Which cooking oil to use?

[KarenBravo]

A good friend of mine who is an educated dietician, and quite famous adviser writing in magazines and having her own TV-program, told me, that palm oil is the best oil for cooking (frying). Whether there are different varieties to look for, I don’t know.

Normally cold pressed virgin olive oil has been considered the best for cold use, like salad dressing. Don’t (never) use olive oil for cooking.

Just goes to show, nobody really knows.

Coconut oil was first demonized, now, it's a "miracle oil.

Same with palm oil.

Used to be that any oil that was poly-unsaturated fat was considered better than saturated fat. Later research has proved that it is not quite as simple as that.

[KVJ]

The first thing I'd do is cut back on the oil use in general. The OP saying they use "tons of it" already has alarms going off.

I use the best olive oil I can afford for dressings and to cook Mediterranean food, the rest I like Rice bran oil.

We eat predominately Thai food so there's lots of stir frys hence the need for a decent cooking oil.

[duanebigsby]

The first thing I'd do is cut back on the oil use in general. The OP saying they use "tons of it" already has alarms going off.

I use the best olive oil I can afford for dressings and to cook Mediterranean food, the rest I like Rice bran oil.

We eat predominately Thai food so there's lots of stir frys hence the need for a decent cooking oil.

I really like the Rice bran oil for that. When I read "tons of oil" I was picturing a huge vat and deep frying lol!

Stir frying doesn't take much oil for each dish and I consider it healthy.

[GaryB1263]

A good friend of mine who is an educated dietician, and quite famous adviser writing in magazines and having her own TV-program, told me, that palm oil is the best oil for cooking (frying). Whether there are different varieties to look for, I don’t know.

Normally cold pressed virgin olive oil has been considered the best for cold use, like salad dressing. Don’t (never) use olive oil for cooking.

khun I have heard from many sources the amount of Palm Oil you get from frying is safe. Your friend acts like she knows what's up.

[lvr181]

Light Olive Oil if you can afford it.

From what I have read Canola Oil is the next best option and not too expensive.

http://authoritynutrition.com/canola-oil-good-or-bad/

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/canola-oil

From my research a few years ago on oils, Olive oil (Virgin or first cold pressed) good for adding to salads etc. for flavour. Not good for frying - high temps of frying breaks down Olive oil. Best for frying is a vegetable oil such as Canola. I do not buy oil in Thailand so I am not sure of labelling. But, oil LOW in saturated fats is best for your health with pluses being polyunsaturated and monounsaturated. Stay away from Palm Oil. Buy the best oil you can consistent with what you can afford, of course.

And when researching on the internet, see who is behind the results. Is it someone/company who has an interest in pushing a product or results from an independent third party giving validated, peer reviewable results. Much snake oil on internet!

[Kitsune]

None

[HerbalEd]

At least use olive oil on salads and other non-cooked foods. If you shop around Macro you can find some economic olive oil brands.

For cooking, sesame oil is very healthy. And for high-heat deep frying, peanut oil can take the heat ... just don't reuse it too much. However, no matter how healthy the oil ... eating lots of fried foods frequently (and especially daily) is the very opposite of healthy.

Anyway, as far as "affording" good oils: Also calculate in the expense and suffering of bad health. I always have to laugh at those who would never put cheap, low quality gas and oil in their car, but they'll put cheap, low-quality food and drink into their bodies their whole, unhealthy and short lives. I guess we all have our personal priorities.

And, yeah, yeah ... I know there's the exception like your old grandaddy or uncle who all his life ate terrible food, smoked, and drank lots of alcohol ... and lived until his nineties. But that's most likely because of super genes and maybe a very positive style of dealing with stress (The alcohol?? 555). But that exception to the rule is insignificant when you look at the life-style/diet/health/longevity statistics of millions of people. So, while not an absolute (What is?), most always bad food creates bad health.

Edited August 11, 2014 by HerbalEd

[HerbalEd]

Palm Oil? Not even fit for motorbike engines.

