Cooking oil choices and questions

 Cooking oil choices and questions
A great post from a blog that might soon become a favorite:  Lifein a Shoe


[Also checked this out:   The Best Cooking Oils: For Your Heart and Wallet  ]


Comments about health and shelf life:

"know that every oil has a heating factor, once you heat it over it’s tolerance, it becomes TOXIC and RANCID. Olive oil’s smoke point is 350, go over and it’s no longer good, but very harmful."

"Butter: Frankly I think dairy products are a fairly critical organic purchase. Hormones and antibiotics are huge issues, and they are found in the highest concentrations in the fat. Since butter IS the fat, and it takes approx 21 gal of milk per pound of butter, you get 21x the amount of antibiotics and hormones that you get in a gallon of milk. Antibiotic resistance is a serious issue, and much of our exposure comes from low level doses we get continuously in our food.
"Go hormone, pesticide and antibiotics free with dairy products. (Also every other industralized nation bans BGH.)"

"Palm Oil Shortening is a great alternative for grapeseed oil or butter if you’re out of ORGANIC butter. There is no point in eating hormone fed, GMO corn fed cow butter, but if you want the nutrition in REAL butter, you have to go with pastured, organic butter."

"Grapeseed oil: I don’t know of any advantages over butter. It is ok for mayo. I really like Mary Enigs’ mayo recipe, which uses an equal blend of coconut, olive, and hemp oils."
"Grapeseed oil is processed with hexane from what I understand and it is NOT good for you. One has to be careful to check and research the process the oils go through, because that is really what in the end with determine if you have a healthy product or not."


Olive Oil: The difference is the refining process and quality of olives. Light OO is a blend of low-grade oils, mechanically processed, heated, and sometimes mixed with canola oil. EVOO should ideally not be heated above 77 degrees, as that is when the vitamin E starts to degrade. But is should never be heated to smoking point, as then it turns to trans-fats. I would bake with the grapeseed over the olive.
" Keep the OO in the fridge."

Refined Coconut Oil: One of the big problems with inexpensive CO is that many are hydrogenated. Steer WAAY clear of those. LouAna, to my knowledge, is not hydrogenated. It is heated, bleached and treated with hexane though. I don’t know that there would be any benefit to putting it in your smoothies, but it might be a good choice for cooking and skin care. There are also refined coconut oils that don’t use hexane, but rather use more traditional methods that preserve more of the health benefits. If you can, virgin coconut oil for smoothies and refined for everything else.


 "
For more information on good fats, I would go to the Weston A Price Foundation’s website and read up on it. Theirs is the most informative:)
Also another good website is the Healthy Home Economist, Sarah does a good job explaining the how to’s and such of doing a good fats diet. Other websites are Kelly the Kitchen Cop, and check out their links for more information."


I couldn't read all the great comments, but what I took away from this was:

Keep OO under 350 in oven.
 Buy organic butter or non-hexane processed grapeseed.
Light olive oil for cooking.
For Mayo: Grapeseed (have used sesame/coconut blend)

Must research the hexane method.  A certain French cheese has been banned in the US because they use beetles to eat the wax off.  For or against? Skeptical either way?  I can see how both sides might have reasons, but this cheese has been eaten for hundreds of years, so I lean to the French way.  And they are THE cheesemakers.  The hexane use might not be bad.

Quick reference (copied)

• Coconut oil (unrefined,5 gallons from Mountain Rose): $42/gallon
• Organic Butter (4 lbs. from Costco):$36/gallon [MY ESTIMATE]
• Olive oil, extra virgin (2L from Costco): $19/gallon
• Butter (4 lbs. from Costco): $18/gallon
• Olive oil, extra light (4L from Costco): $17/gallon
• Grapeseed oil (2L from Costco): $13/gallon
• Coconut oil (refined, 50 lbs. from Soaper’s Choice): $13/gallon