The article is talking about overheating to the point of causing "unhealthy" byproducts to form. Butter aside, it's hard to realistically heat plant based oils that hot in a home kitchen. As a...
The article is talking about overheating to the point of causing "unhealthy" byproducts to form. Butter aside, it's hard to realistically heat plant based oils that hot in a home kitchen.
As a case study, take olive oil, probably the most common oil used in cooking with a relatively low smoking point.
Based on my research, cooking with olive oil using high heat isn't nearly as problematic as most of us imagine. On the health side, I was unable to find credible evidence that cooking olive oil with high heat being bad for health (and, in fact, it might be one of the more stable oils for high heat cooking).
And on the taste side, its impact is minimal to none when used to sear foods that are then served with other ingredients, like a sauce. For deep frying, it does make a difference in taste, so you just have to follow your preference.
Note that none of the studies that they referenced or their own test actually got the olive oil up to its smoke point. My point is that it's very easy to get oils up to their smoke points. I've...
Note that none of the studies that they referenced or their own test actually got the olive oil up to its smoke point. My point is that it's very easy to get oils up to their smoke points. I've done it tons of times even with avocado oil, which I use for its high smoke point.
That said, there are studies indicating that olive oil is more stable even above its smoke point...more stable then what I can't say because I cannot access even the abstracts of the studies and I can't even find information on the journals in which they were published, so I'm thinking they might not be the most trustworthy studies. Not to say they're wrong...just that we can't really know.
Oh yeah. The internet has become absolutely rabid about oil lately. Whenever I hear someone talk about how great that a thing has because it has healthy butter and lard instead of those dangerous...
Oh yeah. The internet has become absolutely rabid about oil lately. Whenever I hear someone talk about how great that a thing has because it has healthy butter and lard instead of those dangerous seed oils, I kind of just want to grab their shoulders and shake them until they come to their senses.
That being said, I do take umbrage with the articles' characterization of oil as "healthy". Yes, you should be consuming plant-based oils in place of animal-based ones because of the reasons listed, but oil is not healthy as much as it is less bad for you. It is, after all, a highly refined food product that consists almost entirely of fat, and fat has about 3 times the calorie density of carbohydrates or protein. None of this is to say you shouldn't eat it, but that you should take extra care to not overconsume. The inherent unhealthiness of oil is probably one of the contributing factors for the misinformation around it.
I dislike the characterization that oil is primarily to convey heat. It can be, but so can air or water. But often oil is added for flavor or texture and heat convection is not even a factor. For instance, you can make a cake without it (or butter) and it will bake just fine - it just won't taste the same. Heat convection is mostly only for cases when you are frying, and there are alternatives you could fry in that are not oil; sand frying is a thing. But once again, if you sand fry something it won't taste the same as if you deep fat fry it.
I do agree with the conclusion paragraph, though. People are getting to much into the weeds with nutrition. If you are reading scientific papers on nutrition, you are probably not eating right. Most people do not have the experience or knowledge to parse the information they contain, and that sadly includes the people writing articles about nutrition on reputable-looking sites on the internet and in newspapers.
As a side note I just learned by accident that if you highlight a passage on archive.is it will update the URL bar with a reference that you can share to show highlighted sections of the article. That's a really neat feature!
I'm curious about your characterization of oil as "less bad." I think we see eye to eye on the importance of not over consuming foods which is especially easy to do with fats since they're so...
I'm curious about your characterization of oil as "less bad." I think we see eye to eye on the importance of not over consuming foods which is especially easy to do with fats since they're so calorie dense. However I think the charactizarion of oil as "less bad," feels a bit extreme as well. Unsaturated fats and sources of omegas/high density cholesterol are crucial in a healthy diet. It's easy to over consume especially in western diets, but I think it's important not to demonize oils either. Oils and fats are crucial components of nutrition, but the focus should be on paying attention to the quantity and kinds of fats in ones diet.
It's very possible I've missed your intent here. But I feel like this is a counter swing to "ok, but fat isn't good actually" so please let me know if I've misinterpreted the point you're trying to make.
Fat is good for you in moderation, but the problem with oil in particular is that it is essentially only fat. You need fat, but you certainly do not need refined oils. Humans are the only animals...
Fat is good for you in moderation, but the problem with oil in particular is that it is essentially only fat. You need fat, but you certainly do not need refined oils. Humans are the only animals that refine oil. In nature the fat in plants and animals is packaged with other nutrients that makes it much harder to overeat.
But I’m not trying to demonize oil. Eat oil! Just not too much. It should be treated like candy; an occasional thing rather than something you put in every meal.
