The variety of oil and fat products presented in supermarkets amazes and confuses many buyers. Finding out which vegetable oil is best for cooking is not an easy task. To make the right choice, you should find out all the useful and harmful properties of the product, learn to read its labeling and determine the quality of the product by color and smell.
Variety of species
There are many varieties of vegetable oils, each of which has certain properties and health benefits. The most popular are the following:
- flaxseed;
- olive;
- corn;
- nutty;
- sunflower;
- soybean.
All of them have useful substances, which should be described in more detail in order to determine which vegetable oil is best for frying.
Corn oil
Its color can vary from pale yellow to brown with a red tint. This product is produced in two ways: extraction and press. The main advantage is that it is able to lower blood cholesterol, which is why it is recommended for patients with cardiovascular diseases. It contains a huge amount of vitamin A and lecithin, and in terms of the amount of vitamin E it exceeds walnut.
It has a soft, unobtrusive taste and a neutral smell. Unlike olive oil, it is not bitter during frying and you can safely cook any dishes on it. With the frequent use of corn oil, metabolic processes normalize, the functioning of the liver and gall bladder improves, and the intestines function stabilizes. This product is useful for frequent headaches, shortness of breath and poor blood coagulation.
Olive oil
One of the most popular in the world. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks wrote about its benefits. It is difficult to determine when people began to extract oil from olive, but the first industrial production appeared in the Middle Ages. The benefits of this product are hard to overestimate. Suffice it to say that it is part of the famous Mediterranean diet. It has beneficial effects on all internal organs, rejuvenates and cleanses, fights cancer cells and helps to overcome mental disorders.
Despite the benefits, olive oil can harm patients with cholecystitis and obesity. This is a rather high-calorie product containing about 950 calories per 100 g. Dressing a fresh salad with two tablespoons of olive oil, it should be borne in mind that the calorie content of the dish automatically increases by 300 calories.
When buying it, it is advisable to give preference to goods made in Spain. This country honors the tradition of making olive oil and makes it the most natural and useful.
Linseed oil
It is considered therapeutic and is used in limited quantities. It resembles fish oil in taste and smell because of the huge content of omega-3 and 6 acids. Not everyone likes this product, and therefore linseed oil is rarely found in housewives' kitchens.
Traditional medicine advises using it to cleanse the liver. To do this, daily in the morning, on an empty stomach, take two tablespoons, washed down with warm water with the addition of lemon juice. Immediately after the procedure, you can not eat food for one hour. Among the useful properties of a product from flax, the following are distinguished:
- Positive effect on the cardiovascular system.
- Stimulating the brain.
- Strengthening immunity.
- Lower cholesterol.
- Thanks to folic acid and vitamin E, women have an easier period during menstruation.
- It has antimicrobial and regenerative properties.
It is stored in a dark place at a moderate temperature. It equally does not tolerate heat and cold. It is not cheap, but very little is required. They are seasoned with fresh salads of tomatoes, cabbage or zucchini. This oil is not suitable for frying or stewing. It is useful to use for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, especially for gastritis and inflammation of the pancreas. Contraindication to use is gallstone disease.
From sunflower seeds
Sunflower oil is publicly available and inexpensive. It has the following useful qualities:
- Rejuvenates thanks to the presence of two antioxidant vitamins - A and E.
- Prevents the formation of cholesterol plaques and thus blocks the appearance of atherosclerosis.
- Favorably affects the work of the stomach. With the help of sunflower oil, constipation has long been treated.
- Like other vegetable oils, it prevents the development of cancer.
- It improves memory and strengthens the immune system.
For frying, use oil that has undergone chemical treatment (refined), and natural (unrefined) is added to fresh salads. Crude oil has a limited lifespan. If a precipitate has formed at the bottom of the bottle, then it can no longer be consumed. After heat treatment, most of the beneficial properties are lost, and the oil itself acquires carcinogens. The best vegetable oil for frying, which does not impose its taste and smell on the dish, is refined sunflower.
Soybean oil
This product is still winning the hearts of customers. In terms of popularity, it is inferior to sunflower and olive, although soybean oil prefers all others to the population of China. It is perfectly absorbed by the body and has virtually no contraindications. Its color varies depending on the cooking method. Refined has a pale yellow tint, and unrefined has a dark brown.
The product obtained by cold pressing has a specific taste and smell. It is extremely difficult to eat, but the benefits from it are simply huge. The Chinese consider it a source of youth and consume 2 teaspoons every morning on an empty stomach.
For cooking, only refined oil is suitable. Unfortunately, due to processing, there are practically no useful substances left in it, but it will not bring much harm. Unrefined contains a huge amount of lecithin. Cooking on it is impossible, since during heat treatment it becomes extremely carcinogenic.
Walnut or walnut
This product, obtained from walnut kernels, has an original taste and pleasant aroma. Among fans of a healthy diet, this product is appreciated quite high due to the huge amount of iodine, iron and zinc. It also contains omega-6 and 3 fatty acids, which contribute to improving the condition of hair and skin. Walnut oil is a part of medicines intended for the treatment of pulmonary diseases and ulcers.
