Which Oil For Cooking?

Berardi does not recommend using vegetable oil at all or so I have read from his Lean Eating article.

How else do you guys fry your food, or rather cook it so it still tastes good? Does anyone cook with Olive oil, or is it bad to heat that up?

Any recommendations?

I often use olive oil.

Look at the following article by Dr. Lowery:

Practical Fats
What you need to know about ingesting fats
by Dr. Lonnie Lowery

http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=04-026-diet

At my house we:

Fry with extra virgin olive oil.

Bake with canola oil.

Use Smart Balance a “non-hydrogenated butter spread” as our “margarine”.

Get yourself one of those spritzy spray thingies for spraying olive oil for stirfries. They work great because you often go overboard when dumping oil into the pan. With these things it sprays out the oil in small amounts.

The sprayer thingies can be purchased at kitchen specialty stores usually. Make sure you take 3 capsules of M before entering the store though, the TSF’s are quite high in those places :wink:

-Dave

This info has come from Udo Erasmus. When frying, a fat that does not damage easily should be chosen. Therefore it needs to be high in mono or saturated fatty acids eg. olive oil, butter or lard. Apparently also, the fat should not contain many antioxidants eg. dark olive oil (instead of light) since these are oxidised which then can cause damage in the body. I once thought that antioxidants in the oil was good because they would protect the fatty acids from oxidation. Heating the fat to smoking point also detrimentally damages components.

Hey, Tom:

Why bake with canola oil? (Just wondering…)

I’m also along with Rich, Tom and others: Olive Oil is great…spray it for things like omlettes and stir fry BUT on a low to medium heat. (Take you time!)

Mufasa

Butter, Coconut oil, or lard works great. They’re among the most saturated and will oxidize the least. I also think they are healthier. I feel much better since switching to more saturated fats compared to olive and canola oil.

[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Hey, Tom:

Why bake with canola oil? (Just wondering…)

I remember an article talking about it. I can not recall if it was by Dr. Lowery or if it was Dr. Berardi. I had also read two other articles that recommended canola oil and I can not seem to remember who these other writers were. The articles seemed to make logical explanations as to why.