Health Tip: Fats and Oils

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Health Tip: Fats and Oils
Posted by tempestodimare under Alternative Health, Cooking, Survival, health
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Drina Brooke, certified community herbalist

Dear friends:

I wanted to share this tip with you while it was occurring to me today.

While sitting in on a health lecture by a nutritionist, she said that to use olive oil for pan-frying is “Free radical city”. Instead, to use oils with a high smoking point is to reduce the formation of free radicals during the cooking process. These oils with a high smoking point (which can tolerate heat better than other oils) include cold-pressed coconut, grapeseed, and sunflower seed oils among a few others.

For further reading about fats and oils, including the Omega 3′s, Omega 6′s, saturated, mono-unsaturated, etc. see Paul Pitchford’s chapter on fats and oils in his book “Healing with Whole Foods”. This is as complete a write-up as you will get, and it’s absolutely very enlightening. For a shorter presentation, see Linda Rector Page’s “Healthy Healing” book, but I really highly recommend reading Pitchford’s book if you are up for reading an entire chapter that really teaches you all you need to know.

FYI free radicals are chemicals that cause oxidative tissue processes in the body, yielding disease and inflammatory processes or speeding up aging. So it’s important to minimize exposure, especially with oils which can be carcinogenic when heated and consumed in routine quantities.

Also, use only cold-pressed oils because those oils pressed by other methods also form free radicals during heating process which occurs during pressing, while also losing nutritional value. Hexane-free is important too for immune and other health. (Chemicals in any form always affect immunity, cancer proneness, and often the nervous system as well) .

Corn and vegetable oils have been associated with some forms of cancer, FYI. You can read about this in Paul Pitchford’s book. Conversely, olive oil and other mono-unsaturated oils are very heart-healthy, aid cholesterol reduction and liver cleansing, and also aid cellular respiration and membrane integrity. Don’t forget that cell membranes are part of your body’s immune barrier. Healthy oils are essential for nerve impulse transfer and nerve cell health too. So to avoid oils is not to be on a healthily low-fat diet, just to correct any misconceptions about this. It’s the animal fats which oxidize tissues, but healthy oils are actually key to good health. And they are not metabolized at all in the same way that animal fats are. (I am not vegetarian, FYI and do believe that we may need a certain amount of animal proteins for vitamin B 12 and energetic strength. But needs vary with each individual, and considerations are unique depending on body type and exercise levels, and on your very understandable ethical feelings about consuming animal proteins) .

A friend joked: “But I like free radicals, because they are free and they are radical” but of course, he was just kidding around. Have a great 3-day weekend and best wishes, Drina