It seems like I've seen recent articles touting linoleic acid as being a good thing. For example: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2014/11/05/diet...

I use EVOO oil for pretty much all cooking and its wonderful. Only time I wouldn't is for high heat cooking but I don't do much of that as it is.

No reason to use any other type IMO for (most) cooking.

It depends on what you are cooking. While I use plenty of EVOO, I also use a fair amount of refined avocado oil (high temp, neutral flavor) and butter. There are many cooking contexts where the latter two are quite arguably the superior choice, either for flavor or performance reasons.

Right tool for the job and all that. There isn't one cooking oil that serves all purposes adequately.

With EVOO there is at least a certification seal from the COOC for California-based olive oils. Not only does that certify oil quality and safe storage practices-- it certifies that it is actually olive oil. This is necessary because, according to various sources I've read, there's a better chance than a coin flip that the EVOO bought at the grocery store is a) some other oil (and dyed green), b) cut with other cheaper oils, or c) substandard non-virgin olive oil.

So I guess my question is-- how do you know that the avocado oil isn't fake? Is there a certification body? Without one, it seems like the current popularity of it would push manufacturers to use the same tricks as with EVOO. But again, I'm not even talking about quality or storage-- just whether it is actually the oil claimed by the label on the bottle.

I mean-- there's a oil manufacturer literally called "California Olive Ranch" that does an oil with a little graphic that says something like "Global Blend!" And apparently they used to be COOC certified manufacturer but got the cert revoked because there's rule that putting "California" on the label requires all the olives to be from California (obviously).

Hell, there was even a story about a mysterious proposal to change some of the language in the certification guidelines to soften this rule, but a lot of the members petitioned against that.

Given this weirdo shady oil environment I'm just assuming everything is either dyed vegetable oil or some other trick unless I can get my hands on a really good reason to believe otherwise.

Personally I like beef tallow

I did some popcorn in cod liver oil the other day. Lots of vitamin A, but it gives the house a bit of a nautical atmosphere.

I wouldn't do that

Cod liver oil is mostly omega3 pufa.

Omega3s oxidize really easily under heat.

Use coconut, ghee, butter, macademia nut, avocado or maybe even olive oil. Or any kind of animal fat (duck fat, beef tallow, etc)

stealing nautical atmosphere

I like fractionated coconut oil if I'm not cooking with it. Little known secret: MCT Oil is just fractionated coconut oil with different branding:

> What percentage MCTs do your coconut oils have?

> Our Liquid Coconut oil has 80 to 85% MCT.

https://louana.com/faq/

I cooked with nothing but beef tallow for a few years, I used to render it myself, lately I've been using coconut oil and butter, it's just much easier. I no longer render the fat from beef I eat and just eat it with the meat to get more fat in my diet.

Well it really depends on your cuisine - EVOO works great for most things European, but many other cultures work better with peanut oil.

Peanut oil is ridiculously high in omega6s too just like seed oils.

Yes, it tends to lose its olive flavor once cooked so it works for a lot of things. I think saturated fats do crisp up foods better. I cook steaks and ground beef in ghee which gives a great crust.

I’ve decided to go back to my desi roots and use ghee for more things. It’s awesome.

For anyone like me who didn't know what EVOO is, it stand for Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Lard is your delicious friend.

This shouldn't be downvoted. Lard is an excellent cooking fat that's been needlessly maligned.

I thought the issue with Lard was the trans fats, but since I didn't know I double checked and apparently Lard has no trans fats, so I then wanted to know why we quit using it.

It seems that Lard was very popular up to WWII, but then we had supply issues due to the war effort so people switched over to vegetable shortenings, and afterwards pork fats like Lard were considered unhealthy compared to the "pure vegetable oils" which were often hydrogenated and filled with Trans Fats which were worse for you health-wise than Lard is.

So, yeah, WWII and food purity aesthetic might be responsible for some measurable portion of the modern obesity crises!

But the smell is horrid.

This is the first I've heard of an anti-seed oil campaign?

Basically the argument is that plant fats are kind of new in our diet and used in huge quantities when compared to historic levels (with perhaps exception of olive oil) and their introduction correlates with rise in diseases that we believe are caused by western diet.

First of all, this article is about seed oils, not plant fats.

Secondly, does the world in which this argument exists consist only of the west? Your mention of olive oil as the exception and a “western diet” seems to indicate so given that plant fats (such as in nuts or coconut oil) have been consumed for thousands of years. Would any of this generalize to humanity?

Was coconut oil manufactured and consumed in large quantities before industrial age? Was it a staple of local diet? Were people there healthy and not unusually prone to various diseases and not overweight? In some island nations being overweight was beneficial for travel and times of scarcity. So tradeoffs of their diet might not fit us so well as it fitted them.

Plant fats consumed with their respective plants are probably tolerable, because your stomach has limited volume. Only after they are squeezed out do that you can have oil out of 20 kilos of plants in each single meal then it might not suit your body.

So let me restate the question.

Do you any plant fats that were extracted from plants before industrial age and used as a staple meal ingredient by themselves?

Olive oil is one. Is coconut oil the second? What else?

> Was coconut oil manufactured and consumed in large quantities before industrial age? Was it a staple of local diet?

