Which is the best cooking oil for heart patients? Learn which is the best cooking oil for heart health and how to choose the best oil to use for cooking.
When choosing edible oils or cooking oils, we all want to know which oil is good for our health. Or more specifically, which is the best cooking oil for heart patients.
Most cooking oil brands and cooking oil manufacturers will cite all sorts of scientific studies claiming that theirs is the healthiest cooking oil. This makes it very difficult for us to truly understand which is the best cooking oil for health.
So how do you know which oil is best for health and which oil to use for cooking? In this article, you’ll find a list of different types of cooking oil and their benefits to your health.
You’ll find it’s not necessarily a question of which cooking oil is good for health or of choosing the best sunflower oil, as much as which is the best cooking oil to use in different circumstances.
How we cook the food we eat can be just as important as which foods we choose to improve health. With so many oils and butter products claiming to be the best, it can be quite difficult to know which ones to use and which ones to avoid.
In order to know which is the best cooking oil for heart health, we first need to understand the connection between good fats, bad fats and heart disease.
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Fatty Acids And Heart Health
Edible oils and cooking oils are basically fats. According to Harvard University, good fats include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.
Bad fats include industrial-made trans-fats, while saturated fats fall somewhere in the middle. Trans-fats include cooking fats like margarine, while saturated fats include butter and beef or pork fat.
It’s easy to identify these fats because they are solid at room temperature. It’s best to avoid trans-fats altogether and consume saturated fats sparingly or in moderation.
There are two categories of good fats – monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). This article from Harvard University states that good fats come mainly from vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fish.
Healthy fats are liquid at room temperature, not solid. Good sources of monounsaturated fats are olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, avocados, and most nuts, as well as high-oleic safflower and sunflower oils.
If you’re looking for corn oil, safflower oil or sunflower oil benefits, they are all good sources of polyunsaturated fatty acids. These essential fats are required for normal body functions and, since your body can’t make them, you must get them from food sources.
Which Is The Best Cooking Oil To Use For A Healthy Diet?
Here is a comparison of the health benefits of different cooking oils and how best to use them in preparing food. This list will help you decide which is the best healthy cooking oil for your recipe.
1. Cooking Oils With PUFA
Many oils with polyunsaturated fatty acids include edible oils such as refined sunflower oil, corn oil, soy oil, safflower oil, and canola oil. Physicians claim that oils rich in polyunsaturated fat have the ability to lower the risk of heart disease.
These cooking oils are low in saturated fat, but according to some health experts, the high omega-6 content in polyunsaturated fats make them highly susceptible to heat damage so they’re not the best high-heat cooking oils.
Is sunflower oil healthy? If you’re using sunflower oil for cooking, remember that it has a high smoke point and doesn’t have a strong flavour, which means it won’t overwhelm a dish. However, sunflower oil contains a lot of omega-6 fatty acids.
Another problem with using cooking oils with polyunsaturated fat is that a skewed ratio of dietary Omega-6: Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) is directly associated with inflammatory-based pathology in human diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis, and obesity.
According to this review, the modern diet has way too much PUFA because most of the “heart-healthy” seed oils we’ve been eating are high in pro-inflammatory Omega-6 PUFA and low in Omega-3.
This has caused an imbalance between the two main types of PUFA, Omega-3 and Omega-6. So it may be best to avoid industrial oils like refined sunflower oil, corn oil, canola oil, soybean oil altogether, or use them in moderation in sauteing, as a marinade and even in low-temperature stir-frying.
These oils have a bland flavour, which makes them a great choice for foods that contain many spices, and they won’t interfere with the taste of your meal.
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2. Olive Oil For Cooking
Want to use olive oil for cooking? This heart-healthy oil offers a very distinct flavour, is rich in monounsaturated fats, helps to lower cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of cancer making it the best cooking oil for heart health.
Olive oil is also rich in antioxidants and has a very long storage life. Even though it can be used in cooking, it’s healthiest when uncooked, as in salad dressing or dipping sauce.
