• H&R Moderators: streaM Freak

Cooking oils - The good, the bad, and what do you use?

Cooking with any oil is tricky business since they all eventually burn at certain temperatures and some burn with much less heat than others. Also, polyunsaturated fats (which is what omega-3 fats are, although not all polyunsaturated fatty acids contain omega-3s) are the least stable of all the oils (this is correlated to their high viscosity or extreme state of liquidity that is opposite of saturated fats that are room-temperature stable solid). Heating any PUFAs will break down their stability and bring them closer to oxidation, and when an oil starts burning/smoking it is starting to oxidize and form free radicals. I don't know about cooking with hemp seed oil per se but since it is mostly polyunsaturated I'd say it is not worth cooking with at all. Flax seed oil, which is extremely high in PUFAs including omega-3s is widely considered too unstable to cook with. Some people even consider it inedible because of how fragile the polyunsaturated fatty acids in its oil are after pressing. It is said to be a good deal rancid already by the time it reaches the consumer.

Which reminds me: you can often tell when a food has gone rancid (its oils undergone oxidation; it has nothing to do with bacteriological spoilage or fermentation) by the smell it gives off. Take a good whiff of linseed oil, which is what's used for coating your tools so they don't rust while you store them, and note how it smells (musky or musty and very acrid). Remind you of something? Even a brand new bag of tortilla chips can smell that way, and that's a clear cut sign that the oils have gone rancid already. Linseed is another name used for the same plant otherwise called F L A X.

Here's a decent chart showing the constituent breakdown of most conventional oil seeds, with some generalized wingnut commentary underneath. You can see that hemp oil has

More on hemp oil here: http://www.hempworld.com/hempworldhotels_com/htms/Health/Hempforhealth.html
And page 7 of this .pdf has the best chart showing more classifications of the omega-3.6.9 that are in hemp seed oil: http://www.davoil.ro/documente/the-...otential-as-an-important-source-nutrition.pdf
 
I've read through your post, some good information! Thank you.

I'm going to have to re-read it again a few times and follow the links - try and make sure I understand.

I'm showing my colours here, but I only know Flax from runescape :p

So flax and linseed are the same (or at least from the same plant)?
 
In this three minute audio snippet, Jimmy Moore, author of Cholesterol Clarity (2013) says some telling things about the most common vegetable oils. He says the idea that they're healthy is totally flawed.




Coconut oil is a bullshit fad and potentially very bad for your health. Saturated fats are BAD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil#Health

In response to this, I'm going to quote something:

And it was the combined egos of medical theoreticians and the designs of greedy, unscrupulous members of the vegetable oil industry that gave birth to and perpetuated the myth of the dietary heart disease hypothesis. The dietary heart disease hypothesis sought to vilify saturated fat and cholesterol as the culprits in heart disease. What started out as a plausible hypothesis has never, ever been proved, despite extensive efforts and millions of dollars spent. Today, there are billions upon billions of dollars—from government agencies, medical-establishment interests, the pharmaceutical industry, organizations such as the American Heart Association, and, let’s not forget, the ever-popular food industry—all invested in the perpetuation of the antisaturated fat and anticholesterol agenda. This sordid history is well documented, though poorly publicized, as the media are beholden to their corporate advertisers.

Dr. George V. Mann, noted researcher in the Framingham Heart Study, stated, “On-going issues of pride, profit and prejudice cause outdated and never-proven notions of the saturated fat/cholesterol hypotheses to persist despite a lack of supportive evidence in the medical literature.” In fact, the Framingham study—long considered the most important dietary-related heart study to date—presented data that can only be a secretly shattering disappointment to those keen on promoting the dietary heart disease hypothesis. Claims by biased investigators that the difference in cholesterol value from 182 to 244 led to an increase in heart disease by 240 percent were shown clearly by forty years of Framingham data to be in actuality a potential increase in risk of no more than 0.13 percent. This is hardly damning evidence in favor of reducing saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet. In this range, there is virtually no difference among any individuals relative to their risk of coronary heart disease. Interestingly, in those people with cholesterol levels between 244 and 294, the rate of coronary heart disease actually declined!

Study after study (such as Framingham, the Minnesota State Hospital Trial, the Veterans Clinical Trial, the Puerto Rico Heart Health Study, and the Honolulu Heart Program) has shown a consistently distinct lack of correlation between dietary fat, dietary or serum cholesterol, and heart disease. Autopsy studies of vegetarians show the same degree of atherosclerosis as nonvegetarians, despite a commonly lower level of serum cholesterol and fewer dietary sources of saturated fat and cholesterol. A group of scientists known as the International Atherosclerosis Project analyzed thirty-one thousand autopsies from fifteen countries and found zero correlation among animal fat intake, atherosclerotic disease, and serum cholesterol levels.

