Lard, butter, coconut and olive oil are all better dietary choices, leading scientists have said. When heated, corn, sunflower, palm and soya bean oils -often called “vegetable” oils -release chemicals called aldehydes which have been linked to various cancers and neurogenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Martin Grootveld, a professor of bioanalytical chemistry and chemical pathology at DeMontfort Univer sity in Leicester, said that a meal fried in vegetable oil such as fish and chips contains 100 to 200 times more aldehydes than the daily limit set by the World Health Organisation (WHO), according to the Daily Telegraph.
Using butter, olive and lard in the frying pan, however was found to produce much lower levels of aldehydes -with coconut oil coming out as healthiest. Yet, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has long warned against cooking with butter and lard. The NHS choices website advises: “Try to cut down on foods that are high in saturated fat and have smaller amounts of foods that are rich in unsatu rated fat instead. For a healthy choice, use just a small amount of vegetable oil or reduced fat spread instead of butter, lard or ghee.”
Yet vegetable oil has been inked to heart disease, cancer, nflammation, rising blood pressure and mental health. And the omega 6 fatty acids present in vegetable oils are pushing out the important omega 3 fatty acids that keep he brain healthy , according to John Stein, emeritus professor of neuroscience at Oxford University. “If you eat too much corn oil or sunflower oil, he brain is absorbing too much omega 6, and that effectively forces out omega 3,” Stein said, according to the Daily Te egraph.