And yet if you eat fried foods on the street or in Thai restaurants that's exactly what you're eating. And that palm oil is most likely being used over and over for days, which creates a lot of trans-fatty-acids which are significantly carcinogenic. Bon appe´tit.

[TheWizardofRnR]

The Canola Oil recommendations are the best after Olive Oil.....if you use Olive Oil extra-virgin should only be consumed at room temp, for salads and cold dishes ...cooking with it is a waste....for cooking, regular Olive oil is best to use.

When we lived in Phuket we use to get Olive Oil for our Deli in 5 liter cans or bottles , between 700-1000B , depending on which brand or Country it came from . The Deli Supermarket carried a good variety in Patong.

[kolchuga]

I cook often with oil, and for health benefits, as well as stability at high heat, and neutral taste, you just cannot top, nor beat, the health and taste advantages of grape seed oil, most of which comes from Italy or Greece, sometimes Turkey and France, as well as some areas of South America. I'm not sure just how difficult it may be to find in Thailand though? Sunflower oil is distant runner up, to grape seed oil, olive oil is good for some things, but NOT for high heat frying, and canola oils, ( rape seed ), are only slightly better than what palm oil offers. ( Personally, I'd never use palm oil for anything, not even lubrication. Nothing will clog an artery or heart better than palm oil!

[Captor]

This is interesting and helpful oil comparison chart.

screenshot_113.jpg

http://www.eatingrules.com/Cooking-Oil-Comparison-Chart_02-22-12.pdf

Great chart. Can not find rapsseed oil in it?

[HerbalEd]

This is interesting and helpful oil comparison chart.

screenshot_113.jpg

http://www.eatingrules.com/Cooking-Oil-Comparison-Chart_02-22-12.pdf

Great chart. Can not find rapsseed oil in it?

Rapeseed is in the chart. It's the sub-name under it's modern, politically-correct name, Canola.

[Captor]

This is interesting and helpful oil comparison chart.

screenshot_113.jpg

http://www.eatingrules.com/Cooking-Oil-Comparison-Chart_02-22-12.pdf

Great chart. Can not find rapsseed oil in it?

Rapeseed is in the chart. It's the sub-name under it's modern, politically-correct name, Canola.

Oh.. Thanks Herbaled! I did not knew that.

[Captor]

This is interesting and helpful oil comparison chart.

screenshot_113.jpg

http://www.eatingrules.com/Cooking-Oil-Comparison-Chart_02-22-12.pdf

Great chart. Can not find rapsseed oil in it?

Rapeseed is in the chart. It's the sub-name under it's modern, politically-correct name, Canola.

I always thought that Canola is more healthy than the chart shows. I even read some new research that it is better then Olive oil. Which is hard to believe. And Sunflower seems to be better then Canola as well. OK, then I will change to that at least. I don´t like all my food tasting olive oterwise I would use that of course. The Canola is more or less tasteless thats why I use that. But Sunflower is too.

[h90]

Stay away from fried food period.

A recent study in the Science Times reported that fried food is more addictive than cocaine and clogs up your motorways.

yes all foods are.....withdrawal almost always ends with dead after weeks-month. Strangely the more heavy addicted survive the withdrawal longer.

[HerbalEd]

Stay away from fried food period.

A recent study in the Science Times reported that fried food is more addictive than cocaine and clogs up your motorways.

yes all foods are.....withdrawal almost always ends with dead after weeks-month. Strangely the more heavy addicted survive the withdrawal longer.

We are especially programmed by Nature to crave sweets. It's been shown that giving a fasting pregnant woman a tablespoon of sugar will within a minute cause the fetus to make sucking movements with it's mouth.

[h90]

Stay away from fried food period.

A recent study in the Science Times reported that fried food is more addictive than cocaine and clogs up your motorways.

yes all foods are.....withdrawal almost always ends with dead after weeks-month. Strangely the more heavy addicted survive the withdrawal longer.

We are especially programmed by Nature to crave sweets. It's been shown that giving a fasting pregnant woman a tablespoon of sugar will within a minute cause the fetus to make sucking movements with it's mouth.

