Get Heart Healthy!

Cooking oil is plant, animal, or synthetic fat used in frying, baking, and other types of cooking. It is also used in food preparation and flavouring that doesn’t involve heat, such as salad dressings and bread dips, and in this sense might be more accurately termed edible oil.

Cooking oil is typically a liquid at room temperature, although some oils that contain saturated fat, such as coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil are solid.

The FDA recommends that 30% or fewer of calories consumed daily should be from fat.

Oils containing higher percentage of saturated fats are associated with higher cholesterol and triglyceride levels. This can be bad for the heart.

Oils containing higher percentage of Unsaturated fats (monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats) are generally healthier.

Mayo Clinic has highlighted oils that are high in saturated fats, including coconut, palm oil and palm kernel oil. Those of lower amounts of saturated fats, and higher levels of unsaturated (preferably monounsaturated) fats like olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, avocado, safflower, corn, sunflower, soy, mustard and cottonseed oils are generally healthier.

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and World Heart Federation have urged saturated fats be replaced with polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. The health body lists olive and canola oils as sources of monounsaturated oils while soybean and sunflower oils are rich with polyunsaturated fat.

Here is the List of Cooking oils arranged in increasing amount of saturated fats!

oils

Its better to choose oil which are low in Saturated fats and high in monounsaturated fats as they are found to be healthier. However, the total amount of oil consumed still needs to be less than 30% of your calorie intake!