The fixation on cholesterol levels and recommendations toward eliminating dietary saturated fat and cholesterol bewilderingly persists to this day, despite an overwhelming degree of evidence to the contrary. Michael Gurr, Ph.D., a renowned lipid expert and coauthor of the textbook Lipid Biochemistry, said, “Whatever causes coronary heart disease it is not primarily from a high intake of saturated fat.” He went on to refer to the steadfast preoccupation with the antisaturated fat and anticholesterol agenda as “the degree of self delusion in research workers wedded to a particular hypothesis despite the contrary evidence” (Fallon and Enig 1996). In the quest for answers with respect to the causative factors in coronary heart disease, there are many more viable contenders to more realistically blame: the increased consumption of dietary sugar and starch (and the development of AGEs and/or insulin resistance), certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies, elevated homocysteine levels, food sensitivities, damage from free radicals, inflammation (due to increased C-reactive protein levels; H. pylori overgrowth; intake of vegetable oils, omega-6 fats, trans-fats, or dietary sugars; or food sensitivity issues), stress, a lack of exercise, consumption of pasteurized milk products, and others.

Fallon, S., and M. G. Enig. 1996. “Diet and Heart Disease—Not What You Think.” Consumers’ Research 53: 15–19.


Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life. Nora T. Gedgaudas. 2011. Beginning of chapter 1.


One thing I'd like to add to this is that it's been determined that when animals are fed an unnatural diet of feed consisting mostly of corn and grains, which is standard for mass produced meat, the fatty acid profile becomes more like that of vegetable oils as opposed to traditional meat (because they're consuming the oils of corn and grains). This is pointed out in the chemical analysis featured in the following documentary. The following link will take you exactly to this part of the documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9cEoSDyfLo#t=2099 So there could be some truth to the rumor that animal fat is bad, but funnily enough it's only bad when the animal has been saturated with vegetable oils. Additionally, there are many aspects of health and wellness that are ignored in these authoritative statements ("saturated fat should be consumed sparingly"). There are just so many factors of health and wellness -- as an example, vitamin D deficiency (a unique vitamin generated via sunlight exposure) is said to afflict many people as a result of people being indoors all day long. And vitamin D is directly involved with the the body's processing of cholesterol. And certainly the broad studies that speak against animal fats have not been controlled for important factors such as the quality of the meat, as conveyed above, and vitamin D deficiency. And this is just two examples.


This is the full version of the interview from which the snippet at the start of my post was taken. It completely argues against the idea that saturated fat is bad. http://www.bulletproofexec.com/69-clearing-up-cholesterol-with-jimmy-moore/


I know of a website that sells both the books referenced in this post at a 95% discount in ebook form. It's one of the biggest ebook sites on the net. PM me if you want an invite.
 
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http://www.bulletproofexec.com/69-clearing-up-cholesterol-with-jimmy-moore/


I know of a website that sells both the books referenced in this post at a 95% discount in ebook form. It's one of the biggest ebook sites on the net. PM me if you want an invite.

Yup, all the hallmarks of anti-scientific woo

Self-proclaimed "experts" who want to sell you a product- tick
Emotive language - tick
Appeal to conspiracy theories - tick
Appeal to the authority of a small number of contrarian "experts', complete with full post-nominals to give extra air of expertiness - tick
An appeal to decades old peer-review literature that didn't cut the mustard then and doesn't cut it now - tick

Meanwhile, you will not find a single peak health body on the planet that recommends saturated fats. I'm sorry but I've seen far too much of this kind of anti-scientific denial to know when something is bullshit and this fat fad is bullshit of the highest order.

The evidence for what is healthy and what is not really couldn't be clearer - forget the fads, stick with what the science says - eat mostly plants, use vegetable oils, get your protein from fish and poultry, limit the amount of red meat you eat and get your carbs from whole grains.

HEPApr2013-1024x800.jpg


http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/pyramid-full-story/


http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/pyramid-full-story/#healthy-eating-plate
 
Meanwhile, you will not find a single peak health body on the planet that recommends saturated fats. I'm sorry but I've seen far too much of this kind of anti-scientific denial to know when something is bullshit and this fat fad is bullshit of the highest order.

The following sources are either scientific publications themselves or are direct reports on them. You completely ignored the scientific references in red22's post above and only sought an attack on one of the unaccredited bloggers referring to them. Your only two sources yourself come from an incredibly watered down nationalized public interest dump of metascience that has no particular hard fact to it at all. This took me all of about two minutes to find. If you really cared about learning about this subject you would have come across these and read them too, but you didn't, you just came here to shit on something because it conflicts with your own narrowed minded idea that you have never even considered challenging. Do your own research and leave us to ours. If you don't read any of the sources here or in red22's post then you're an idiot for trying to start an argument because there is plenty to argue against. Who's full of shit now?


