The truth about cooking with seed oils
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Why is there so much hype and fear around cooking with seed oils?
Avocado, hemp, extra virgin, olive, and rapeseed. The shops are packed with various oils to cook with. But what is actually worth spending money on and are any of them actually better for you? Eva Quinn is a registered dietitian and she joins me on the line. Morning Eva.
Hi there, how
are you? Great, thanks. Now, if you look at TikTok, um you'd almost be uh a scared uh scared of cooking with any seed oil. There's a lot of bad publicity. Would you just explain that to us? Is is there any need to be worried?
Absolutely. So there is a huge amount of discussion online about kind of seed oils and them being in and kind of inflammatory. But when we actually look at the evidence in humans anyway, we don't have any good evidence that kind of normal consumption of those seed oils causes any inflammation or that is bad for us in any way.
Oh right. Okay. So that's reassuring. So obviously uh uh as with everything, moderation is key. Exactly. So when it comes down to choosing what you're going to be using, it does it just come down to personal preference.
Yeah, so that definitely plays a part. But what I'd love to say is we've probably all heard that our lovely extra virgin olive oil is a really great choice, but it's not the only healthy oil out there. So if we look at where the kind of olive oil as being a great choice comes from, the Mediterranean style diet is a dietary pattern that we've all heard about before that has loads of evidence to show there's got loads of health benefits for us, particularly for our heart health. But the um broader principle is more that the I olive oil helps to replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats. And it's not the only source of healthy fats that we can have. So other seed oils like your rapeseed oil, your sunflower oil, other just vegetable oils can be really lovely um additions in there that don't break the bank.
Okay. Um
Does normal consumption of seed oils cause inflammation or health problems?
We talk about olive oil. So there's extra virgin, there's virgin, and there's just plain olive oil. What is the practical difference? Because I I think people go into the shops and they say, Oh, well, this must be better for me. I better pay the extra whack and it is an extra whack for the the extra virgin.
Yes, so with the extra version, it's just gone through a little bit more processing, but it has less kind of additives as such in there and less impurities is the word I should use. Um, but you do pay extra for that. Um, it tends to have a kind of a deeper flavor as well. Whereas if you're okay with kind of using other oils for kind of just the cooking purposes rather than the flavor purposes, there's no need to necessarily go for the extra virgin um and pay that extra for it.
Okay, so if I'm uh frying some onions I can use the cheap stuff, but if I'm making uh m making a French dressing or something, you're better with the extra version. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. Okay. How do they last? How long do they last? So if you're if you're gonna have a a couple of different oils for different purposes, can you just leave them in the in the in the cupboard and they'll be okay?
Absolutely. They last quite a long time. Oils in general and fats in general are very shelf stable. Um it's a case of just being sure that if we're say um frying with oil or just cooking with oil in general, that we don't overuse them or reuse them as such. Um because the more that we use them and uh heat them, the more likely it is to cause the lysal impurities in them.
Okay. Um w what would you generally cook with? I mean, if you're just frying stuff, uh frying onions to make a sauce or or whatever. Um What would you use?
So so great question. It tends to be vegetable oil or rapeseed oil because it is so much cheaper um when we're just using it to uh as a a cooking medium so things don't stick to the pan. I am a lover though of the taste of olive oil. So if I am having a salad or creating a dip with, say, yogurt and and oil, I'd always have an olive oil there because of the lovely flavour. And I know that it's got lots of anti inflammatory properties.
How do olive oil and other seed oils contribute to a heart‑healthy Mediterranean‑style diet?
properties too, but not so much in my cooking purely because gosh, they really do know how to charge for it now.
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