Home Cooking Oil Recommendations - Doctors Rank the Best Oils [ Extra Virgin Olive Oil | avocado Oil | Grapeseed Oil & vegetable oil]

A doctor's breakdown of the oils you use all the time for cooking at

home. Learn the difference between expensive oils like olive oil, avocado oil, and others like grapeseed oil and canola oil, and find out what's best to use as a cooking oil in your home.

 

Table Of Contents

• Cooking Oil Controversies and Research Papers
• Understanding Good Oil Bad Oil
  • Saturated fat
  • Unsaturated fats
• Unrefined (pressed) vs. refined oils
  • Unrefined oils (pressed oils, Unrefined oil)
  • Refined oil
• How to tell the good oil from the bad
  • Bad oil
  • Good Oil
  • Is olive oil safe to use for cooking?
• What cooking oil should I use?
  • Home Cooking Oil Conclusion and Recommendation
• Facts about Fats and Oils Q & A;

Cooking Oil Controversies and Research Papers

Cooking oil for cooking is always a controversial topic.

If you look at the outlets that cover this, a lot of them take a paper or two and say, here's good, here's bad.

Even the results are mixed. Studies have been mixed, which is why it's so controversial.

The first reason for the mixed results in the edible oil literature is that the market for edible oils is dominated by large food companies, and much of the published research is funded by food companies.

That's why it's not uncommon to see food companies with research grants experimenting with what they think will produce the results they want and then publishing the good stuff, or using studies that produce bad results in relation to their competitors' products.

 

For example, a study funded by an avocado oil company might raise the temperature of the experiment to 220 degrees, which is not even a realistic cooking temperature, and burn olive oil, which has a smoke point of 210 degrees, and conclude that avocado oil is better.

 

Currently, almost all edible oil papers are like this, and it's hard to find one that isn't conflicted.

 

Naturally, it's harder to find papers published in international journals.

 

This is not only true for cooking oil, but for many other commodities as well.

A paper commissioned by Oral-B says rotary motorized is better, and a paper commissioned by Philips says sonic is better.

 

Understanding Good Oil Bad Oil

So let's take a look at how to separate the good oil from the bad.

 

Let's talk about fats first, because it's easier to understand something when you know what it is.

 

Cooking oil is oil, so the entire ingredient is fat.

 

Fats can be broadly divided into saturated and unsaturated fats.

 

Saturated fat

Saturated fats are fats that are already stabilized at room temperature, meaning they don't go rancid and exist in a solid or gel-like state at room temperature.

 

The reason we often hear that saturated fat is bad is because it's a solid at room temperature.

 

That's why when you melt down saturated fats, they turn back into solids in your body, which can clog your blood vessels and cause a whole host of problems.

 

 

Unsaturated fats

Unsaturated fats are fats that have not yet stabilized because their structure has not been filled in.

 

As a result, it is easily deteriorated and exists as an unstable liquid at room temperature.

 

Here's why unsaturated fats are good for you.

 

Benefits of Unsaturated Fats

 

It can flush out saturated fat.

Contains omega-3 or omega-6, which your body needs.

This is why unsaturated fats are often referred to as healthy fats.

 

Disadvantages of Unsaturated Fats

The problem with unsaturated fats is that they are easily rancid, meaning they oxidize easily. Saturated fats, on the other hand, are not as easily rancid, but unsaturated fats start to oxidize as soon as they are exposed to air, and they oxidize even faster when they are cooked and heated.

 

This is called rancidity, and rancid unsaturated fats can oxidize all sorts of cells in the body, causing inflammation aging cancer and all sorts of other ills.

 

So, rancid oil is a bad thing.

 

This rancidity is what we need to be most concerned about with unsaturated fatty acids.

 

Unrefined (pressed) vs. refined oils

Let's categorize commercially available cooking oils. Commercially available cooking oils can be broadly categorized into unrefined pressed oils and refined oils;

 

The red lines in the illustration above are unrefined pressed oils, while soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower seed oil, and grapeseed oil are refined oils.

 

 

Unrefined oils (pressed oils, Unrefined oil)

Unrefined oils are oils that have been pressed and squeezed from their natural source.

 

So the original fat content is still there.

