I keep seeing so many things “this oils no good you have to use this one” for a while I thought avocado oil was the go to and then I thought it was grape seed oil? Now I’m not to sure
Today when I was cooking I was reaching in my pantry and looking at the nutrition facts I had sunflower oil, extra virgin olive oil, and grape seed oil and the grape seed oil had the lowest calories so I used that one.
With all the conflicting information I keep seeing I’m not sure where to turn to to figure out what’s best to use. I know I keep seeing that if you use the “wrong” one it leads to inflammation and possibly a higher risk of cancer? But is that just propaganda?
Please help me out I’m just trying to live a healthier lifestyle and trying to learn more about gut health as I go and please don’t be mean. Please correct anything that I’ve said wrong but understand that I know I know nothing lol
Edit: if you can, can you pls explain why you use what you use?
Depends on what you are cooking.
English / french - lard or butter
Italian- Extra Virgin olive oil
Indian - Gee
South Asian- Coconut oil
Just stay away from using seed oils if you can. Highly oxidative to your body.
There is no “best,” any of them are fine.
Whenever someone tries to complicate nutrition, or act like this ingredient is toxic, “causes inflammation,” or other phrases like that… as a general rule, you can disregard these things. Claims like this are loaded with biases and dogma, and rarely in fact (or sources)
The type of oil you “should” use is based on what you prefer, what you can afford, and what might work best with the temperature. If you’re you’re cooking at a high temperature, you want to use an oil with a higher smoke point, which is more of a cooking topic than it is a nutrition topic
As for whether or not oils cause cancer, again, please be wary of anyone who throws “facts” around about cancer. MThere are a lot of people out there who will use the word “cancer” as a way of scaring you into listening to them, or buying their book/supplement. Do you increase your risk of cancer by eating a very high amount of fried foods? Yes. But that does not make the oil a carcinogen in and of itself.
[also, I came back to edit this but consider that people who tend to push these ideas are 1) very unqualified to talk about things like cancer, and 2) being very insensitive to those that topic affects]
You can use sometning like this as a guide. Group 1 carcinogens are the only known, aka proven, carcinogens - as you dissect you may find grouo 2a carcinogens, group 2b carcinogens - it is not a proven carcinogen unless it’s group 1. however, just because they are in the same group does not mean they have the same risk level. Smoking cigarettes is a group one carcinogen, same with certain hot dogs, but your level with smoking is much higher than eating a hot dog.
In other words, you’ll hear people say canola oil is toxic, or causes cancer, people say this about aspartame and other things. But if they are not group one carcinogens, then there is no evidence that they cause cancer (and they added even suspected to cause cancer)
Seeing a lot of people saying to not use EVOO for high heat when it is among the most stable oils at high heat. Due to it having minimal processing it has more antioxidants that keep it from going rancid (which heat and exposure accelerate) and are good for you. When people use “smoke point” as a means of judging oil all that really affects is taste, not stability at high temps.
Nutrition aside because people here will argue anything, look into how seed oils first came about - they lubricated machinery! It was used as soap! I’d prefer not to eat stuff that wasn’t even designed for human consumption - especially if it’s inedible without processing it through a factory.