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Choosing healthy cooking oils
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While some scientific studies show that people who eat large amounts of saturated fat – like animal fat and coconut oil – tend to have heart disease, other scientific studies show people who eat large amounts of saturated fats do not develop heart disease.
The most famous example are the French, who are famous for the love of rich foods and yet they have relatively low rates of heart disease – much lower than that of Americans.
The people of Okinawa, famous for the good health and longevity, also eat large amounts of saturated fat. They cook mainly with pork lard! And some of their popular traditional dishes are stewed pork legs, containing plenty of fat.
If you were to go back in history, you will find that almost all people all over the world use saturated fats as their main fat for cooking – butter in Europe, ghee in Northern India, pork lard in China, beef tallow in America, coconut and palm oil in the tropics.
And people have been free of heart disease throughout most of history. In America, the rate of heart disease began to climb only after the 1920s. In most other parts of the world, the rate of heart disease escalated more recently, after the 1960s or even 1970s.
This trend, in fact, correspond closely with the increasing use of polyunsaturated fats.
Traditionally, polyunsaturated fats have never been used for cooking. Some European cultures traditionally took some polyunsaturated fats such as flaxseed oil. But they took them in salads, not for cooking.
We need, therefore, to seriously reconsider which are the truly healthy cooking oils.
Polyunsaturated un- healthy cooking oils
The main problem with polyunsaturated fats is that they turn rancid easily – when exposed to heat, light and air.
Depending on the type of oil, some turn rancid more easily than others.
The extreme case would be flaxseed oil. It has to be kept in dark, totally light-proof bottles and perpetually refrigerated. Even then, tests have shown that many brands of flaxseed oils sold in health stores have some degree of rancidity.
Regular oils that are promoted as healthy cooking oils – like corn oil, soybean oil, etc – may not appear rancid. But that is because they have been deodorised to remove their rancid smells.
These oils are, in fact, rancid before they even leve the factory. Because they are typically extracted using very high temperature (as well as harmful chemical solvents) that make them rancid.
They then undergo various treatments, including bleaching, the addition of anti-foaming agents, dedorisation, etc to make them appear good. But they are not. In fact, they are far, far from being healthy cooking oils.
If at all you wish to use polyunsaturated oils, make sure you buy cold-pressed oils. And use them mainly in salads or, at most, in low or medium heat cooking. Do not allow the oil to smoke. That's when it starts to turn bad.
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Monounsaturated fats include olive oil, sesame oil and peanut oil. These are closer to being healthy cooking oils.
For a start, they have traditionally been used for cooking for thousands of years, without causing heart disease and other health problems.
But again, not all monounsaturated fats are healthy cooking oils. You still need to avoid heating these oils until they smoke. Olive oil, one of the most widely recommended healthy cooking oils, is actually not suitable for high heat cooking, more for sauteeing or adding to salads or to pasta AFTER it has been cooked.
Sesame oil can withstand somewhat higher cooking temperatures and peanut oil is especially suitable for high heat cooking.
One other monounsaturated fat needs closer examination. This is canola oil.
According to some nutritionists, this is the "most perfect" among healthy cooking oils, because it is said to have an ideal balance of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
But this perfection is achieved through artificial means - by genetic manipulation. In nature, there is no such thing as a canola plant, whose seeds give canola oil.
Canola oil is derived from genetic manipulation from rapeseed, which is a toxic oil – unless consumed together with saturated fats.
There are some reports circulating the Internet about the extreme dangers of canola oil. Those reports are mostly exaggerated. Canola oil is not as dangerous as it is sometimes made out to be.
But what is true is that consumption of Canola has been linked with vitamin E deficiency as well as growth retardation. For this reason, Canola oil is not allowed to be used in the manufacture of infant formula.
A friend who once switched to using canola oil, thinking it was one of the best healthy cooking oils, made this interesting observation: He said that when he used canola oil, it was very hard to clean his pots and pans because the oil stuck closely to them. Now he uses peanut oil and he finds that his pots and pans clean easily.
This friend is not learned in health matters and about healthy cooking oils, but he has made an interesting – probably valid – observation that if a cooking oil makes your pots and pans difficult to clean, it cannot be all that healthy!
As you can see, the subject of healthy cooking oils can be quite complex. But here's a simple guideline: USE TRADITIONAL COOKING OILS rather than new, supposedly healthy cooking oils.
These would include:
To learn more about unhealthy and healthy cooking oils, visit my other website: www.stop-trans-fat.com
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