Health Hack #6 - The Lowdown on Cooking Oils
THE LOWDOWN ON COOKING OILS
If there’s one component of thoughtful food preparation that is overlooked above all else, it’s cooking oils. Quality food establishments go to extreme lengths to broadcast their local products and tout their organic ingredients, but you rarely see any emphasis on oils. Nearly every hot food we encounter interacts with some type of oil during the process of cooking, but there’s hardly ever any mention of them. Why?
The sad truth is that in most minds, the oils are taken for granted. I’m cooking at a high heat? I’ll use canola oil. After all, it’s more ubiquitous than any other oil found in published food recipes and on grocery store shelves. Vegetable oil should do the trick, right? I mean, it comes from vegetables.
They’re an afterthought. A means to an end. And we’ve all been trained not to think twice about what flies as normal. But when dealing with real food, there is arguably no component more crucial to the balance of a dish than the oils the foods are soaked in.
Why should we be concerned?
Oils represent the pure fat of any particular food. Rendering oil from coconuts for example, yields only fats from the pulp of the fruit, leaving out all of the carbohydrates and protein. Therefore, it’s all the more important that the fat profile of an oil be as high quality as possible. Additionally, processing factors heavily on the micronutrient content of a food. The more extensive the processing, the less likely the good stuff will survive. And worse yet, more processing leads to a higher likelihood of oxidation, meaning the oil you consume is literally spoiled.
If your goal was to load up on carbohydrates (aka “carb load”) for whatever reason, I highly doubt that anyone would select candy (heavy in refined sugars, processed carbohydrates, etc.) as an optimal means of doing so, even though you’d be likely consuming pure carbohydrates. The logic is simple: food components come in a variety of qualities, and it’s not any different than with fats. Yet we’re (often unwittingly) exposed to some of the lowest grade fats known to man all of the time.
What distinguishes good from bad?
This is a tricky question, and one deserving of a deep, technical dive. However, it can be best summarized as follows: The more real the food, the higher quality the fat of the food, and the more natural the extraction process, the better the oil is bound to be. Take traditional soybean oil, for example. Soybeans represent the world’s most ubiquitous genetically modified (aka “GMO”) crop. It’s hard to consider GMO’s real. They’re also quite high in polyunsaturated fats. Just as important as the Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio that generates most of the buzz in the world of ranking fats is the ratio of Monounsaturated Fats to Polyunsaturated Fats. Higher mono over poly is what you’re looking for. And lastly, to yield cooking-grade oil from a soybean requires robust processing and machinery. Not particularly natural by any stretch. (Side note: for an exploration into how extensive cooking oil processing can be, conduct a quick youtube search into the process by which Canola Oil is produced. It is the furthest thing from natural.)
Take Extra Virgin Olive Oil (aka “EVOO”) on the flipside. A wholly real food, for starters. Very high in Monounsaturated Fat, known to improve heart health, reduce inflammation, and aid in weight loss. It’s also bursting with antioxidants. And The Process (nod to Philly) couldn’t be simpler. It requires merely cold pressing of real olives.
We’ll dive deeper into the benefits of EVOO with next week’s post, dispelling a few long held myths and explaining in depth why at Real Food Eatery we’re proud to broadcast that it’s the lone cooking oil that we use in house. In the meantime, hoping all had a nice Thanksgiving, and looking forward to seeing everyone back next week to rebound from the long, indulgent holiday weekend with some nourishing real food!