Dietary Fats and Health: Dietary Recommendations in the Context of Scientific Evidence1
Glen D. Lawrence*
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY
lawrence{at}liu.edu.
Abstract

Although early studies showed that saturated fat diets with very low levels of PUFAs increase serum cholesterol, whereas other studies showed high serum cholesterol increased the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD), the evidence of dietary saturated fats increasing CAD or causing premature death was weak. Over the years, data revealed that dietary saturated fatty acids (SFAs) are not associated with CAD and other adverse health effects or at worst are weakly associated in some analyses when other contributing factors may be overlooked. Several recent analyses indicate that SFAs, particularly in dairy products and coconut oil, can improve health. The evidence of ω6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) promoting inflammation and augmenting many diseases continues to grow, whereas ω3 PUFAs seem to counter these adverse effects. The replacement of saturated fats in the diet with carbohydrates, especially sugars, has resulted in increased obesity and its associated health complications. Well-established mechanisms have been proposed for the adverse health effects of some alternative or replacement nutrients, such as simple carbohydrates and PUFAs. The focus on dietary manipulation of serum cholesterol may be moot in view of numerous other factors that increase the risk of heart disease. The adverse health effects that have been associated with saturated fats in the past are most likely due to factors other than SFAs, which are discussed here. This review calls for a rational reevaluation of existing dietary recommendations that focus on minimizing dietary SFAs, for which mechanisms for adverse health effects are lacking.


The Physicians Concise Guide to the Cholesterol Myth
http://www.cambridgemedscience.org/reports/CholMythCamb.pdf


Date:
March 5, 2014
Source:
BMJ-British Medical Journal
Summary:
Diets low in saturated fat don't curb heart disease risk or help you live longer, says a leading US cardiovascular research scientist. And current dietary advice to replace saturated fats with carbohydrates or omega 6-rich polyunsaturated fats is based on flawed and incomplete data from the 1950s, argues the author. Dietary guidelines should be urgently reviewed and the vilification of saturated fats stopped to save lives, he insists.


"But the new research, published on Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, did not find that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less. Nor did it find less disease in those eating higher amounts of unsaturated fat, including monounsaturated fat like olive oil or polyunsaturated fat like corn oil."
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/...eart-disease-link/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Coronary Heart Disease: The Dietary Sense and Nonsense -- An Evaluation by Scientists
Edited by George V. Mann. 149 pp., illustrated. London, Janus, 1993. $17.95. ISBN: 1-85756-072-8 (Distributed in the U.S. by Paul and Company, Concord, Mass).
 
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Couldn't see this mentioned but I often use it when cooking

Chili Oil (soya bean with chili and garlic added) - can give a great kick to a lot of dishes
Mustard Oil - great with curries etc
 
the only oil i cook in is coconut oil. AFAIK, it's got the highest temp-rating before its lipids deform from the heat, so i always, ALWAYS use it as my base. I use a ton of butter, olive oil and bacon grease in my daily-cooking, but I always add them when the food's done and i just saturate at that point. Is there any other oil that could be better? I'm going by experience, i've found google to be woefully useless in this regard (any legit references on oil temps are very appreciated. I've found olive to be very weak, i won't use canola or veg oil in anything, and butter / lard aren't as heat-resistant as the coconut oil i use; am very open to suggestions tho!)
 
I'm surprised to see how popular coconut oil has become recently. It's honestly not that good for you, given that it's super high in saturated fat. Most of the scientific articles that I've read say that it's better than butter, but not much else. You're better off with vegetable oils.

I only really use olive oil and canola oil. They're both relatively cheap, which are both decently healthy if you're using reasonable amounts. Canola oil gets a bad rep, but it's actually rather low in saturated fats. It's a better option than vegetable oil, which is just a blend of different oils, so those differ by company. And canola oil has the benefit of being super cheap, so it has that going for it.

Bmxxx, is something like this what you're looking for? - Smoke Points of Various Fats. It seems like a pretty solid list.
 
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can you elaborate on 'better than butter'? I hold coconut oil in high regards, but not as high as butter. I hold olive oil really high-up. am the type that will not eat a bite of something, if it has processed/hydrogenated fats in it.
Would be interested in learning more about whaty ou're getting at. I couldn't say there's a 'best' oil (outside of blends) because, afaik, the body needs things that butter has that olive oil don't, and vice versa. I like olive oil for it's poly-unsat's and like coconut/butter/meat-oils for their satty content. I like salmon w/ skin for the u3's. I think it's hard(or, missing the point) to name 'best fat', and yes that does apply to cooking oils- the best oil/fat for cooking, that i keep on-hand, is coconut. Your chart is interesting but i may've misspoke earlier, it's not 'burning point' that concerns me, it is what temperature starts to 'denature', for lack of a better term, the lipids in the oil/fat. I'm ignorant how that would stack up to the burning points, maybe it's tightly correlated but maybe not. I do know that the list you posted had extra virgin olive as much higher burning point than coconut, but iirc the stuff is photosensitive.. i would be interested in a more coherent approach to cooking oils than i currently use, but i don't think burning point is the most important metric there. regardless, i do appreciate that link it was informative :)
 
I like olive oil for it's poly-unsat's

Olive oil is comparatively low in polyunsaturates.

