> vegetable oils are the worst type of food known to man
actually, there is no evidence that the commonly consumed vegetable seed oils such as sunflower, corn, canola, soy, peanut, safflower, cottonseed, walnut, linseed, etc., are harmful at all, except when rancid, trans, or hydrogenated. there was a long period when they were believed to be harmful simply because they were fats, but we now know that was wrong
there's a lot of old research where they were conflated with high-trans-fat-content partially-hydrogenated versions of themselves, and we now know that the trans fats were the major problem there. there was a period when it was believed that low ω-3 fatty acid levels relative to ω-6 levels were causing inflammation, and some people do see improvements in health when they eat more ω-3, but both ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acids of the kind you find predominantly in vegetable seed oils; that's not a question of eating more or less seed oils but of which ones you eat. (and the ω-3 effect turned out to be fairly small on a population level.)
finally, there's a certain fanatical contingent that is convinced that unsaturated fatty acids in general (seed oils, fish oil) are terrible, and saturated fat (coconut oil, beef) is what's good for you, but this is basically completely unsupported by the evidence. a and there's a mountain of evidence against it. see https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-... for a deeper dive
the trans fats are a big problem. a lot of those veggie oils turn into trans fats with high heat, so even if you're using the "good oils" you gotta make sure they're not overly heated
do you know of good research on how fast the trans fat levels rise with normal cooking temperatures? i'd like to know if i'm poisoning myself by frying eggs
this is fantastic, exactly what i was hoping for! i wonder how i hadn't found this article before. thank you!
(also it's hilarious that the article's academic editor is named "meat hacker" in german)
the abstract says
> Overall, heating to temperatures <200 °C had no appreciable impact on different TFA levels. Between 200 and 240 °C, levels of C18:2 t (0.05% increase per 10 °C rise in temperature, 95% CI: 0.02 to 0.05%), C18:3t (0.18%, 95% CI: 0.14 to 0.21%), and total TFA (0.38%, 95% CI: 0.20 to 0.55%) increased with temperature. A further increase in total TFA was observed with prolonged heating between 200 and 240 °C. Our findings suggest that heating edible oils to common cooking temperatures (≤200 °C) has minimal effect on TFA generation whereas heating to higher temperatures can increase TFA level.
so i probably shouldn't worry too much about frying eggs in sunflower oil
actually, there is no evidence that the commonly consumed vegetable seed oils such as sunflower, corn, canola, soy, peanut, safflower, cottonseed, walnut, linseed, etc., are harmful at all, except when rancid, trans, or hydrogenated. there was a long period when they were believed to be harmful simply because they were fats, but we now know that was wrong
there's a lot of old research where they were conflated with high-trans-fat-content partially-hydrogenated versions of themselves, and we now know that the trans fats were the major problem there. there was a period when it was believed that low ω-3 fatty acid levels relative to ω-6 levels were causing inflammation, and some people do see improvements in health when they eat more ω-3, but both ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acids of the kind you find predominantly in vegetable seed oils; that's not a question of eating more or less seed oils but of which ones you eat. (and the ω-3 effect turned out to be fairly small on a population level.)
finally, there's a certain fanatical contingent that is convinced that unsaturated fatty acids in general (seed oils, fish oil) are terrible, and saturated fat (coconut oil, beef) is what's good for you, but this is basically completely unsupported by the evidence. a and there's a mountain of evidence against it. see https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-... for a deeper dive