A small amount of peanut butter is put in a cake dough and seasoned with meat and fish dishes. It goes well with fresh vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers. This product is very loved in French cuisine and try to use whenever possible. Its energy value is lower than that of olive, and is 880 calories.
What is the best vegetable oil
To answer this question, you need to decide what the oil will be used for. If it is considered not as a product for cooking, but as a medicine, then the best option would be to buy a nut or flaxseed. They are not suitable for heat treatment, and the possibility of their use is very limited.
Equally useful is corn oil. It can be used both for frying foods and for dressing fresh vegetables. Sunflower and soybeans are slightly inferior to corn in the amount of nutrients, but are also great for cooking.
The best sunflower oil
To determine which brand of vegetable oil is better, a test purchase was conducted among Russian manufacturers. The following trademark representatives were provided with a choice of buyers:
- Kuban Krai oil;
- "Sloboda";
- "Russian woman";
- "Ideal";
- "Oleina";
- The Golden Seed.
As a result, buyers named Oleina oil as the winner, while experts preferred the Golden Seed. In their opinion, producers carefully selected the highest quality grains, and as a result, this brand turned out to have the lowest peroxide value. Thus, in what kind of vegetable oil is better to buy, “Test purchase” determined its winner.
Butter in baby food
Very often, young parents wonder which vegetable oil is best for complementary foods. Doctors advise starting exclusively with vegetable oil and only then moving on to butter. The first dose should be no more than 2 drops, which are added to mashed potatoes or chopped boiled meat. The first oil most often becomes olive. It must be cold pressed and in no case refined. Which vegetable oil is better? "Control purchase" recommended "Oleinu."
The first lure is carried out no earlier than 7 months, when the baby begins to eat vegetable dishes daily. A little later, they switch to sunflower. It is considered more severe for the baby’s tender stomach, so it is used no earlier than a year after birth.
Olive helps to properly form the vessels and digestive organs. It also prevents the appearance and development of skin diseases. Thanks to the oil, the baby normalizes stool, passes colic and stabilizes the level of beneficial microflora of the stomach. If there is a suspicion that the child has tuberculosis or bronchial diseases, then vegetable oil can be started to be given a month earlier, as an additional medicine.
Starting from nine months, babies already consume butter, which is added to rice, oatmeal and buckwheat porridge. You should be careful with him and monitor his quality. Unfortunately, it is butter that is most often falsified, and it is sometimes very difficult to find a real, safe product. In such cases, they simply focus on the price, since a product made from natural milk cream cannot be cheap.
What does the labeling mean?
Each bottle of oil contains the necessary information intended for the buyer. It shows the expiration date, energy and nutritional value, country of origin and place of manufacture. Refined olive oil is denoted by the word refined, natural - virgin, and oilcake - pomace. It is easy to guess that the best will be virgin, that is, natural.
Also, the oil has the designations DOP or IGP, meaning that the fruit was pressed in Greece or Spain, and the product was packaged in another EU country. A single container may contain a mixture of several oils, and then the word mix will be written on the label. Which vegetable oil is better to use? Professionals advise mix, as its taste is most balanced.
Vegetable or creamy
When asked about which butter is better - butter or vegetable, many, without hesitation, answer that it is vegetable. For many years, doctors and nutritionists were able to convince the population of the benefits of butter from the fruits of plants and the “cholesterol horror” of butter from animal milk. However, not everything is so simple.
Creamy is less caloric, as it contains proteins. At the same time, the vegetable contains exclusively fats. As for cholesterol, this substance in a small amount is extremely necessary for cell division and maturation of sex hormones. Therefore, one sandwich a day with butter and whole grain bread will not only not hurt, but will also bring some benefit.
This product is recommended for use in stomach ulcers, as it has certain healing properties. With cholecystitis and pancreatitis, the rate of butter should be halved.
You can not abuse butter because of the risk of acquiring too much cholesterol, which the body will not be able to absorb. It settles on the walls of blood vessels and eventually turns into plaques that clog the lumen.
Real butter has a fat content of at least 82%. Various ersatz, spreads and margarine have little in common with a real milk cream product. Low-priced foods contain plant-based trans fats that aren't good for daily use.
Vegetable oil can be both beneficial and harmful. A heat-treated product contains carcinogens and is extremely hazardous to health. Carcinogens are poison, a large amount of which poisons the body. The constant intake of this poison over time can lead to cancer.
The refined, clarified oil sold in supermarkets will not bring any benefit either. It practically does not contain useful substances, but there are components in it whose presence is undesirable. In its manufacture, chemical preparations were used to clarify and disinfect the oil.
In a word, everything is good in moderation. Nutrition should be as balanced as possible and contain a variety of products, each of which brings its own benefits for human health. Which vegetable oil is better - olive or soybean, linseed or nut, is up to the buyer to decide.