Healthiest cooking oil

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lordkenmore

lordkenmore

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Interesting article about a study that tested 10 cooking oils to see what is healthiest.

 

Quote:

Researchers found that extra virgin olive oil is the most stable and safest to use at high temperatures. Cooking with coconut oil was almost on par, but it failed to come close when comparing levels of naturally-occurring antioxidants.

Seed oils (also called vegetable oils)–such as canola oil, grapeseed and sunflower oil–were the least stable when heated and produced the most harmful compounds.

Researchers also found that an oil’s smoke point is a very poor marker of its safety and stability as a cooking oil, contrary to popular belief.

 

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I like olive oil for salads and cooking anything that doesn’t require high heat for frying. Also, the dish or food needs to be complimented by the flavor of olive oil, for somethings the flavor is wrong or too prominent.

I just usually get plain old vegetable oil for everything I would use oil for, frying, salad dressing, ect. I don’t like flavor or smell Canola oil at all. For sauteing I like butter or a combination of oil and butter, if the heat needs to be on the high side. For baking I use butter, only use Crisco for piecrust, nothing else.

I know that olive oil is healthier for you. But, then so was vegetable oil, like Safflower, Corn and Soybean oil 40-50 years ago. Seems like every 10 years or so, there is a new theory about whats healthy or not. I say just try and be moderate in what ever fat or oil you’re using and use what you like the flavor of. You only live once, so eat what you like, just try and eat a little less of the high fat and sugar choices.

Eddie
 
I never buy extra virgin olive oil anymore, although finding a decent brand of any other type of olive oil on store shelves is no easy task.   I like cooking with olive oil, but contrary to the source cited in the OP, EVOO has a very low smoke/burn threshold, so I buy the plain old olive oil that everybody -- including my Italian grandmother -- used before EVOO became a thing.
 
Most times

I use California EVOO from California Olive Ranch. Its so much better than the imported rancid crap they think is gold. I use it on pizza, pasta, salads, etc. Rarely do I use regular olive oil but when I do I buy the cheap stuff from Italy or Spain. When using the wok I buy peanut oil at the Asian market. When it comes to EVOO or peeled plum tomatoes I never buy imported they're over priced and the CA ones taste better. Salt however I buy from France and its great.
 
 

 

In Spain, virtually everything that is fried is done so with olive oil. Growing up, my mother was devotedly using Mazola corn oil for frying, Iberia extra virgin olive oil for salads. I use Wesson corn oil, (it has Wessonality), and usually Fairway brand Catalan olive oil. My husband would throw a fit if I dared bring Italian or Greek olive oil home.
 
You can live longer if you don't eat fats, stay away from bacon, don't drink, don't smoke, avoid having sex, eat only vegetables, don't come close to meats...

But wait... Why would somebody want to live longer without all that? (or at least most of the items.)

Every time somebody comes with this "healthy/fit/detox/whatever name" bullshit, i remember the chef Nigela Lawson.

Karan Diwan is a 51 year old TV health guru advocating a holistic approach to nutrition and health, promoting exercise, a vegetarian diet of organic fruits and vegetables. She recommends detox diets, colonic irrigation and supplements, also states that yeast is harmful, that the colour of food is nutritionally significant, and the utility of lingual and faecal examination.

Nigella Lawson is a 58 year old TV cook in Great Britain , who eats nothing but meat, butter and desserts, and uses lard and bacon for cooking. she also smokes and drinks

It's ok to try to go healthy, but everything has a limit. Extremes are not good.

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Not mentioned so far is avocado oil. It's very neutral, packed with "good" mono unsaturated fats, etc. And it has a high smoke point. It's not cheap, on a part with EVOO.

As far as EVOO, I very much like the California Olive Ranch stuff. Recently I picked up a "new crop" version, that is unfiltered. It has a strong olive taste to it... shorter shelf life than the filtered stuff but tastes great on salads, cooked veggies, etc.

I have not noticed a problem frying eggs or even meats with filtered EVOO. But since I got a big jub of the avocado stuff I use that for pan frying.

As far as seed oils go for frying... the better choices are probably safflower and canola.I prefer the safflower. Canola tends to get a kind of fish taste (don't know why). For deep fat frying, probably the best is natural lard or refined coconut oil. So far I've had good results with safflower oil in my deep fryer, but it can be a little hard to find.

As far as health goes, seems to me I've read that fully saturated fats like lard and coconut oil are not the health hazards they were once thought to be. What's really bad are the artificial trans fats produced when seed oils are hydrogenated to make them more stable and solid. The bugaboo about saturated fats, I think, was based on a poor research paper published long ago and it became sort of a sacred meme.

The problem with seed oils is the high unsaturated fat content makes them unstable and prone to oxidation. The high heat of frying accelerates the oxidation. Ever see a film of something that looks like varnish on a deep fat fryer? That's poly unstaturated fat that has broken down from the heat and become something akin to varnish (like linseed oil). Not good for your blood/heart. Saturated fats like lard and coconut oil won't do that.

Take you pick. If you use seed oils to fry, then change it out whenever you see it start to thicken. That's a danger sign that the fat has degraded and started to cross link.
 
Re health hazards

I am a old fashioned Southern cook, I season all vegetables with fatback, I love anything pork....My skinny doctor just had a major heart attack and bypass surgery, I told him I didn't want to hear about weight or diet anymore!
 
A lot of this bull crap comes down to genetics!  After working in a cardiac ICU for 13 years I learned it's really just the luck of the draw.  The 90 year old man who smoked since he was 10 years old and just now has heart issues or the 26 year old health nut with high cholesterol and going for triple bypass in the morning....genetics.  I have switched back to corn oil recently but I end up throwing out over half a bottle because it gets old before I use it up (or I use it in an oil candle).  I buy the small cans of Crisco...and it will get old also before I actually use it all. 
 
Rapeseed is Canola oil here, and while it's better for frying, I think the Safflower is even better. Of the liquid oils.

OK before someone gets panties bunched... Canola is from a rapeseed plant that has been selectively bred to reduce some potentially harmful ingredients: erucic acid and glucosinolates. Animal studies suggested heart damage from erucic acid, and the glucosinolates may impart a sharp taste. However some research has shown no harm to human health from consumption of regular rapeseed oil with higher levels of erucic acid.

Here's a good table comparing various vegetable oils. For heat resistance you want low polyunsaturated fat levels. Of course, coconut oil and lard have none or next to none (depending on what the hogs are fed). You also want high monounsaturated fat levels, and some oils excel in that category: Olive oil, avocado oil, safflower oil, and canola oil.

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I mostly use olive and nut oils, but I don’t actually fry all that much anyway. Although I do like stir fried stuff and I do tend to use proper homemade vinigerette made with good olive oils.

My grandmother lived past 100 and basically cooked more like Nigella or the Two Fat Ladies.
Although, she mostly used olive oil or butter for frying, not lard or beef dripping.
 
The biggest travesty in 20th century nutrition is how experts pushed trans-fat laden margarine on consumers, telling them that butter was unhealthy. This was based on insufficient medical research that branded saturated fats as bad, and polyunsaturated fats as uniformly good. The problem was compounded by the lower stability of high polyunsaturated oils on the shelf and in frying. To increase stability food processors started with more hydrogenation of frying oils.

I remember reading an interview with Julia Child in the 1990's, where she insisted that she never used margarine but always used butter instead. She knew something a lot of us didn't.
 

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