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Why is vegetable oil to be avoided? Is it because of their Omega 6 content? And does this mean that fried food is to be avoided too?

Thanks!

Back in the good old days, food was fried in animal fat, normally beef tallow or lard. Then they started used "healthy" fats like Crisco and corn oil, now canola and safflower.

Omega 6 is inflamatory and it probably one of the most damaging components of the modern diet, after right after sugar and gluten. It became popular due to a misguided fear of saturated fats, as they were blamed for the damage caused by trans fats. O6 is an "essential" fatty acid, which just means that we need a little bit in our diet. However, we get a lot of it, about 20 times too much. Cooking with O6 oxidizes the fragile fats creating cancer causing free radicals.

Fry your food in saturated fats that don't oxidise. Any naturally solid fat will work. Butter, coconut oil, beef tallow, lard, drippings, etc, will work for frying. Virtually no restaurant in the western world uses these fats for frying anymore so avoid all fried foods you don't cook yourself.

Edit: I should mention hydrogenated fats. These are artificially hardened fats like crisco and margaine. These are evil due to their trans fat content and everyone now agrees that these should not be used anymore. Instead they've been replaced by a new type of fat called Interesterified fat. It turns out that there are issues with this fat that may be just as bad as the trans fats they replace. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 131545.htm

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Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
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Thanks TimD

Stu, when you say you should fry your food in naturally solid fats, does that mean not to fry in olive oil? I go through a litre of the stuff every 2 weeks. I fry everything in it.

Olive oil has a relatively low smoke point and can oxidise more easily than saturated fats. It's far better than most oils, which are unsaturated, but it's better to use it as a cool temperature oil for uses like for salads, etc. Some people like macadamia nut oil or avacoda oil which have higher smoke point and are also monounsaturated. I still prefer butter for sauteing, coconut oil for stir frying and lard or beef tallow for deep frying, although I don't normally deep fry anything. In general, the better the olive oil is, the more monounsaturated it is and the more resistant to oxidation it is.

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Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
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Thanks TimD

Thanks stu for the information. But how can people know which saturated fats don't oxidise? Beside being naturally solid, does it have any relation to how easy a type of fat to become rancid?

Unfortunately I've never experienced eating food fried in any kind of animal fat.

Rancid = oxidization. We're talking the same thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancidification
"Oxidation primarily occurs with unsaturated fats." In fact, the more saturated a fat is, the more resistant to rancidification it is. That's why you keep your fish oil refrigerated but you can leave butter out on the counter. Coconut oil is the most saturated fat. It's rock hard in the fridge. Keep it in the cupboard. It's easier to spoon out. Try that first and see how you like it.

_________________
Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
_________________
Thanks TimD

So that's why some type of fat seemingly can't become rancid.

hmm, I might switch to lard for frying purposes then. I have never seen coconut oil in any of my local shops.

amazon.

that's not a bad shout but unfortunately the post in my area is a nightmare. The postman can never seem to be arsed to deliver anything, they just tell us to pick it up at the depot which is miles away.

I remember getting ready for work one morning and seeing my postman out the window in the lane behind my flat. He was holding what looked like a big long straw, then he put it to his lips and lit it! No wonder he can't be bothered to deliver my parcels if he's smoking 12 inch spliffs at 8 o clock in the morning.

Hahaha! Our post is hit and miss too, last year everything went to the depot in the centre of Nottingham. I waited 3 weeks for a massive parcel of protein and endd up having to carry it back from the depot. I felt vulnerable, but at least they could tell I worked out by the box!

We're in the middle of a postal strike here in Canada. For Coconut oil, check the ethnic communities. Many medeteranian stores carry it. It's in the natural foods section of my grocery store. In my house we use lard instead of shortneing for baking and it works fine for frying but I distrust anything that comes from big agriculture. If you have access to grass fed pork, the best lard is the leaf lard found near the kidneys of the pig. It's vastly different than the stuff that comes in a box but it's hard to find.

_________________
Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
_________________
Thanks TimD

Vegetable oil blends are used in unmodified vehicles, but straight vegetable oil needs specially prepared vehicles which have a method of heating the oil to reduce its viscosity and surface tension. Another alternative is vegetable oil refining.

One more post, and he'll be able to post the link!

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

Nah, the magic number is higher, but it's also a secret.