Oil is something you put in every meal because many nutrients are fat soluble. It is not at all like candy, of which there is no healthy or necessary amount to eat. We suggest guard rails around...
Oil is something you put in every meal because many nutrients are fat soluble. It is not at all like candy, of which there is no healthy or necessary amount to eat. We suggest guard rails around candy because it is refined sugar, which is inherently addictive and causes cascading hormonal reactions in the processes by which the body regulates digestion, metabolism, appetite, and feelings of satiety.
Fats are actually pretty easy for people to self regulate with because it makes you feel full easily and stay full for a long time.
Once again, fats are not only in oils. Nobody is suffering through malnutrition through lack of fat except for people who are suffering from food insecurity and starvation or who have extremely...
Once again, fats are not only in oils. Nobody is suffering through malnutrition through lack of fat except for people who are suffering from food insecurity and starvation or who have extremely disordered eating. Chances are if you eat meat or avocados on a near-daily basis you are already eating more than enough fat without needing to add any oil.
Satiety is determined by a person’s body based on a number of factors, and it appears as if those factors get weighted differently from person to person. The obesity epidemic suggests that there are quite a number of people who are not easily satiated with calorie-dense foods, which will contain a higher percentage of dietary fat. And rather critically, when you press plant matter for oil, you are removing fiber, an extremely important factor for digestion and maintenance of your long-term satiety and gut microbiome. Anecdotally, when I eat food with a lot of fat in it, it usually triggers me to eat more food than I would if the meal weren’t so fatty. The old Lays slogan “Betcha can’t eat just one” is practically a taunt to me.
Fat is absolutely necessary to any animal diet. But oil is not, and it comes with effects that are damaging in the long term. It also tends to be kind of sneaky because of society and food culture; it’s ubiquitous in just about any packaged food product. It’s in your salad dressing, the sauces and bread on your sandwich, on the already fat-heavy roasted salty nuts you snack on, and even on dried fruits sometimes.
All of Europe on life support. Cooking in olive (and sometimes sunflower) oil is a daily thing for many, many, many people in Europe. Oils are absolutely completely fine to use.
rather than something you put in every meal.
All of Europe on life support.
Cooking in olive (and sometimes sunflower) oil is a daily thing for many, many, many people in Europe.
Yes, I know. But I'm putting an asterisk on that last statement. It's perfectly fine to feature oil in every meal. I cook with olive oil near every meal and many others do too. An excess of oil...
Yes, I know. But I'm putting an asterisk on that last statement. It's perfectly fine to feature oil in every meal. I cook with olive oil near every meal and many others do too.
An excess of oil comes close to straight drinking it. The worst part of overusing oil when cooking is that you saturate your food making it soggy or greasy.
I'm glad I've been justified in using my sunflower oil. It's my flavor preference and smoke point preference (because it doesn't taste like anything, and it has a high smoke point). I do like the...
I'm glad I've been justified in using my sunflower oil. It's my flavor preference and smoke point preference (because it doesn't taste like anything, and it has a high smoke point).
I do like the diea of use whatever oil you want as long as it works for you.
Homie, what the hell are you talking about? People overheat their oil all the time.
The article is talking about overheating to the point of causing "unhealthy" byproducts to form. Butter aside, it's hard to realistically heat plant based oils that hot in a home kitchen.
As a case study, take olive oil, probably the most common oil used in cooking with a relatively low smoking point.
https://www.seriouseats.com/cooking-with-olive-oil-faq-safety-flavor#:~:text=This%20idea%20that%20it's%20not,when%20exposed%20to%20high%20heat.
Note that none of the studies that they referenced or their own test actually got the olive oil up to its smoke point. My point is that it's very easy to get oils up to their smoke points. I've done it tons of times even with avocado oil, which I use for its high smoke point.
That said, there are studies indicating that olive oil is more stable even above its smoke point...more stable then what I can't say because I cannot access even the abstracts of the studies and I can't even find information on the journals in which they were published, so I'm thinking they might not be the most trustworthy studies. Not to say they're wrong...just that we can't really know.
I had a serious crisis of “was I the only idiot doing that for years?” So thank you
Oh yeah. The internet has become absolutely rabid about oil lately. Whenever I hear someone talk about how great that a thing has because it has healthy butter and lard instead of those dangerous seed oils, I kind of just want to grab their shoulders and shake them until they come to their senses.
That being said, I do take umbrage with the articles' characterization of oil as "healthy". Yes, you should be consuming plant-based oils in place of animal-based ones because of the reasons listed, but oil is not healthy as much as it is less bad for you. It is, after all, a highly refined food product that consists almost entirely of fat, and fat has about 3 times the calorie density of carbohydrates or protein. None of this is to say you shouldn't eat it, but that you should take extra care to not overconsume. The inherent unhealthiness of oil is probably one of the contributing factors for the misinformation around it.
