Warning - longish post!
I thought I'd bring this up again as I've spent years in my spare time on the internet trying to find some answers and the way lipid (fat) research seems to be going is quite surprising.
Most of you will have heard of the 3 categories of oil or fat: Monounsaturated, Polyunsaturated and the devil's stuff itself, Saturated oil or fat.
A little bit of history:
Up to about the 1950s nobody ate industrial seed-based oil such as soya, sunflower, rapeseed oil, cotton seed oil etc. etc. These products were used to make oil paints, varnish and were used as industrial lubricants. In those days people ate olive oil, lard, butter, beef tallow, palm oil and coconut oil.
At this time it was discovered that it was cheaper to use petroleum oil products to manufacture paints, varnish and lubricants. This left a big problem for the agriculture business as to what to do with these industrial seed oils. To cut a long story short, due to some appalling science we ended up eating these oils at the advice of our governments because they told us these oils were heart healthy, unlike the old fashioned saturated fats we used to eat.
The most recent research paints an entirely different picture. Polyunsaturated oils are becoming the "bad boy". Most of the poly oils we eat are classed as Omega 6. Too much of this stuff is implicated with heart disease, cancer and slow metabolism (that's not a good thing by the way).
Many scientists now agree that we need a ratio of omega6 to omega3 of between 4:1 and 1:1.
The standard American diet creates a ratio of at least 50:1 omega6 to omega3 poly oils, and a UK diet is hardly different.
On top of this, we are only talking about a recommended quantity of polyunsaturated oil in the region of about 6 grams daily in total.
The problem with excess polyunsaturated fats is of oxidation. These oils are highly unstable and oxidise in the body very easily. This causes inflammation in the body hence the links to cancer and heart disease.
More research seems to be debunking the bad science of knocking saturated fats and how they will cause heart disease. This link has never been proven.
The facts are, the body converts excess sugars to saturated fat. Out bodily fat make up is similar to lard, i.e. about 50% monounsaturated and 50% saturated, very little polyunsaturates in the human body.
If these statements turn out to be true we should be wary of eating sunflower oil, rapeseed oil or any industrial vegetable seed oil that is high in polyunsaturated fats.
I switched recently to making curries with light olive oil that only contains 10% polyunsaturates.
That is the oil I now use for most frying.
I've also switched to 100% butter instead of a 70/30 butter/veg oil mix.
I use butter ghee for my dals. (Highly saturated)
I also use virgin coconut oil for some curries. (Highly saturated)
I'm planning to return to lard and beef tallow for making home made chips. Actually easier said than done as supply exceeds demand for quality lard and beef tallow.
I take an omega 3 fish oil supplement and I actively avoid anything that may contain omega 6 poly oils.
Bring on the old school sat fats!
Topic: A heathier alternative to Vegetable Oil? (Read 25077 times)