 

These formulas contain a lot of unsaturated fatty acids, which are primarily good for you.

 

Examples include products like olive oil and avocado oil.

 

 

Refined oil

In the case of refined oil, it is literally refined and extracted;

 

Commercially available soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower seed oil, and grapeseed oil are examples.

 

For example, grapeseed oil does not yield oil when pressed.

 

The materials that can't be squeezed out of the oil are forced out by chemical and heat treatments.

 

However, this heat treatment rancidizes all the unsaturated fatty acids in the oil. That's why refined oil is bad for you;

 

In addition, chemicals such as nucleic acids are introduced during the purification process.

 

How to tell the good oil from the bad

As we've seen, refined oils can be categorized as bad if they contain a high percentage of saturated fat, are heat-treated, and contain chemicals;

 

On the flip side, a good oil is one that is high in unsaturated fats and is pressed in its natural state without any processing.

 

 

Bad oil

1. rancid oil refined oil due to chemical and heat treatment

As mentioned earlier, refined oils are classified as bad because they have chemicals added to them and are rancid due to heat treatment. Things like soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower seed oil, grapeseed oil, corn oil, and flaxseed oil.

 

First, let's categorize these refined oils as bad oils.

 

2. oils that are high in saturated fat

Oils with an excess of saturated fatty acids are also categorized as bad oils;

 

Examples include butter, coconut oil, lard, beef tallow, lamb tallow, and duck fat;

 

 

 

	Saturated fatty acids	Monounsaturated fatty acids	Polyunsaturated fatty acids
Mustard Oil	11	59	21
Peanut oil	17	46	32
Avocado oil	12	71	14
Corn oil	13	24	59
Olive oil	14	73	11
Canola oil	8	64	28
Coconut oil	87	13	0
Soybean oil	15	24	58
Sunflower Seed Oil	11	20	69

 

 

Note that the unsaturated fatty acids in those oils are not nutrients, they are rancid fatty acids that have been refined. SoThe refined oils in orange in the table above are the ones you shouldn't be eating, at least in terms of saturated fatty acids.

Good Oil

Now let's look at how to choose a good oil, excluding both refined oils and oils high in saturated fat.

 

The best oils are olive oil and avocado oil (avocado oil), which are unrefined and low in saturated fat.

Nutrition Facts per 100 grams of Olive Oil (USDA)	Nutrition Facts per 100 grams of Avocado Oil (USDA)
Calories 884 kcal Fat 100 g Saturated Fatty Acids 13.8 g Palmitic acid 11.3 g Stearic acid 1.95 g Monounsaturated Fatty Acids 73 g Palmitoleic Acid (Omega-7) 1.26 g Oleic Acid (Omega-9) 71.3 g Gondoic Acid (Omega-9) 0.311 g Polyunsaturated fatty acids 10.5g Linoleic acid (omega-6) 9.76g Alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3) 0.761 g	Calories 884 kcal Fat 100 g Saturated Fatty Acids 11.6 g Palmitic acid 10.9 g Stearic acid 0.66 g Monounsaturated fatty acids 70.6 g Palmitoleic acid (omega-7) 2.66 g Oleic acid (omega-9) 67.9 g Polyunsaturated fatty acids 13.5 g Lumenic acid (omega-7) 12.5 g Alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3)0.957 g

However, when it comes to olive oil and avocado oil, there are many different grades.

Of those, the only real oil squeezed from a circle is extra virgin.

	Rating	Type	Description.
OLIVE OIL	Extra Virgin	Natural	Raw Fruit Extract / 0.8% acidity or less
	Virgin	Natural	Raw Fruit Extract and Re-extracted oil / Acidity0.8 ~ 2%
	Pure	Mixed Refined Oil	Olive refined oil (80-90%) + virgin (10~20%)
	Pomace	Mixed Refined Oil	Chemical re-extraction of olive oil residues with organic solvents
AVOCADO OIL	Extra Virgin	Natural	Raw Fruit Extract
	Virgin	Natural	Re-extracted oil from coconut pomace
	Pure	Mixed Refined Oil	Avocado refined oil (80-90%) + virgin(10~20%)
	Blends	Mixed Refined Oil	Other refined oils (80-90%) + virgin(10~20%)

The remaining grades are oils that have been re-extracted, either by burning chemicals into the pomace, or by burning pomace oil into refined oil.

