The Oily Truth

There’s one ingredient essential to pretty much every kitchen, but not everyone knows how to make the right choice when it comes to stocking up on it — oil.

Oil is important, a necessary part of our diets and supplies us with much of the fatty acids that our calorie-consuming number-crunching noggin needs. In the cooking scheme of things, most times it is the medium.

“Healthy fats are extremely important for our survival,” says local nutrition and inch loss expert, Rashi Chowdhary. “They help in the absorption of very important fat-soluble nutrients like Vitamin A, D, E and K. Lack of any of these nutrients can have an adverse effect on many different functions in our body. Most of these nutrients are powerful antioxidants, which are anti-ageing nutrients as well. So, lack of dietary fat can make you look and feel older much faster. Since most body tissues are fat based, the type of fat you consume becomes an integral part of your cells. Thus, balancing your fat intake can help with optimal functioning of your entire body.”

But the danger in a supermarket aisle is in the clever gimmicky marketing — “Big advertising 
budgets, slogans like ‘light’ and ‘heart healthy’ in front of the can should not be the decision makers when you go grocery shopping,” says Rashi.

Oils are complex and come in several different varieties based on the method of extraction, and from various sources. There are fruit oils like olive and avocado, oils from legumes like peanut and soybean, seeds like sunflower, mustard and sesame and their corresponding oils, oils from nuts like hazelnut, walnut and palm, and even fish oils. Even the humble olive oil — one of the oldest oils in the world, along with sesame, going back some 4,000 years — have variants that have you scratching your head or worse, changing the flavour of the food that you intend to make.

Comedian Lewis Black does a great segment on milk aisles that ‘go on forever’ in one of his stand-up routines, and pokes fun at oddities like lactose intolerant milk (“then what’s in the carton?”) and acidophilus milk (“Milk doesn’t need a friend”). Maybe a segment on oils would go much the 
same way. There are so many choices from highly refined oils like canola and rapeseed to cold-pressed wonders like extra virgin olive oil and peanut oil.

No guide is quite complete without culinary geek Alton Brown. His Food Network show Good Eats did a briefly encyclopaedic (30 minutes is just not enough) episode on oils, and although geekmeister Brown said that smoke points were hard to determine, it is still quite an important component to selecting your oils. The smoke point is basically the temperature at which the oils start to smoke and things like oxidation take place and free fatty acids start to escape. The more unrefined, usually the lower smoke point, but there are exceptions.

Coconut oil, usually unrefined, has a fairly high smoke point because of the high amount of saturated fatty acids, doesn’t break down easily, and is actually one of the healthiest to cook with, according to Icelandic nutritionist Kris Gunnars, from Authority Nutrition. Among the benefits is lowering bad 
cholesterol (LDL) and improving good cholesterol (HDL), and the abundance of lauric acid, which helps kill pathogens like bacteria and viruses. Virgin olive oil and regular refined olive oil (usually mixed with pomace and called olive pomace oil) have higher smoke points, but are not as healthy as the cold-pressed, unrefined goodness of extra virgin, especially that latter imposter! Peanut and sesame also have fairly high 
smoke points, but none come close to natural avocado oil. It’s very close in chemical composition to olive oil — primarily heart healthy monounsaturated fats — but can stand significantly higher temperatures and imparts a very delicate flavour. This also means it’s great for general cooking and frying without losing much of its flavour or nutritional value.

One handy thing to remember is that if it’s not heat treated and chemically neutralised, then it’s cold pressed — literally squeezed out — and arguably one of the healthiest choices. Extra virgin olive oil can be used for frying, but taste so much better drizzled over salads, in vinaigrettes, or pesto. Oils like sesame and peanut can also be used for frying, but ensure you don’t burn the oil, as it could ruin the flavour of the oil and the food you’re cooking.

Which brings us to the next important thing to look for in oil: flavour. Most unrefined oils are packed with great flavour, usually close to its source. Coconut, peanut, sesame, even unrefined sunflower and palm oil (red palm oil) are great for cooking not just because of their health benefits, but also because of the way they flavour the other ingredients. It is probably best to avoid refined oils as they are deodorised, neutralised and chemically treated, especially since extracting the oils is an intensive process. Legumes like soybean have such little oil that the process of extraction destroys much of its healthy compounds.

“One of the biggest mainstream nutrition lies that is 
keeping you fat and miserable is that cooking in canola, sunflower or other vegetable oils is good for you and your heart. The truth couldn’t be further from this fiction. These oils 
are very high in omega-6 fatty acids — a type of PUFA, or polyunsaturated fatty acid),” according to Rashi. She adds that a lot of us pop pills like omega- 3,6,9 on a daily basis, which gives us more omega-6 than we actually need, leading to an increase in health issues. “Even our favourite restaurants probably use these refined oils, so we’re getting even more PUFAs in our diet!”

Another important factor to remember when choosing your oils is fat content. The opinion is rather divided on this, with new evidence showing that some saturated fats are actually beneficial (read: coconut oil). Kris, who researches at the University of Iceland, is a proponent of these healthier saturated fats and an advocate for coconut oil as a ‘superfood’ and so is Rashi. Some mainstream experts suggest sticking to oils with low saturated fats and high monounsaturated fat content — olive oil being the best natural contender. “Use monounsaturated fats for heart health and to regulate chol-esterol. Make sure to choose a good quality extra virgin olive oil. It has much more nut-rients and antioxidants than the refined type. Plus it tastes much better,” says Kris. Olive oil, peanut oil, avocado oil and sesame oil are examples of monounsaturated fats. Avoid trans fats, usually found in chemically processed 
hydrogenated oils that are bad for your health.

Rashi goes a step further admonishing people to “Stop cooking in vegetable oils for your family and start using oils which are solid at room temperature. Ghee, pasteurised organic butter and virgin coconut oil are your best bets,” she adds. “Healthy fats, like those in coconut oil, help you live hormonally healthy lives. Omega 3 fatty acids have a great effect on insulin, which if balanced, can dramatically improve lifestyle related health issues.”

Most importantly, make sure to check labels to ensure you’re getting the right kind of oil for you and your family. Polyunsaturated oils like soybean (major component of vegetable oil) and corn oil, turn rancid quickly unless they are processed with high temperatures and dangerous chemicals. Avoid these at all costs. Oils like canola are often advertised as healthy refined oils, but because of the processing and treatments involved to make them, they’re often just as bad or worse. Most canola oil is from genetically modified canola crops in the US and Canada, and we all know that’s something to stay away from. “Big corporations pump in a whole lot of money on research studies to prove the health benefits of these oils they produce. So we start believing that groundnut oil, coconut oil and ghee are fattening. But in reality, they are not, and actually provide us with important components to our diets that help lower bad cholesterol, increase good cholesterol, and promote overall health,” adds Rashi.

The last thing to note is proper storage of your oil. All oils remain liquid when kept at room temperature — except unrefined coconut oil — but can go rancid if exposed to sunlight 
or moisture. It is best to store oil in a dark, dry place. Buy 
olive oil in cans or in dark bottles. Oils that are high in monounsaturated fat will keep up to a year, while refined olive oil, having the highest of monounsaturated fat, can last a few 
years. Extra virgin and virgin olive oils will keep about a year after opened. The shelf life of most other oils after opened is usually six-eight months. And never pour used oil down your kitchen sink as it can congeal and block pipes!