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Americans Have Lost the Plot on Cooking Oil
- mock-possum 2y agoIf you’re frying / sautéing with it, pay attention to the smoke point. Otherwise, if you’re topping with it or using it as a prominent ingredient in a sauce, pay attention to the flavour. What else is there?
- bsder 2y agoThe biggest problem right now is that something like "extra virgin olive oil" is often everything but. At least the ones that claim to be 100% California have some level of the law checking on them. Everything else is a crapshoot.
- christkv 2y agoSpanish olive oil is very strictly managed with clear definitions of what extra virgin oil is as well as the other grades of olive oil. We also have quite a selection of small batch local olive oils. Some people here are as fanatic about this as wine enthusiasts. If you can find original package Spanish olive oil you will get what it says on the bottle. When it comes to white label brands in places like the us all bets are off. In that case better stick to California olive oil.
- mns 2y agoIt’s not really that simple any more. There’s a magazine in Germany called ÖkoTest and they do a lot of testing of all kind of products. We were shocked at the results for olive oil (and these were all from Europe, Italy and Spain), most of them all had mineral oils from processing probably and only one or two from the 20+ brands tested were free of mineral oils and had decent or ok overall results. Even some of the BIO/organic ones were not so good.
- steve1977 2y agoAs I understood the magazine article, the mineral oil could come from a couple of sources, including for example harvesting machinery. I wonder if seed-based oils (like rapeseed a.k.a. canola) would be better in this regard, as the seeds are maybe a bit more protected until a later stage of processing... just guessing here though. Olives seem to be a bit of an outlier because there it's also the fruit that is oily and used is used for making the oil. Do you know by chance if ÖkoTest also did tests with other types of oils? Edit: Just checked the recommended articles, they also tested rapeseed. TLDR; nope, not better https://www.oekotest.de/essen-trinken/Rapsoel-Test-Die-meisten-Oele-sind-mit-Mineraloel-verunreinigt_11527_1.html https://www.oekotest.de/essen-trinken/Rapsoel-Test-Die-meist...
- christkv 2y agoThe tests I'm finding seem to be mostly white-label brands with who knows what kind of oil. I'm talking about single source olive oil. It's a bit more expensive but you generally get oil from small operations and co-ops that can be either eco or not. https://www.elcorteingles.es/club-del-gourmet/aceites-y-vinagres/aceites/2/ https://www.elcorteingles.es/club-del-gourmet/aceites-y-vina...
- steve1977 2y agoThe parent poster (not OP) mentioned was specifically about organic brands in the German markets. The brands there are pretty known around here.
- steve1977 2y agoPS: I cannot buy their test results because I'm in Switzerland, do you know by chance how well the Alnatura one did?
- darkwater 2y agoItaly's EVO Is already a joke currently. Most brands, even old, famous ones are re-selling oil from Spain or Greece (and sometimes even Morocco and rest of Northern Africa). In Spain the situation is a bit better, for now, because olives are still a bit cheaper (even if last year the thing changed drastically due to draught and very bad harvesting, and prices skyrocketed like 2.5x)
- steve1977 2y agoDon't cook with cold-pressed oil. Not necessarily because it's unhealthy, but it would be silly to pay more for cold-pressed oil and then heat it up.
- olalonde 2y agoHow do you know you are past the smoke point? Doesn't cooking always produce some smoke?
- Sirizarry 2y agoNo cooking produces steam. Unless you’re intentionally burning your food there shouldn’t be a ton of smoke
- olalonde 2y agoHow do you tell steam and smoke apart?
- mock-possum 2y agoSmoke has a distinctive smell, and steam is damp. Both have a distinctive appearance.
- tamimio 2y ago[flagged]
- nunodonato 2y agoI don't think olive oil should be on that list. The smoking point is too low, it should be used raw
- bowsamic 2y agoOlive oil is used for cooking in Italian all the time. For example the soffritto. You don’t need to have the burner on high heat…
- AmericanChopper 2y agoA soffritto is the perfect kind of use case for a low smoke point oil. The big pile of moist ingredients is going to prevent the oil from getting close to the smoke point.
- tamimio 2y agoI personally cook with olive oil. It does have a low smoke point, but as long as you're not deep frying with it, it works well.
- defrost 2y agoOlive oil prices will soon rapidly climb where they haven't already: https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/production/australian-olive-growers-begin-harvest-with-mixed-expectations/129285 https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/production/australian-olive-gr... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-003627_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-00362... There's been a lot of commercial crop failures about the globe for various reasons. We recently raked through a slew of "old" quasi abandoned trees about the district that were once (decades back) commercial trees and now stand alone; they've done better than the mono fields of more recently planted commercial trees. There's a local olive farm that's doing good business processing small trailer loads from locals bringing in small loads to process at a flat rate (up to a ceiling) for own use .. we've got in two years worth of anticipated demand for our family this way at about half the going rate let alone the predicated per litre price.
