Selecting the Right Cooking Medium

There are few areas that are so riddled with confusion, contradictions, misinformation and conflicting opinions and recommendations than the issue of selecting the right cooking oil and fat for preparing one’s food. It is imperative to understand the basic facts about fats and oils. While the chefs are fixated on an oil with a mild flavor and a high smoke point, the health experts are more concerned with the polyunsaturated versus saturated fat discussion. The issue is plagued with various misconceptions like Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA) being always healthy, assumption that flax or apricot oil must be healthy since the source is healthy, and overemphasis on smoke point without considering the process that the oil might have gone through. For instance, flax seed oil may have beneficial Omega-3s and PUFA, but, the low smoke point damages these rendering them pro-inflammatory.