The inspiration for this article was ‘Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill’ by Udo Erasmus (published by Alive Books).
‘Frying with oils once will not kill us, and so it seems harmless. Our body copes with toxic substances. But over 10, 20, or 30 years, our cells accumulate altered and toxic substances for which they have not evolved efficient detoxifying mechanisms. The altered and toxic substances interfere with our bodies life chemistry, our ‘bio-chemistry’. Cells then degenerate, and these degenerative processes manifest as degenerative diseases.’ (Udo Erasmus, 1996:125).
Udo Erasmus would prefer we never touched a frying pan, much less ate chips. However, most of us will find it hard to give up frying altogether, so it seems important to me to learn the better way to fry. And even more important, it seems essential to understand a little of the way frying affects (‘alters’) our foods, and the way altered or toxic fats affect our cells.
Frying is not recommended, because the temperatures used when frying foods are too high. When foods turn brown, they have been burned, and the nutrients in the browned material have been destroyed. Proteins turn into carcinogenic acrolein. Starches and sugars are browned – caramelised – through molecular destruction. Fats and oils are turned into smoke by the destruction of fatty acids and glycerol.
These temperatures are particularly damaging to the oils that are best for our health-oils such as flax seed oil that are high in Essential Fatty Acids. These oils are highly unstable and change, when they come into contact with high temperatures, oxygen and light, into free radicals, which cause all manner of health problems. Therefore what Udo recommends is that we save these oils for salads and use other fats for cooking that are more suitable.
Although frying cannot be recommended for optimum health, there are some fats that are more suitable for frying than others. Saturated Fatty Acids (SaFAs) are less valuable to our health but they stand up better to higher temperatures. The least damaging fats for frying with include coconut, palm oil and butter – in small quantities. But even when cooking with these oils we must be careful that they do not smoke, as smoke in this context is made up of destroyed fatty acids.
Unrefined olive oil is also suitable for low temperature frying, as are ‘high oleic’ safflower and sunflower oils, and refined peanut and sesame oils.
Traditional Chinese cooks, according to Udo, out water in their woks before oil, which keeps the temperature down below 100 degrees centigrade, and therefore does not destroy the EFAs in the oil. Another method used by European Gourmet cooks is to put the vegetables in the pan before the oil. This protects the oils from overheating, the vegetables from burning and supports our health better.
Summary:
Good fats for cooking:
- Butter
- Tropical fats
- High oleic sunflower and safflower oils
- Refined sesame and peanut oils
- Olive oil
Best Methods for frying:
- Put water, soya sauce, garlic and onion in the pan with the oil (garlic and onion contain sulphur which provides a measure of anti-oxidant protection)
- Put your vegetables in the pan first – and never heat the fat up to smoking before you cook.
- Minimise burning of food
- Add plenty of EFA rich oil to your food after cooking, and eat plenty of anti-oxidant rich foods to minimise health damage due to free radicals (for example, seeds such as sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and hemp seeds and oils such as hemp seed oil and flax oil).
Because we believe that organic food is always better, for you and for the environment, we would always reccommend that you buy organic oils whenever possible.