I'm surprised to see how popular coconut oil has become recently. It's honestly not that good for you, given that it's super high in saturated fat.

I don't think it's yet clear how harmful saturates are or aren't when controlling for the risk factors that tend to covary with them.

ebola
 
lel @ this thread

Canola oil is one of the healthiest oils and is generally the cheapest. The only reason people avoid it is because they think the less they spend, the worse it is for you.

The only time I use olive oil is flavoring crap. It's definitely not a cooking oil. Also, 95% of olive oil in supermarkets is fake shit.
 
lel @ this thread

Canola oil is one of the healthiest oils and is generally the cheapest. The only reason people avoid it is because they think the less they spend, the worse it is for you.


What about the trans fats? ->


The oil is removed by a combination of high temperature mechanical pressing and solvent extraction. Traces of the solvent (usually hexane) remain in the oil, even after considerable refining. Like all modern vegetable oils, canola oil goes through the process of caustic refining, bleaching and degumming--all of which involve high temperatures or chemicals of questionable safety. And because canola oil is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which easily become rancid and foul-smelling when subjected to oxygen and high temperatures, it must be deodorized. The standard deodorization process removes a large portion of the omega-3 fatty acids by turning them into trans fatty acids. Although the Canadian government lists the trans content of canola at a minimal 0.2 percent, research at the University of Florida at Gainesville, found trans levels as high as 4.6 percent in commercial liquid oil.24

24. S O'Keefe and others. Levels of Trans Geometrical Isomers of Essential Fatty Acids in Some Unhydrogenated US Vegetable Oils. Journal of Food Lipids 1994;1:165-176.

download


Source: Fallon, Sally, and Mary Enig, "The Great Con-nola." The Weston A. Price Foundation. 28 July 2002. http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/the-great-con-ola
 
It is all well and good to cite scientific information, but please watch the dates. Palm fat/coconut oil isn't all that great in large quantities either. If it is over 5 years old give it a healthy amount of skepticism.

Anyhow, from studies conducted here it has been observed that mono and poly-unsaturated fats combined with small amounts of healthy saturated fats are the best for heart health. Like ebola? said, a good mix of omega-3 and -6 is also recommended. As a general rule the longer the chain the more healthy it is for you. People here use a ton of rapeseed oil and sunflower oil.

I like sunflower because it has a lot of good vitamins, especially vitamin E (which is healthy, and protects the oil from oxidation), it has a high smoking point, and a neutral flavor. I use olive oil primarily for flavor in mediterranean/middle eastern dishes, walnut oil sometimes, and sesame in smaller amounts to season asian. Omega-3s can be achieved fairly regularly through fish, walnuts, rapeseed oil, and flaxseed oil (among others).

You can do an interesting experiment in order to observe what rancid oil looks and smells like. Pour some oil out into broad flat container and let it sit out uncovered. Depending on the source of the oil/temp/amount of UV, etc...you will notice the oil becoming rancid at different times. This demonstrates how some oils have natural ingredients which protect them from oxidation.
 
It is all well and good to cite scientific information, but please watch the dates.

If it is over 5 years old give it a healthy amount of skepticism.

So you're going to completely ignore the statement based on that?
 
24. S O'Keefe and others. Levels of Trans Geometrical Isomers of Essential Fatty Acids in Some Unhydrogenated US Vegetable Oils. Journal of Food Lipids 1994;1:165-176.

download

As such, these data don't include a suitable set of controls to establish the effect of industrial processing on oil seeds clearly (we'd want a large sample of similar oils extracted sans application of heat, stored favorably). And the variation shown is comparatively large, trans-fats accounting for from less than one percent to over four percent of total fatty acids in each sample. Oddly, the expeller pressed samples shown (C4-6) don't have the lowest average levels of trans-fats (C5's disproportionately high level of trans-fats accounted for by likely improper heating during production though, but C4 and C6 still don't collectively outperform C1 or C2) (see table on p. 7).

Also, we lack a clear idea of whether we should expect these levels of trans-fats to pose any health risks...it's not like extraction and deodorization created fucking margarine or Crisco vegetable shortening or something. :P

TL;DR: if industrial oil extraction were leading to significant transisomerization of seed-oils, we'd expect reduced rates in expeller-pressed samples; we don't here, so further study is warranted.

ebola
 
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