Probably? Coconuts were certainly cultivated and used in prominent societies dating back to 1500 BCE or earlier, and the oil has been used for nearly as long, although it's unclear to what extent this was for culinary purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut#Origin

> Were people there healthy and not unusually prone to various diseases and not overweight? In some island nations being overweight was beneficial for travel and times of scarcity. So tradeoffs of their diet might not fit us so well as it fitted them.

This is also unclear, although I assume the same ambiguity applies to animal-sourced fats which were consumed in cultures very different to our own.

Don't forget good old fashioned tallow and lard.

That's a great start but sadly most of those seed oils can still find a way into your body through through much of the food people eat. It's insane how much cotton seed, canola, rapeseed, corn, sunflower, Safflower, soy, rice bran oils are found in all processed and prepared food like breads, sauces, salad dressings, snack foods, and basically any every other packaged or processed food. Unless you are eating extremely clean, you're ingesting seed oils. Most pork and chicken that is bought is raised on seed oils but from what I understand ruminant animals are able to filter it out through their urine. One has to be extremely diligent in their food choices to eliminate seed oils from their diet and it takes years to get it out of your body. Ray Peat has some interesting stuff and has basically preaching long before it was popular to get PUFA's out of your diet. If you eat out, all restaurants and fast food is either cooked in it or it's in the food they are serving.

Check your pantry and read the ingredients on everything. I basically use Costco Organic EVOO and the big tub of Coconut oil you can buy there for everything and never go out to eat anymore for at least the last 4-5 years. My diet is so simple that I lost 100 pounds and kept it off just eating clean and doing some fasting.

> If you eat out, all restaurants and fast food is either cooked in it or it's in the food they are serving.

Was recently searching for information about the restaurant industry’s switch from classic fryer oils to seed oils. I ran across something about Buffalo Wild Wings (BWW) getting sued by a vegetarian because they’d assumed BWW used ‘vegetable’ oil in their fryers. BWW’s attorneys got the suit thrown out.

On learning this, I added BWW to my list of restaurants to patronize.

Had a friend buy me lunch last Thursday. She ordered fried shrimp from the appetizer menu. They were very greasy - I pulled off the breading to hopefully avoid the oil. The next day I cautioned her about eating foods fried in vegetable oil. We went to BWW that night. I ordered wings and French fries. Would order again.

[0] BWW lawsuit report: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-buffalo-wild-lawsuit-idUS...

> about the restaurant industry’s switch from classic fryer oils to seed oils

What is classic fryer oil made of for you? Perhaps a country/region difference but for me fryer oil is sunflower oil?

I think it depends on how long ago you need to go to be “classic”. I bet they were originally lard and tallow.

"Vegetable" oils weren't commonly used as food until it was figured out how to deodorize them. Mostly they were used to preserve wood (as paints and stains), then the paint industry figured out how to use petroleum distillates. The moniker 'vegetable oil' is a marketing term to trick people into thinking these products are edible.

McDonald's formerly used a blend of tallow, lard and coconut oil, iirc. The Tipping Point guy... .. . Malcolm Gladwell, had a podcast about this, McDonald's Broke My Heart: https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/mcdonalds-broke-my-heart/

BWW uses seed oils in all the sauces.

And in all the dry rubs.(no shit.. I have some aging shakers of it here in the house and soybean oil is an ingredient on all 3)

So they fry in tallow but then slather it in seed oils anyways

Ok thats good to know but the amount of oil absorbed in breading would be more of a concern for me. At some point I just admit fried chicken is probably never going to be perfect and enjoy it sparingly.

their wings arent breaded.

Also, bc of what we feed chickens has changed radically over the years, chickens are themsleves particularly high in omega6s. .

And they store most of it in their skin. A skinless breast isn't so bad.

Wings? Even without sauce or being fried, you might as well be taking a shot of canola oil

Good point, thanks. The fried shrimp I had was soaked in oil. My understanding is that unsaturated oils are somewhat stabilized by saturated fats. Maybe I'll take some coconut oil chasers if I go to BWW again.

My 2 oils of choice are EVOO - fresh, for salad - and rice bran oil for frying. When researching smoke points and other oil related health issues I found bran and grapeseed to be the best for high heat cooking, with bran winning the tie break by affordability. What did I miss?

I would replace the Rice Bran with Coconut oil or EVOO. EVOO is fine to fry in 90% of the time. For that 10%, I use Organic unrefined coconut oil.

Here is some info on EVOO

https://fat.gold/guide/

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) and other common cooking oils were heated up to [460 degrees F] and exposed to [350 degrees F] for 6 hours, with samples assessed at various times, testing smoke point, oxidative stability, free fatty acids, polar compounds, fatty acid profiles and UV coefficients. EVOO yielded low levels of polar compounds and oxidative byproducts, in contrast to the high levels of byproducts generated for oils such as canola oil.

Was this actual (tested to be) EVOO or stuff in a bottle labelled EVOO? Apparently, much of the latter isn’t extra virgin and quite a bit isn't even olive oil, so it's important to distinguish...

Yeah it really is in almost everything. I cook from scratch all but a few times a month so I’m hoping to reduce exposure, but going to any restaurant or fast food place it is pretty much a given that they will use cheap oils.

Why is that a bad thing? It seems like everyone in here is jumping to conclusions?

You’re right theres not a lot to show seed oils are really bad for you, thats why I mentioned avoiding them as a precaution. Its completely unscientific but frying with highly processed canola makes your kitchen smell vaguely like paint thinner which is unpleasant if not unhealthy.