Friday 18 December 2015

What is the best cooking oil?

I am getting particular about my food nowadays. Solely because age really adds chronic illnesses into my life. By paying extra attention to nutrition, physical activities and lifestyle, I wish these can prolong my functional independence.

In Malaysia, the popular cooking oil would be palm oil. It is the cheapest and easily found in all stores that sell cooking oil. Of course, this is due to the fact that Malaysia produces the most palm oil globally, together with Indonesia.

When I was young, I remember my mother would cook with peanut oil. I could still remember the smell of peanut oil lingering in the air. However, nobody is selling peanut oil nowadays.

A google search shows that palm oil is quite an inferior oil as compared to other oil such as soy bean oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, olive oil, etc. Well, I don't really bother about the comments. Palm oil is cheap as compared to other oil, and as a result, market competitors are many out there to discredit it.

Anyway, here are some general rules for me
1. Use refined oil for cooking as smoke point is higher.  Due to its lower smoke point, unrefined oil becomes unstable at lower temperature.
2. Do not recycle oil. After frying fish, deep fried chicken etc, discard the oil. Oil that has been used will have lower smoke point due to the impurity in it.
3. Extra virgin oil has low smoke point. Use it for dressing only.
4. Use as little oil as possible as. A person's diet should only get about 6% of calorie from fat. Basing on my daily calorie of 1800, 6% is 108 cal. Convert to fat is 12g, this is about 2 tbsp. Calorie from oil must be less than that amount because meat consumed also contains fat.

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