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We all know that cooking at home is one of the best ways to ensure you are eating healthy. You get full control over menu, ingredients and nutritional value over your food. And if you know the right meals to prepare, home-cooking can be super quick and simple.
But if you don’t know the right ingredients to use and which to avoid, you may run the risk of making your foods more unhealthy than they need to be.
Almost everything we make needs some type of oil or cooking fat, and while many of these can be quite beneficial for our health, there are others that we should all try to avoid. The worst cooking oil you should never use is probably sitting in your pantry right now: canola oil.
Many people believe canola oil is one of the better cooking oils because it is lower in saturated fats than options like butter or olive oil. But this one fact is pretty deceiving. Nothing else about canola oil is good for you.
Canola oil is overly processed, meaning that it has absolutely no nutritional value. Despite the fact that it is made with natural ingredients, all of the nutrients from those ingredients are stripped in the refining process. This is pretty unique to canola oil compared to alternative cooking fats, becuase the seeds that canola is made from must be processed at a much higher temperature than other options.
When trying to pick the right oil to cook with, consider the nutritional value more than the fat content. Cooking with oils that deliver nutrients can help make your meals all the more healthy.
“The best alternatives are olive oil and avocado oil," RD Megan Byrd told SheFinds. "Both of these are higher in unsaturated, heart-healthy fats, which make them pantry staples for a healthy diet."
“Olive oil is great for salad dressings and homemade sauces. Avocado oil is best for baking and sauteeing because of its mild flavor.”
