Hidden Valley Original Ranch is the best-selling salad dressing in America. It sits in nearly every fridge in the country. But if you flip the bottle around and read the label, the first thing you find is not buttermilk or herbs - it is soybean oil, sugar, and a list of chemicals that have no business in food.
One of those chemicals is polysorbate 60. It is a synthetic emulsifier originally developed for industrial and cosmetic use. You will find it in face creams, hair conditioners, and shaving gel. Hidden Valley uses it to keep the oil and water from separating in the bottle - the same job it does in a moisturizer.
What is actually on the label
Pulled straight from the current Hidden Valley Original Ranch ingredient panel:
Vegetable Oil (Soybean and/or Canola), Water, Buttermilk, Sugar, Salt, Less than 1% of: Spices, Garlic, Onion, Vinegar, Phosphoric Acid, Xanthan Gum, Modified Food Starch, Monosodium Glutamate, Artificial Flavors, Disodium Phosphate, Sorbic Acid and Calcium Disodium EDTA as Preservatives, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Polysorbate 60, Yellow 5.
That is the dressing your kids dip carrots in.
The cosmetic emulsifier problem
Polysorbate 60 is a member of the polysorbate family (20, 40, 60, 80). These are some of the most-studied emulsifiers in modern food science, and not in a flattering way.
A 2017 paper published in the journal Gut and indexed at the National Institutes of Health showed that dietary emulsifiers - polysorbate 80 was one of the two tested - directly altered human gut microbiota and increased its pro-inflammatory potential, even at doses humans actually eat.
A 2021 study in Microbiome replicated the finding: commonly used dietary emulsifiers, including polysorbates, disrupt the mucus layer that protects the intestinal wall. That mucus layer is the thing standing between you and "leaky gut."
A 2025 placebo-controlled randomized trial in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology found measurable changes in gut permeability and microbiome composition in humans fed dietary emulsifiers - exactly the additives sitting in your ranch bottle.
Hidden Valley is not adding polysorbate 60 because it tastes good. They are adding it because without it, the bottle separates on the shelf and looks ugly. The cost is paid by your gut.
MSG, modified starch, and the flavor stack
The dressing also contains monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate. That trio is a classic processed-food flavor amplifier - guanylate and inosinate make MSG taste roughly 10 to 20 times stronger. It is what makes ultra-processed food crave-able when the actual ingredients are cheap.
Modified food starch is there to fake the thick, clinging texture you get from real dairy fat. Real ranch made at home is buttermilk, mayo, and herbs. It does not need starch. The industrial version does, because most of the fat is cheap soybean oil that pours like water.
Soybean oil is the base
The very first ingredient is "vegetable oil (soybean and/or canola)." Soybean oil is industrially extracted using hexane, a solvent listed by the EPA as a hazardous air pollutant. After extraction the oil is degummed, refined, bleached, and deodorized at high heat. By the time it lands in your ranch bottle it has been processed beyond anything you would recognize as food.
Soybean oil also tracks with one of the highest glyphosate residue rates of any commodity crop, because most US soy is sprayed with Roundup as a desiccant before harvest.
The "no MSG" version is not better
Hidden Valley sells a "no MSG added" line. Flip that one over and you find yeast extract instead - which contains naturally occurring free glutamate, the same molecule MSG delivers. The label changes. The chemistry does not.
What to do instead
You do not have to give up ranch. You have to give up industrial ranch. Real ranch is one of the easiest dressings on earth: a cup of full-fat sour cream or whole-milk yogurt, half a cup of real buttermilk, a clove of garlic, fresh dill, parsley, chives, salt, and pepper. Whisk. Done. No cosmetic emulsifiers required.
If you want to keep buying bottled, look for brands with five or six ingredients you recognize, that use avocado oil or olive oil instead of soybean, and that skip the polysorbates, EDTA, and color dyes entirely. A handful of small brands now make ranch that fits this bar.
Scan before you buy
This is exactly why we built Tallow. Point your phone at any salad dressing in the store and Tallow tells you in plain English what is in it - the seed oils, the emulsifiers, the dyes, the flavor amplifiers - and rates the product so you can decide in five seconds whether it belongs in your cart.
The bottle in your fridge right now was designed by chemists to look like food. You should not need a chemistry degree to shop around it.