 

In other words, there's no reason to eat anything less than virgin olive or avocado oil;

Is olive oil safe to use for cooking?

Sometimes people worry about the smoke point of olive oil. The bottom line is that olive oil does not have a lower smoke point than other oils and we have no problem using it in our cooking;

 

The International Olive Council and the Journal of Food Chemistry list the smoke points as follows, so you don't have to worry about using extra virgin refined olive oil for cooking.

Type	Firing Point(°C)	Flash Point(°C)	Combustion Point (°C)
UnRefined(press) olive oil	210	321	361
Refined Castor Oil	200	293	335
UnRefined(press) Corn Oil	178	294	346
Refined Corn Oil	227	326	359
Refined linseed oil	163	287	353
UnRefined Soybean oil (expeller pressed)	181	296	351
UnRefined Soybean Oil (Solvent Extracted)	210	317	354

Even without the above comparison, in real-world cooking, you're not going to get above 180°C no matter how high you go, so the boiling point comparison doesn't mean much.

The temperature at which real chicken is fried is also 160 °C to 170 °C. This means that when you're cooking at home, you're unlikely to cook anything above 180 °C, even when frying.

In fact, in the case of BHC chicken, they even use it as marketing that it's cooked in healthy olive oil;

The table below summarizes the applications based on the main oil flash points.

Utilization based on the main oil's trigger point
Avocado oil (271°C)	Salad Dressing, Fried, Grilled, stir-fry Baked, Seasoned
canola (242°C)	Fry, Bake, stir-fry
Sunflower seed oil(220°C)	Fry, Bake, stir-fry
Grapeseed oil(216°C)	Bake, stir-fry
Olive oil (210°C)	Grilling, stir-frying, and salad dressings, Seasoned

One thing to note is that olive oil is not recommended for deep-frying or for actual home frying , as it is sometimes cooked at high temperatures and your oven or air fryer has a temperature setting above 200 degrees;

In this case, it's better to use avocado oil, which is the safest;

 

As a reminder, the United States has banned the unauthorized use of partially hydrogenated oils made from refined oils in processed foods, so many refined oils such as soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower seed oil, butter, and coconut oil have been banned. In the U.S., the government is pushing to get rid of these unhealthy oils, so it's best to avoid using them at home;

 

What cooking oil should I use?

So far, we've seen the good oils and the bad oils.

But here's the kicker.

 

Things like extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil are also great for drizzling on salads or consuming directly;

 

 

However, the heat you apply to it when you cook it will cause it to go rancid. The good news is that it's better than refined oils or oils that are full of saturated fat. That's not to say that frying or cooking in oil is healthy.

 

I hope there's no misunderstanding;

Home Cooking Oil Conclusion and Recommendation

So far, we've learned a lot about oil, and we know that you should use extra virgin avocado oil or olive oil for salads and direct consumption at home;

However, I've learned that avocado oil and olive oil also go rancid when heated and release unhealthy components;

 

The bottom line is that food cooked in oil is not good for you, but let's rank the cooking oils that are at least a little less bad for you;

[ Cooking Oil Rank ].

We can conclude that cooking fats (oils) are safe in the following order: avocado oil or olive oil. Avocado oil is more heat-safe, so avocado oil is a great choice for any type of cooking;

Ranking	Oil	Detail Description
1	Avocado Oil	More stable to heat than olive oil (safe with a smoke point of about 270 degrees)
2	Olive Oil	Stability to heat approximately 210 degrees (180 degrees or less recommended for cooking)
3	Refined oils (soybean oil, sunflower seed oil, canola oil, etc.)	Rancid and chemical-laden oils
4	Coconut Oil	High in saturated fat
5	Butter	More High saturated fat

[ Home Cooking Oil Recommendations ]

When choosing a cooking oil for cooking, it's a good idea to buy one that comes from a safe source, avoiding too much whenever possible;

Capacity

It's a good idea to buy small bottles (500 ml or less) of prepared oils like olive oil and avocado oil and use them separately, as some types of oils go rancid as soon as they come into contact with air. Also, olive oil and avocado oil can turn rancid in sunlight, so it's best to buy them in dark bottles and keep them out of the sun;

Origin

When it comes to country of origin, olive oil tends to maintain a certain level of quality, while avocado oil often comes from Mexico, where avocados are most commonly grown. However, avocado oil from Mexico is not well controlled.
On the other hand, products from certified avocado farms in the U.S. are safe. In addition, the HASS variety, developed by a man named Hass in California, is known for being the most flavorful. Therefore, buying American avocado oil made from HASS is recommended.