No.....I actually most of my family don't like sweet after puberty (spelling). I love to taste a perfect cake, but just one bite to see if it is perfect but really I don't like the sweet taste.

But of course when the sugar level in the blood is low we want sugar to fix that emergency.

We crave water when we are dehydrated.

If you exercise hard and eat mostly carbohydrates you'll crave a steak and even raw meat will look ready to eat.

If you don't eat any carbs or if you eat carbs that are very slow digested you won't crave sweets. You may still like them but not crave them.

If you drink a sweet drink than an hour later you'll crave sweets. Because you get a high sugar level in your blood very fast. You put out a lot insulin to compensate (but with delay), you absorb the sugar but still the insulin is there so you absorb more than you should. Get low sugar level and crave sweets....

[Shiver]

[quote: Well most of the problem is oxidation. So as long as the oil is in glass (also don't get UV light inside the glass) and never opened it should be save for a long time. Once opened the problems start to accelerate.

Keeping it in the fridge (side effect it get hard) slows that down. Second solution is to buy small bottles instead of big ones.]

A couple of years back, my then GF found a bottle of cheap cooking oil at the back of the cupboard (that had been opened a long time prior), and told me that it had gone bad. I took one sniff, and geez it smelled of pure chemical (it was in a plastic bottle). I don't do cooking at home and am single mostly (hence the reason this thing was lost at the back of a cupboard), but if you want to buy oils in bulk then would strongly suggest putting them in a glass container.

As for which oil, I've never found one that ticks all the boxes, but I guess Sunflower would be the nearest thing if heat is involved. I did try coconut oil once, but the coconut flavour over powered all other ingredients, so not recommended for cooking, but fine for straight drinking or oil pulling. I dont care if it's MCT's or saturated fat, it's just the trans-fatty hydrogenated plastic type things (like margarine) that I would steer away from. If it doesn't go rancid after time, then it's probably not the best thing you could eat. Better to buy something that needs to be fresh than something that has a long shelf life due to processing.

[Edit: I should clarify that when I mentioned coconut oil, I'm talking about the real stuff, not that stuff you get in a carton, which is probably best avoided].

Edited August 11, 2014 by Shiver

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I looked at a couple of different medical-oriented, ostensibly unbiased sites, and they both recommended olive oil and canola oil as their top two picks for cooking in terms of health:

American Heart Assn:

http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/NutritionCenter/HealthyCooking/Healthy-Cooking-Oils-101_UCM_445179_Article.jsp

WebMD

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/healthy-cooking-oils-buyers-guide

Although, oddly, rice bran oil doesn't seem to even get mentioned on a lot of the U.S. health sites relating to cooking oils, in either good or bad terms.

Although, rice bran oil did get a good review in a study reported by the AHA in 2012.

http://newsroom.heart.org/news/sesame-and-rice-bran-oil-lowers-238424

It also got a good review in a study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/1/64.long

Edited August 11, 2014 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[Jaggg88]

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Incidentally those who love fried street food, tread carefully, it is ALL cooked with Palm Oil!

and palm sugar!

[misterphil]

How can you say Olive Oil is too expensive when its you and your families health?

Olive oil is the best way to cook, it scrubs the arteries and keeps a healthy heart.

[goatfarmer]

.

PAL OIL IS A HEART KILLER. STAY AWAY FROM IT.

The evidence for this claim is very weak and does not justify scaremongering.

[goatfarmer]

Too bad I can't convince my wife that cooking oil choice is an important health issue. Wife says "Thai people cook with palm oil"!

It is. You could learn something from her.

[goatfarmer]

Read the articles about different oils and fats on http://www.marksdailyapple.com/.

That site is positive on Palim Oil which is unusual given the consenus.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/palm-oil-nutrition/#axzz3A3ILhOzc

What's more surprising is that we have been misled for many years.

[goatfarmer]

The first thing I'd do is cut back on the oil use in general. The OP saying they use "tons of it" already has alarms going off.