When you use olive oil for cooking, you should heat it at low to medium temperatures, making sure to avoid high heat as this cooking oil has a low smoke point and is easily oxidised.
3. Coconut Oil For Cooking
Coconut oil is used for cooking in coastal areas of India, like Kerala. Coconut oil is comprised of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs), also called medium-chain triglycerides or MCTs and is Nature’s richest source of these healthy MCFAs.
According to alternative health expert, Joseph Mercola, who endorses coconut oil as the best choice, the unique health benefits of coconut oil are directly related to its chemical structure, or more precisely, the length of its fatty acid chains.
One of the best benefits of coconut oil lies in its ability to help stimulate your metabolism. Many animal and human research studies have demonstrated that replacing LCFAs with MCFAs results in both decreased body weight and reduced fat deposition.
So if you want to know which edible oil is good for health, coconut oil for cooking is definitely a great choice as it has been used in parts of coastal India for a long time.
4. Groundnut (Peanut) Oil For Cooking
Which is the best oil for deep frying? Groundnut oil has a high smoke point so it is an excellent choice for sautéing and the best cooking oil for frying.
It is also high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which makes it the healthiest oil for deep frying or as a base for dressings.
Groundnut or peanut oil is high in Mono-Unsaturated Fatty Acids (MUFA) that helps reduce LDL (bad) cholesterol levels and improves HDL (good) cholesterol levels.
This high-heat oil is considered to be the finest all-around heart-healthy oil for cooking and frying because it lowers the levels of bad cholesterol in our body without lowering the levels of good cholesterol.
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5. Butter For Cooking
Butter is one food that has been around for many, many years. Butter tastes great so many great chefs swear by it. It is also a good source of Vitamin A and other fat-soluble vitamins such as E, K, and even D.
The main problem with butter is that it has a high content of artery-clogging saturated fats, so it’s not the healthiest oil to cook with. The advantage of butter is that it is made from natural ingredients and not chemically or artificially processed.
You can use butter with cooking, baking, or even as a spread. You can also pair it with creamy sauces, marinades, baked dishes, or bread.
6. Margarine
Margarine is not a natural cooking oil. It was first introduced as an alternative to high-fat butter. However, it is loaded with trans-fat, a substance that we know raises bad cholesterol and is definitely not heart-healthy.
As a cooking oil, margarine tastes good and it’s lower in fat than most oils and butter, and quite easy to spread. It’s available in a variety of different products and is a good source of vitamin E, but it’s not recommended as the best oil to cook food.
How To Choose The Best Oil For Health
So which oil is healthy for cooking? And which is the best oil to use for cooking? It depends on which oil is best for cooking a specific recipe based on the temperatures and ingredients you’re using.
Most experts recommend using groundnut or peanut oil for high-temperature cooking, canola oil or olive oil for medium temperature cooking, and a variety of polyunsaturated oils for baked goods.
When it comes to cooking with oils, there are several cooking oil brands you can use, but only a few are heart-healthy oils and it’s important to have a knowledge of which oil is better for cooking a particular dish.
When you buy cooking oil, you might want to ask your cooking oil suppliers for the best quality organic cooking oil, instead of opting for the cheapest cooking oil, as your health is dependent on whether you use the most healthy cooking oil.
There are many more types of edible oil than are mentioned in this cooking oils list, although the ones above are the most popular cooking oils in India. Eating healthy involves cooking healthy food – which is where your cooking oil really takes centre stage.
Disclaimer: The information contained on this website is presented for the purpose of educating people. Nothing contained on this website should be construed nor is intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment. It should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or another qualified healthcare provider. Should you have any healthcare-related questions, please call or see your physician or another qualified healthcare provider promptly. Always consult with your physician or other qualified healthcare providers before embarking on a new treatment, diet, or fitness program.
Author Bio:
Priya Florence Shah is the Group Editor at SHEROES and author of Devi2Diva, an emotional self-care book for women.
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Great post. I just knew about the olive oil. Nice to know that there are other options available also for healthy cooking oil.