Oils... The Good, The Bad and the Smoke Points
 

After going gf I would make homemade fish and chips, french fries and burgers and french fries with deep fried chicken (I can't find the recipe I came up with - it was very good - but I'm looking.) and I also came up with a deep fried donutty kind of a thing called a faetkoek (fat cookie - makes you think, eh?). We'd also have french fries for snack sometimes. The reason we did this is because I missed restaurant food *so* much!

However, even though we weren't eating any more deep fried food than we were before... it *seemed* like a lot more because I had to plan it and handle it. I also began to notice that I react to heated oil. So from there we began to cut back. It was gradual though.

Now we have french fries with steamed or baked fish and french fries with baked or rotisseried chicken. Faetkoeks are only made for special occassions now and we limit our french fries to twice a month... if that.

Because I noticed a difference in our family's bodily reactions with cooked oil (negative) vs. raw oils (positive), I began to do some research....

Smoke Points
 

Thanks to Al for these awesome links!!! :)

http://www.hormel.com/templates/know...emid=42&id=571

This is a good site. I urge you to go and read more here.

This chart is more complex at the site:

http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Colle...mokePoints.htm

I LOVE this site because it lists oils both by name and by smoke point! I'll just quote the highest smoke points here.

Here's one just to compare notes with the others. Al's nothing if not thorough. Thank again Al! :)

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1547742

Canola Oil
 

I just wanted to note that at the old BT we had a big discussion and were surprised at how many of us seemed to react to canola oil.

Please feel free to research it and post your research... I just don't feel like doing it all again because I've pretty much closed the book on this oil for my family (after at least 3 trials with it and negative results every time).

I noticed rice bran oil was not listed. I use it for baking, cooking, everything. It has not smoked on me for anything yet. It clumps up in refridgerated salad dressing, though. Smoke points listed at the rice bran site might seem a little biased:

http://californiariceoil.com/

Look under Compare RBO

I have been very confused about which oils are "good" and which are "bad". One thing I have noticed is that it's difficult to buy oils that are not rancid. DH and I have been buying oils in small quantities now so that they do not go rancid, and refrigerating the ones that don't solidify at cold temperatures. We have become very sensitive to the smell of rancid oil. It helps that DH is a chemist! I have been known to return bottles of oil if I buy them and they smell rancid. I have had this problem with canola and grapeseed oil.

The only oils I use now are olive oil, coconut oil, and ghee. Because of my various food sensitivities, I can't use the nut oils. I've read both sides of canola oil being good and bad, but just decided to stop using it because I like ghee and coconut oil in it's place. The smoke point of ghee is higher than butter, at about 375 degrees. Ghee is pretty much 100% fat with the water and milk solids of butter removed, so I'm ok to have it even though I'm dairy free.

Here is a web site with smoke points in both Fahrenheit and celsius:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/SmokePointOil.htm

Claire

Hey Kim,

What has your research showed you?

Claire

No oil or cooked oil makes my family 'break out'.

Raw oil will clear everyone's skin.

Canola did not agree with ds or dh by myself and dd seem okay with it.

Grapeseed oil seemed the most beneficial of all of them. If we don't have enough raw grapeseed oil in our diets, esp. in the winter, our skin really suffers.

Olive oil brings down 'bad' chol. while upping 'good' cholesterol. (This was a long time ago that I researched this... it might not up the good... but I think I do remember that it did.

Grapeseed oil bring up both cholesterols.

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head but if you have a question, let me know and I'll try to remember what I read and where I got it from. A lot of stuff I read is at docguide.com.

What I was never able to ascertain, scientifically, was why my son seems to react most favourably to raw grapeseed oil (he also consumes a lot of raisins) but not other raw oils (we tried many and they did not clear his skin). It's one of those bits of information that I still keep an eye out for - to back up my personal findings.

does anyone know the smoke point of EV coconut oil ?

we have just started using it and find things burn rather than brown so it must be low ........

kozz

Hi Koz,

What does EV mean?

According to the chart that Claire linked, it is 350F.

EV = extra virgin. This is usually used when talking about olive oil. Here is the definition of different olive oils. http://www.oliveoilsource.com/definitions.htm

Information about the processing of Coconut oil http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/wh...oconut_oil.htm

Anne