I use the best olive oil I can afford for dressings and to cook Mediterranean food, the rest I like Rice bran oil.

I would suggest the opposite. If you cut back on oil you will likely replace fat with carbohydrate which, for many/most (I am guessing) middle aged people, will upset your blood sugar control and aggravate insulin resistance.

For those who are concerned about heart disease and stroke, blood sugar control, not fat intake, should be the biggest concern:

• Heart disease strikes people with diabetes almost twice as often as people who don't have diabetes.
• People with diabetes tend to develop heart disease at a younger age than people without diabetes.
• Two out of three people with diabetes die from either heart disease or stroke.

http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/diabetes-link-to-heart-disease

And don't think because you are not diabetic you have normal blood sugar control. Diabetes is the name for an arbitrary degree of abnormal blood sugar control set by a committee.

[belg]

i wonder how many months the street vendors keep their oil ... not that there is any regulation ... Stomac cancer is prelevant in this country...

[h90]

i wonder how many months the street vendors keep their oil ... not that there is any regulation ... Stomac cancer is prelevant in this country...

If you eat only at home and than you eat at one street vendor, you almost can't swallow it because it tastes so wrong.

And if you can, it will leave the body pretty quick......

In the west we are much more developed there are cheap filters you let the oil thru it and all the bad taste is gone (well most of it). With it restaurants can use the same oil for a very long time. Almost infinity (considering that you always loose some with the food).

I had once supplied product for fried pork and important was that it does not suck in too much oil (not for healthy or taste) so refill isn't necessary so often....when they re-re-re-re-re-re-reuse it.

There is even butter aroma if needed that it tastes more expensive....

[GaryB1263]

i wonder how many months the street vendors keep their oil ... not that there is any regulation ... Stomac cancer is prelevant in this country...

If you eat only at home and than you eat at one street vendor, you almost can't swallow it because it tastes so wrong.

And if you can, it will leave the body pretty quick......

In the west we are much more developed there are cheap filters you let the oil thru it and all the bad taste is gone (well most of it). With it restaurants can use the same oil for a very long time. Almost infinity (considering that you always loose some with the food).

I had once supplied product for fried pork and important was that it does not suck in too much oil (not for healthy or taste) so refill isn't necessary so often....when they re-re-re-re-re-re-reuse it.

There is even butter aroma if needed that it tastes more expensive....

h90 I seen this with my own eyes in 1975. The restaurant I worked for had this machine. It looked like a large shop vacuum. It would suck the oil out of a vat and then the vat was cleaned. Then the machine would return the filtered oil too the vat. The machine looked very expensive. It was built with stainless steel, etc. Very little oil was wasted and the food seemed fine.

[isawasnake]

How can you say Olive Oil is too expensive when its you and your families health?

Olive oil is the best way to cook, it scrubs the arteries and keeps a healthy heart.

For each 1 L bottle of olive oil I don't buy here, I can buy 2 bottles back home. So, you see, I am actually getting more of the desired effect

[Cpkt8]

For deep frying, why not try Phillips Airfryer?

Rapid Air technology

The airfryer uses a unique patented combination of high-speed air circulation, with a top grill, called Rapid Air technology. The Rapid Air technology makes the hot air circulate very rapidly around the ingredients in the basket (fig.1). This heats up the ingredients in the basket from all sides at once, making it a healthy, fast and easy method to prepare tasty food. Food prepared in the airfryer is deliciously crispy on the outside, without being dry on the inside.

Healthy

Conventional deep fat fryers use oil to heat the food and create the crispy layer. The airfryer does not need frying oil. The food is only heated by the circulating hot air. When you air fry French fries, the fries prepared contain up to 80% less fat compared to fries prepared in a deep-fat fryer. When you prepare homemade French fries, the fat percentage can get as low as 1.5%.

Fast

With the airfryer, you can easily prepare your favorite foods in a fast way. 300 gr of French fries can be prepared in as little as 12 minutes. The timer will switch off the airfryer automatically after the set preparation time. You can start hot air frying in a cold appliance.