I dislike the characterization that oil is primarily to convey heat. It can be, but so can air or water. But often oil is added for flavor or texture and heat convection is not even a factor. For instance, you can make a cake without it (or butter) and it will bake just fine - it just won't taste the same. Heat convection is mostly only for cases when you are frying, and there are alternatives you could fry in that are not oil; sand frying is a thing. But once again, if you sand fry something it won't taste the same as if you deep fat fry it.
I do agree with the conclusion paragraph, though. People are getting to much into the weeds with nutrition. If you are reading scientific papers on nutrition, you are probably not eating right. Most people do not have the experience or knowledge to parse the information they contain, and that sadly includes the people writing articles about nutrition on reputable-looking sites on the internet and in newspapers.
As a side note I just learned by accident that if you highlight a passage on archive.is it will update the URL bar with a reference that you can share to show highlighted sections of the article. That's a really neat feature!
I'm curious about your characterization of oil as "less bad." I think we see eye to eye on the importance of not over consuming foods which is especially easy to do with fats since they're so calorie dense. However I think the charactizarion of oil as "less bad," feels a bit extreme as well. Unsaturated fats and sources of omegas/high density cholesterol are crucial in a healthy diet. It's easy to over consume especially in western diets, but I think it's important not to demonize oils either. Oils and fats are crucial components of nutrition, but the focus should be on paying attention to the quantity and kinds of fats in ones diet.
It's very possible I've missed your intent here. But I feel like this is a counter swing to "ok, but fat isn't good actually" so please let me know if I've misinterpreted the point you're trying to make.
Fat is good for you in moderation, but the problem with oil in particular is that it is essentially only fat. You need fat, but you certainly do not need refined oils. Humans are the only animals that refine oil. In nature the fat in plants and animals is packaged with other nutrients that makes it much harder to overeat.
But I’m not trying to demonize oil. Eat oil! Just not too much. It should be treated like candy; an occasional thing rather than something you put in every meal.
Oil is something you put in every meal because many nutrients are fat soluble. It is not at all like candy, of which there is no healthy or necessary amount to eat. We suggest guard rails around candy because it is refined sugar, which is inherently addictive and causes cascading hormonal reactions in the processes by which the body regulates digestion, metabolism, appetite, and feelings of satiety.
Fats are actually pretty easy for people to self regulate with because it makes you feel full easily and stay full for a long time.
Once again, fats are not only in oils. Nobody is suffering through malnutrition through lack of fat except for people who are suffering from food insecurity and starvation or who have extremely disordered eating. Chances are if you eat meat or avocados on a near-daily basis you are already eating more than enough fat without needing to add any oil.
Satiety is determined by a person’s body based on a number of factors, and it appears as if those factors get weighted differently from person to person. The obesity epidemic suggests that there are quite a number of people who are not easily satiated with calorie-dense foods, which will contain a higher percentage of dietary fat. And rather critically, when you press plant matter for oil, you are removing fiber, an extremely important factor for digestion and maintenance of your long-term satiety and gut microbiome. Anecdotally, when I eat food with a lot of fat in it, it usually triggers me to eat more food than I would if the meal weren’t so fatty. The old Lays slogan “Betcha can’t eat just one” is practically a taunt to me.
Fat is absolutely necessary to any animal diet. But oil is not, and it comes with effects that are damaging in the long term. It also tends to be kind of sneaky because of society and food culture; it’s ubiquitous in just about any packaged food product. It’s in your salad dressing, the sauces and bread on your sandwich, on the already fat-heavy roasted salty nuts you snack on, and even on dried fruits sometimes.
All of Europe on life support.
Cooking in olive (and sometimes sunflower) oil is a daily thing for many, many, many people in Europe.
Oils are absolutely completely fine to use.
Once again, I am not saying to banish oil. I’m just saying to not consume in excess.
Yes, I know. But I'm putting an asterisk on that last statement. It's perfectly fine to feature oil in every meal. I cook with olive oil near every meal and many others do too.
An excess of oil comes close to straight drinking it. The worst part of overusing oil when cooking is that you saturate your food making it soggy or greasy.
Oh, I see what you're saying. Thanks for clarifying!
I'm glad I've been justified in using my sunflower oil. It's my flavor preference and smoke point preference (because it doesn't taste like anything, and it has a high smoke point).
I do like the diea of use whatever oil you want as long as it works for you.
Mirror: https://archive.is/HTsw7