Cooking Oil

Refined oil, coconut oil etc.

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Cooking oil is purified fat of plant or animal origin, which is liquid at room temperature.

Some of the many different kinds of edible vegetable oils include: palm oil, olive oil, soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, grape seed oil, sesame oil, argan oil and rice bran oil. Many other kinds of vegetable oils are also used for cooking.

The generic term "vegetable oil" when used to label a cooking oil product refers to a blend of a variety of oils often based on palm oil, corn, soybean or sunflower oils.

Oil can be flavoured by immersing aromatic food stuffs such as fresh herbs, peppers and so forth in the oil for an extended period of time. However, care must be taken when using garlic and onions to prevent the growth of Clostridium botulinum (the bacterium which causes botulism) in this medium.

The Bad Fats
Saturated Fats	Saturated fats raise total blood cholesterol as well as LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol).
Trans Fats	Trans fats raise LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) and lower HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol).
The Good Fats
Monounsaturated Fats	Monounsaturated fats lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) and increase the HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol).
Polyunsaturated Fats	Polyunsaturated fats also lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. Omega 3 fatty acids belong to this group.

Therefore, based on the above classification, the "ideal" cooking oil should contain higher amount of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats and with minimal or no saturated fats and trans fats.

The following "bad" oils contain high percentage of trans fat or saturated fats. Some, such as coconut oil, even contain more saturated fats than animal products!

Bad Cooking Oils:

Vegetable shortening
Hard margarine
Butter
Palm oil
Palm kernel oil
Coconut oil

http://www.healthcastle.com/cooking-oils.shtml

Trans fat is found in numerous foods - commercially packaged goods, commercially fried food such as French Fries from some fast food chains, other packaged snacks such as microwaved popcorn as well as in vegetable shortening and some margarine. Indeed, any packaged goods that contains "partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils", "hydrogenated vegetable oils" or "shortening" most likely contain trans fat.

Before the invention of trans fatty acids, we cooked food with lard, palm oil or butter etc which are high in saturated fat. Researchers found that saturated fat increases LDL cholesterol (the Bad cholesterol) which may increase the risk of heart disease.

http://www.healthcastle.com/trans.shtml

Risk Assessment Tool for Estimating Your 10-year Risk of Having a Heart Attack The risk assessment tool below uses information from the Framingham Heart Study to predict a person