- giardini 2y agoRising olive oil prices is what brought my attention to this article: only 6 months ago I could buy olive oil for 20 cents/ounce and this week the lowest price was 48 cents/ounce. Alternatives at far lower prices piqued my curiosity.
- dagw 2y agoOlive oil prices will soon rapidly climb where they haven't already My go to mid level olive oil is up almost 50% over the past few month. Interestingly the much more high end olive oil I sometimes buy is up less than 20%.
- meowster 2y agoIf the sellers are aiming for a flat rate of profit per unit, then a 20%-only increase makes sense.
- holoduke 2y agoAmericans can do a lot of things. But cooking is not one of them. It already starts at the grocery store where the vegetable section is smaller than the candy, crisps section. Its made very tempting to produce garbage food.
- Izkata 2y agoThe vegetable section is about 2-3x as large as the snack/candy aisle at my (American) grocery store. And that's not even counting the fruit area next to it.
- rascul 2y agoI can't recall any grocery stores where the vegetable section is smaller than the candy and crisps section. Certainly not the ones I've frequently shopped at over the years. But maybe I also have a different definition of "grocery store". I suspect you're not in the USA because of the term "crisps". What we commonly call a "grocery store" here, from what I understand, might be called a "supermarket" in other parts of the world, which may be where the mix up happens. Edit to add: We do have in some areas smaller grocery stores that are not supermarkets and what they contain can vary wildly. Also, you might be surprised at some of the cooking us Americans can do. Not me, but others that aren't me.
- alliao 2y agowe all need to visit Portugal to relearn what is food...apparently less than 2% of their caloric intake comes from processed food, insanity. how is it possible.
- Ekaros 2y agoI can only account that to some extreme definition of what "processed" food consist of in that statistic. Generally processed food is rather low bar. And lot of reasonable daily food is processed.
- contingencies 2y agoIf it says 'vegetable oil' it's palm oil and should be avoided.
- wdh505 2y agoor cottonseed oil (with "non food grade pesticides" then post processed to become "vegetable oil"
- wannacboatmovie 2y agoNearly every instance I know of "vegetable oil" means soybean oil.
- eco 2y agoIt can be but I don't think I've ever seen it. The vegetable oils I typically see in my supermarket are soybean oil these days.
- alliao 2y agopalm oil is just too damn cheap... and ferrero got to the game early and probably funded the whole RSPO and convinced the world big tabbaco style that maybe THESE palm oil aren't so bad after all.
- jacknews 2y agoor soy, or whatever is cheap in that region or the time of year etc. The point is it will be highly processed whatever it was.
- balnaphone 2y agohttps://archive.is/HTsw7 https://archive.is/HTsw7
- teslabox 2y agoBefore the 1950’s, soybean oil and linseed oil were used to make paint. These are drying oils that combine spontaneously with the oxygen in the air to form a hard film. Then the paint industry figured out how to make their products from petroleum distillates. The seed oil industry remarketed their product as vegetable oil, and hired some scientists to tell us the saturated fats we’d been eating for thousands of years were actually the cause of the new wave of cardiovascular disease. At least we can still use vegetable oil as biodiesel.
- ghnws 2y agoSaid the dairy industry.
- freetanga 2y agoLet’s go back and remember that Large Tobacco once had Doctors saying smoking was healthy (even funding research papers), and Large Food telling us the importance of the American breakfast - bacon and eggs, OJ. Both large marketing campaigns with no scientific evidence. I see a lot of these warnings as a jaded consumer, translating into: “don’t buy this, is expensive to produce and we don’t have margins, but buy this substitute, which is cheap and will kill you, but as is trendy is expensive and leave us a much bigger margin” Better to ignore all these signs and get your evidence elsewhere.
- safety1st 2y agoOK, but back to the actual article you're responding to, it isn't a very good one. The author is actually saying "don't worry about which oil you fry stuff in" at one point in it, which is dumb. Like can you technically deep fry stuff in extra virgin olive oil? Yes, but it'll be expensive and EVO has a low smoke point so yes you will need to be careful or you risk burning it, creating carcinogens, it will be more dangerous to use than a proper frying oil etc. Dumb dumb dumb. As far as I know there have always been two serious considerations around cooking oils, one is the smoke point for the reasons above, and the other is quantity of saturated/trans fats with less generally being healthier. This article is on to a good general idea that you don't need fancy and exotic oils unless you want to do something fancy and exotic. But the execution is poor. I keep two oils in my kitchen, a light/EVO oil for salads/breads/quick sautees and one with a high smoke point for frying. Haven't seen any evidence in 20 years that this needs to change. BTW if anyone really wants something to worry about, it's probably going to a restaurant - pro chefs know what sells and are using twice the amount of butter you would if you cooked at home. Love me some butter but the amount being used at restaurants is wild
- hgomersall 2y agoEVO has a low smoke point, but AFAICT this doesn't result in serious problems when burning. The suggestion I read is that the high level of antioxidants prohibit the formation of too many nasties, but I'm not sure the study author knew.
