With so many vegetable oils to choose from these days, it can get confusing! What’s the best oil for frying? Cooking? How about salads and are there any beauty and cosmetic uses of them too?
I have put together a super quick guide for you. Now you can enjoy your favourite flavours and be aware of all the wonderful health benefits.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
It is packed with beneficial monounsaturated fat and polyphenol antioxidants to help stamp out disease-provoking free radicals. It’s also one of the few dietary oils to contain vitamin K, which is necessary for proper blood clotting.
Avocado Oil.
My favourite as I love it’s nutty rich flavour. Delicious for cooking and salads but also with a really high smoke point of about 520 degrees, this ultra-versatile oil can be used for all your high-heat cooking needs such as grilling and pan-roasting.
Grapeseed Oil
Great Source of Vitamin E and helps curb hunger pangs by converting oleic acid into an appetite-quelling hormone. Good for substituting butter and since it emulsifies really well, you can use it to make vegan mayonnaise and creamy dressings with cashew nuts too. Delicious.
Almond Oil
Made by pressing the oil out of ground almond paste, almond oil has a mild nutty flavor. Full of monounsaturated fat (like olive and avocado oil), vitamin E, and phytosterols, plant compounds shown to improve cholesterol numbers. Best used in baked goods, muffins and cookies as well as to make your own nut butter – simply blend some with whole almonds and pecans. It’s also brilliant as a skin moisturizer.
Hemp Oil
Too delicate to be heated is best used in pestos, dips and salad dressings. Rich in essential fatty acids such as omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid, which may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Hemp oil also delivers gamma linolenic acid, an omega 6 that emerging research says can improve skin health by reducing conditions like roughness and dryness. And if you’re worried, do not be – the variety of hemp grown for food production contains virtually none of the psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana.
TIP:
Buy all your fruit or nut oils packaged in dark containers to help stymie deterioration from light sources.