A consumer research study by the University of California, Davis found that 82% of commercially available avocado oils were found to contain problematic or different oils.
In particular, Mexican avocado oil was only two brands that made the grade and Most soybean oils contain.
So, don't buy Mexican avocado oil just because it's cheaper, and make sure you buy quality-controlled American avocado oil.

Finally, oil cooking is unavoidably rancid, so cutting down on oil cooking as much as possible will do a lot for your health, as it will reduce your intake of rancid oil by a significant amount. Still, you can't avoid oil cooking, so if you do cook with oil, make sure it's cooked in a refined oil like olive oil or avocado oil.

Once again, we recommend using avocado oil for temperatures above 180 degrees.

 

Facts about Fats and Oils Q & A;

Q: Who says saturated fat is good for you?

While saturated fat can be helpful as a dietary substitute for carbohydrates, claims that it is good for your health can be seen as exaggerated. This claim often comes from the beauty industry or the field of functional medicine, while the medical community looks at it somewhat differently, taking into account information related to disease.

Eating excessive amounts of saturated fat in a typical diet can increase the risk of fatty liver, elevated blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels, which in turn can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, etc.This can lead to cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and myocardial infarction.In addition, saturated fat increases inflammation in the body and also affects fat metabolism, so overall, it's hard to say that saturated fat is good for your health.

Some studies do make claims that saturated fat has some health benefits, but these claims are often based on using statistically skewed data.For example, claims that the incidence of cardiovascular disease is lower with a high intake of saturated fat may be the result of manipulating statistics without taking into account specific conditions.

World-renowned medical organizations warn of the dangers of saturated fat and state that minimizing saturated fat intake can have a positive impact on health. Therefore, claims that saturated fat is good for you are misleading.

Q. Sesame oil/perilla oil is?

Generally speaking, the sesame oil or perilla oil that you can buy in the market is mostly hot-pressed oils.These sesame oils and perilla oils are not much different from other refined oils.However, cold-pressed oils, which can be found in organic grocery stores or other places that sell high quality oils, may have health benefits.Overseas, sesame oil and perilla oil are also often sold in grades such as extra virgin, virgin, and pure.
Cold-pressed sesame and perilla oils are heat sensitive, making them difficult to use for cooking.

 

Q. Can extra virgin olive oil be&used in cooking at 200 degrees like in the oven or air fryer?

The official smoke point of extra virgin olive oil is 210 degrees, but there is some variation from product to product and some as low as 180 degrees, so it is not recommended for cooking above that point.

 

For high temperature cooking, we recommend avocado oil as it has a high smoke point of around 270 degrees.

 

Q. I've been using extra virgin olive oil in my frying pan for a while now, but I've been cranking it up to 190 degrees.

We don't recommend using extra virgin olive oil at that temperature. Extra virgin olive oil is suitable for general cooking below 180 degrees, not for cooking at that high a temperature.

 

For high temperature cooking, we recommend avocado oil as it has a high smoke point of around 270 degrees.

 

Q. Is it true that refined oil is actually better because it has zero rancidity and extra virgin is better because heat denatures the good fatty acids??

While it is true in theory that the refining process should be completely rancidity-free, in practice, rancidity occurs due to the introduction of impurities such as air. Also, since refined oil is extracted using chemicals, these chemicals are not completely removed. Therefore, it is difficult to say that refined oil is a better choice.

In the case of extra virgin, the fatty acids that burn first when heat is applied are mainly omega-3. However, the temperature at which omega-3 burns is about the smoke point, so we don't need to worry too much about the claim that heat will cause the good fatty acids to go bad.