlorpyrifos compared to Californian almonds.
The reviews of the smell are mostly delighted, ranging from no smell to a faint trace of almonds, similarly to Sky Organics. This is a 16oz bottle, and another advantage is its moderately dark, amber coloured bottle. Store the oil in a gloomy cupboard and it could last for years.
While not actually organic, Molivera Organics is a trustworthy and reliable almond oil brand.
Amazon link: Molivera Organics Sweet Almond Oil.
Six – Now Solutions
Another USDA organic certificated almond oil. Now Solutions’ bottle has a light colour, but actually features a built in UV ray protectant, mimicking the dark colour of Molivera Organics. Now Solutions is non-GMO verified, and its sole ingredient is Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis oil.
According to reviews, this brand “smells very natural” and causes “no sensitivity or breakouts“. Now Solutions (an offshoot of Now Foods) is again confirmed to be expeller-pressed and hexane free. There’s no mention of cold pressing, but expeller pressing tends to limit the heat.
How important is cold-pressing with almond oil? It’s important to prevent the polyunsaturated fats from warping into free radicals, but almond oil is stabler compared to grapeseed oil, for example, particularly considering its massive quantity of vitamin E. However, it won’t withstand the harsh chemical bombardment in factories, so a brand like Viva Naturals with the heat limited to 104F is about the limit.
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With tamanu oil, cold-pressing is vital, because its collagen-boosting powers depend on a profile of rare antioxidants like calaustralin and calophyllolide. Almond oil simply contains vitamin E, with the nut’s antioxidants being concentrated in the skin, but the oil could still contain unknown fragile phytonutrients.
That’s why eating or applying heavily processed almond oil is a fool’s errand, and that’s why Now Solutions succeeds. Its final advantage is its large 8oz bottle, for months of strangely glowing and clear skin.
As it’s not explicitly cold-pressed, this isn’t the ultimate brand, but still a trustworthy bottle, as the Now brand has a trustworthy reputation.
Amazon link: Now Solutions Sweet Almond Oil.
Seven – Viva Naturals
This almond oil is expeller-pressed rather than cold-pressed, but the temperatures are kept to a restricted 104F and no harsh chemicals like hexane are used. Viva Naturals matches Sky Organics with its value, giving you a 16oz bottle for months of tasty acne-clearing recipes. The bottle is plastic, but an extremely dark shade of amber, BPA-free and even phthalate-free.
This brand isn’t officially organic. However, this oil is non-food grade, according to Viva Naturals, instead designed purely for topical usage. Is being non-organic a problem? Almonds are moderately contaminated with pesticides, with one deadly example being the neurotoxic insecticide chlorpyrifos.
This chemical is actually banned in the European Union – it is illegal for Euro farmers to spray any crop intended for human consumption with chlorpyrifos as of 2016 – but the US Environmental Protection Agency has refused to ban it. An advantage is that tests of imported non-organic almonds, such as the Spanish almonds used in Viva Naturals, contained no residues of this villain.
Organic almond nuts and oil are ideal, but if not, look for European grown nuts or explicit confirmation that no pesticides were used. The final advantage of Viva Naturals is its freedom from any GMOs. The company is transparent about their production methods too, regularly answering customer questions on Amazon.
Viva Naturals is a great brand if you’re searching purely for a topical treatment, and a relatively affordable one.
Amazon link: Viva Naturals Sweet Almond Oil.
Conclusion
Our work is done. There’s some variation in the products here, with Sky Organics and Erbology being significantly better than Viva Naturals, but all 7 brands beat your average almond oil on the internet with ease.
We could expose the downmarket brands one by one, but it would be wading though an endless sea of endlessly regenerating oils. Instead, just avoid these features: refined, factory processed, an extremely pale colour, strangely plain looking packaging which looks like a mass produced version sold to cash-in companies on short notice, and customer reports of rancidity.
Again, I don’t recommend applying sweet almond oil topically in its pure form, because its 70% content of oleic acid is too high, but if you dilute it with a high linoleic acid oil like grapeseed oil, you’re free to experiment.
As a cooking oil there are far fewer restrictions. For all the hype about olive oil, almond oil contains nearly three times as much vitamin E per tablespoon. That said, olive oil has a stronger taste for those who want to blast their taste buds into oblivion, and more special antioxidants like oleocanthal, so the choice is yours.
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