- Eliezer 2y agoLinoleic acid (a particular polyunsaturated fat) is possibly implicated as one of the major villains in skyrocketing obesity rates; eg, correlation between obesity and linoleic acid content in body fat, theories about it being a trigger for an archaic hibernation metabolic shift. (Its use has risen hugely over time, along with obesity, but of course you could say the same thing about global warming and pirates.)
- IshKebab 2y agoWhy do people look for unknown causes of obesity when there are so many obvious known causes? We aren't lacking an explanation!
- AmericanChopper 2y agoI think there are two reasons for that. The first is just many people don’t like to take accountability for themselves, so they look for other things to blame. There’s now enough obese people in the population for this delusions to get a lot of mainstream acceptance. The other is that doctors know they can’t actually get their patients to do the necessary lifestyle changes, so their interventions tend to revolve around the assumption that the patients will happily lifestyle themselves to death.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoLifestyle is definitely a problem to an extent, but people didn't just all decide to be lazy at once. The environment and culture changed.
- AmericanChopper 2y agoCulture is just the sum of the things people decide to do, so I’d question whether there’s any real distinction between the things you’re saying here. People who lead obese lifestyles can simply decide to lead a more healthy lifestyle. Why many people don’t make this decision, and what caused these lifestyle choices to be so widely adopted in the first place are interesting questions. But lifestyle choices are the totality of the problem.
- Synaesthesia 2y agoThere is a total freak out over “seed oil” and their omega 6 vs omega 3 content. I thought it was a load of crap. Glad to see that is the case.
- teractiveodular 2y agoSpeaking of losing the plot, here's extra-virgin canola oil: https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/483501/geo-extra-virgin-canola-oil-cold-pressed https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/483501/geo...
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoWell painted picture of a specific example of a macro issue of our dawning noosphere. We want to be smart, connected to & making smart choices. And there are some reasons to be savvy, to learn and know differences and uses. And interesting theories and ideas aplenty to dig into. That interest is gullible to or can be played or disrupted by over-excited neurons of the world brain; individuals and media sending strong signals or alarm. Often unduely loudly, disproportionately. Wrecking the noise floor. I maintain more excitement than worry. This connectivity is so new. And so many people and agencies have only shown up lately, are not the aggressive infonauts. It's no surprise we are only beginning to figure out how we will sort and make sense of information. The torrent of news and revelation still ebbs at us, but eventually I hope and tend to believe we might emerge longer views, where information is only regarded as valuable when it has ongoing lineage & history, when it's expected to be updated & mutli-faceted information.
- jacknews 2y ago"We’ve improved the fats in the U.S. food supply a lot in the last 20 years,”" And yet obesity has ballooned in the same period. What could be the cause?
- ghnws 2y agoMore sedetary life. Before most people worked in physically active jobs and past times tended to be more active too. If you work in an office and watch TV when you get home, your energy use is obviously smaller than working in a field for 12 hours. Apparently more sedetary life does not effect the apetite of most people.
- ericd 2y agoI think this is just a convenient excuse, there were plenty of sedentary office workers in the 50s and 60s, and they weren't obese at nearly the same rates. It seems pretty clear from where I'm sitting that it's something dietary or environmental.
- jacknews 2y agomore sedentary than 20-30 years ago? Sorry I don't believe it. I don't see much change in people's lifestyles, in fact with alcohol and smoking on the wane, and ubiquitous healthy-diet messaging, I think people may even be living healthier lifestyles now. It's something in the environment, most likely the food.
- moltar 2y agoJust use butter or ghee. Problem solved. Vegetable oils aren’t safe for human consumption in any form. Plus the majority of olive oil you’ll find on the shelves is fake. Even EU had declared an emergency and stated that olive oil is the most faked food stuff. And that’s EU that produces said oil and has some of the most stringent food rules on this planet.
- 7bit 2y ago> Vegetable oils aren’t safe for human consumption in any form. Yeah, I'd need to see some sources for your claim.
- spiffytech 2y agoDynomight recently wrote a good breakdown of anti-seed-oil theories, assessing whether they're plausible: https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/ https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/