Are you concerned about your health? Who isn’t? If so, you’ll want to avoid polyunsaturated vegetable oils, such as corn, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed, soy, canola, and generic “vegetable” oils. They're found in the majority of canned, bottled, boxed, frozen, packaged, and processed foods sold in supermarkets and natural foods stores. To avoid them you'll need to read labels on everything. Making more of your family's food at home will help you avoid these insidious oils.
Photo right Karly's Carob or Chocolate Sauce over fresh peaches with Vanilla Ice Dream by Rachel Albert Matesz ©
What’s wrong with vegetable oils?
Polyunsaturated oils are highly susceptible to rancidity from exposure to heat, light, and oxygen. In the industrial processes used to extract vegetable oils for sale in supermarkets, oils are exposed to enough heat, light, and oxygen to produce peroxides. These give the oils a bad taste and smell so they are bleached and deodorized before being put on the market or used to make synthetic fats (margarine and shortening).
Even if the oils were to survive industrial processing undamaged, they are typically packaged in clear bottles and stored in brightly lit groceries at room temperature. They are more or less rancid by the time someone takes them home. Then people at home usually store them at room temperature (why not, that’s what they do in the stores), and often use them for cooking.
Want to see vegetable oil turn to plastic/ Brush a baking pan with safflower oil, then bake it at 350˚ F––you’ll have trouble getting the glue off the pan with any solvent. That's what's happening inside your body when you eat a diet rich in vegetable oils as most Americans do.
Even if you get cold-pressed oils packaged in dark bottles and keep them refrigerated, as soon as you eat them conditions are correct for converting them to the pesky peroxides. Remember, your innards are always hot (98.6˚ F), and loaded with oxygen. What happens when peroxides get loose in your blood? Damage to arterial tissue and plaque!
What’s a cook to use?
For cooking and baking, your best bets are real butter, ghee (clarified butter), lard, beef tallow, palm oil, non-hydrogenated palm shortening, and coconut oil. Yes, those are all healthy, traditional fats that your body knows how to deal with.
I know, for years doctors and dietitians have been blaming animal fats for heart disease and cancer, and recommending people eat vegetable oils instead. But they were (and still are wrong!), history and research implicate vegetable oils as the real culprits. For more than 2 million years before the industrial revolution, vegetable oils were rare and fake fats made from those oils, such as margarine and shortening, were unknown.
Photo right: Goat Cheesecake topped with Karyl's Carob or Chocolate Sauce and homemade Caramel Sauce by Rachel Albert Matesz ©
We've been duped
In America during the past 100 years animal fat intake has remained virtually constant, while consumption of processed unsaturated vegetable oil products has increased more than four-fold, parallel with rates of major degenerative diseases––obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. So naturally saturated fats and oils can't be to blame. How can they when people are eating less of them (less butter, lard, and tallow) and downing vegetable oils in amounts previously never seen in history?
What about olive oil?
Extra-virgin olive oil is great for salad dressing and moderate to low heat cooking (best below 350 or 400˚F and medium or medium low heat, not high!), but in some recipes, such as homemade mayonnaise, sweet salad dressings, and dessert sauces, its strong herbaceous flavor can over power other ingredients. Enter unrefined avocado oil. Not only is it good for these applications, but you can also use it for sautéing, pan frying, and roasting vegetables.
What about coconut oil?
From a health standpoint, coconut oils is an excellent addition to the diet and a great substitute for less healthful oils. However, in some applications it doesn’t work, either because it becomes too hard when refrigerated (in a salad dressing or mayo for example), because its flavor can be too strong (in sweet salad dressings or mayo), or because its smoke points is too low.
Coconut oil is heat stable, but it doesn’t have a particularly high smoke point (its smoke point is generally listed as approximately 350°F). This limits its use for some types of cooking (see examples below).
Avocado oil has a fatty acid profile similar to olive oil. It is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids. Compared to olive oil, it has a very high smoke point, over 500°F, which makes it ideal for baking, roasting, and pan frying.While you can use it for deep frying, I don't frying on a frequent basis and if you do it, a more saturated fat would be safer (think palm oil, palm shortening, rendered beef tallow, or lard).
Avocado photo right: Mid-American Marketing Corporation >>>
When used for salad dressings, avocado oil won’t interfere with the other flavors. It also makes an excellent mayonnaise! Almost all commercial mayonnaise is made from soybean, safflower, sunflower, or canola oil, the oils you need to avoid. You can make mayonnaise with olive oil but it doesn’t have the look or the traditional flavor people expect.
How does it taste?
If you like avocados, you’ll like avocado oil. It has a mild flavor and blends well with both sweet and savory ingredients. It’s not my main source of fat or oil by any means, but it’s a great alternative to have on hand for some of the applications listed above. Sometimes I make sweet salad dressings using a reduction of fruit juice (try the Poppy Seed Pineapple, Orange, or Cherry Drizzle recipe found in The Garden of Eating). I used to use flax oil for this, but over time I've virtually eliminated this oil from my diet because it contains a lot of polyunsaturates, it’s inferior to fish oil as a source of omega-3 fatty acids, and you can’t use flax oil for cooking.
Using avocado oil
I've made the sauce recipe (below) for a couple of dozen classes and events, including a recent Arizona Herb Association meeting, People love the flavor and texture of it. Avocado oil provides the healthy fat required to give body and texture to this recipe, balancing the sweetness of the syrup. It keeps the sauce pourable, so you don’t have to heat it to be able to pour it over fresh berries, fresh or frozen bananas, homemade ice cream or Ice Dream (from my latest book, The Ice Dream Cookbook). Avocado oil's mild flavor slips seamlessly into this and other recipes. By using it avocado oil in recipes where olive or coconut oil don't work, you can avoid the hazards of both refined vegetable oils and hydrogenated oils.
My recent taste test
I recently tried Avocado Oil Supreme® from Mid American Marketing Company at www.coconutoil-online.com. I think it tastes great. I’ve tried it in heated and uncooked applications. The only thing I would change if I were consulting with the company is that I would package it in glass rather than plastic containers. If you buy this oil, I suggest you transfer it to glass bottles (dark ones if possible) upon arrival and remember to store it in the refrigerator. They also sell exceptionally good virgin pressed coconut oil and other coconut products. I tried avocado oil from Whole Foods Market, which I also liked. The latter is packaged in glass bottles, making it safer for health and the environment. I am not sure how the two compare price-wise.
Karly’s Carob Sauce
Hands-On: 20 minutes/ Cooking: 0 / Yield: 1 3/4 to 2 cups; 14 to 16 servings
One of my cooking students, Karlene Blair, shared this recipe with me. She got it from raw foods chef Becky Johnson. You can use carob powder or unsweetened cocoa powder. For a less sweet taste use only maple syrup in the recipe below.
Some of my recipe testers thought the chocolate version tasted like Hershey’s Syrup®. It’s easy to prepare, and remains pourable right from the refrigerator, where it will keep for months.
Notes: If you have celiac disease, use unsweetened cocoa powder rather than carob powder. Most brands of carob powder are made on equipment shared with wheat, which can cross contaminate the carob. If you follow a moderate to low-carb diet, consider this a special treat, not daily fare.
FYI: Store avocado oil and almond oil in the refrigerator.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup pure maple syrup or combination of raw honey and maple syrup (agave nectar for vegans)
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup unrefined almond oil or avocado oil
- 1/2 cup raw or roasted carob powder, sifted if lumpy (see variation below for chocolate)
- 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon finely ground unrefined sea salt (e.g. Celtic Sea Salt or Redmond Real Salt)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract or alcohol-free vanilla flavoring
- 1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract or alcohol-free almond flavoring
- Sift the carob or cocoa powder if lumpy. Spoon it into the measuring cup and level the top with a butter knife. Combine all ingredients in a blender, Vita-Mix, or food processor or in a medium bowl with an electric mixer or immersion blender. Blend until smooth.
- Scrape the mixture into custard cups or wide mouth jars, then cover, and refrigerate.
- If you wish to thin the sauce before serving, run the jar under warm water or allow it to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before serving. Alternatveily add a few tablespoons of warm water to the portion you plan to serve right away. Don’t add water to the entire batch as this can cause premature spoilage.
2 tablespoons (carob): 122 calories, 0.2 grams protein, 18.6 grams carbohydrate, 5.3 grams fat, 18 milligrams sodium
2 tablespoons (chocolate): 121 calories, 0.5 grams protein, 17 grams carbohydrate, 5.7 grams fat, 18 milligrams sodium
Variations:
* Karly’s Cocoa Sauce: Replace carob powder with unsweetened cocoa powder.
Source for nutrition info above: The Garden of Eating: A Produce—Dominated Diet & Cookbook by Rachel Albert Matesz & Don Matesz (Planetary Press, 2004)
© Copyright 2004
Source for recipe above: The Ice Dream Cookbook: Dairy-Free Ice Dream Alternatives with Gluten-Free Cookies, Compotes and Sauces by Rachel Albert-Matesz (Planetary Press, October, 2008)
© Copyright 2008
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