Is Olive Oil TOXIC When Heated?

Get all the episodes by subscribing at Substack: https://erictroy.substack.com/ This is Eric Troy from StrengthMinded.com and CulinaryLore.com and this is The BS Vaccine For Fitness and Nutrition podcast, a series that is meant to help inoculate you against fitness, nutrition, and health-related bullshit and teach you some very useful critical thinking skills along the way. In this episode, I'm going explain some things about olive oil that you really need to know and I'm going to debunk a myth about using olive oil for cooking.

Subscribe to my substack: https://erictroy.substack.com/
More episodes: https://erictroy.substack.com/podcast

Transcript:
I was recently watching a video where a cardiologist was attempting to debunk the on-again, off-again rumor that coconut oil is bad for you. He was reacting to a recent American Heart Association release where they said that coconut oil was absolutely bad for you and it raised bad cholesterol. The doctor complaining about this, himself a member of the association, said that he cooked with lard, butter, and coconut oil because they are mostly saturated fat and thus stable when cooking. He seemed to think all other oils are completely unstable when heated, even in regular cooking. So, he said, “I never cook with olive oil because it completely breaks down to trans fat when heated.” Is this true? Is olive oil, since it is not a saturated fat, break down when heated and lose its health benefits? Well, I’ll start by telling you I immediately stopped watching the video because the expert, in attempting to dispel one myth brought up another one! I had no patience to try to figure out which of his further statements may be credible since he started with a complete, absolute, and authoritarian statement about olive oil that is untrue. And this was the same kind of authoritarian statement he complained about regarding coconut oil being bad for you. So, the short answer is NO, olive oil is quite stable when heated and does not break down into lots of bad things like trans fats. Olive oil, unlike many other vegetable oils, even ones with higher smoking points, is mostly monounsaturated fat. Both extra virgin olive oil and regular olive oil will form a minuscule amount of trans fats when heated but not enough to significantly impact your health. Trans fats are present in nature but used to be found in much larger amounts in margarine and vegetable shortenings. However, the fact that this cardiologist focused on trans fats from heating uncovers another leak in his theoretical dam. Trans fats are but one of the compounds that may be produced by heating oil, and not even the most significant. A researcher more familiar with the problem would probably have mentioned something like volatile aldehydes and other oxidative by-products. Olive oil has been shown in at least one study to produce fewer volatile aldehydes than canola oil when subjected to cooking temperatures. When oil is heated, it is not only the heat stability of the oil that needs to be considered but its resistance to oxidation. Olive oil, due to its high amount of monounsaturated fat, not to mention antioxidant content, is more resistant to oxidation than, say, regular canola oil or high PUFA oils like sunflower oil. In fact, in head-to-head studies with other common cooking oils, olive oil displayed higher stability under heat and better oxidative resistance, retaining its good qualities even with prolonged heating at temperatures used for deep frying…up to six hours. When you read about the dangers of cooking oils with low smoke points, keep in mind that the temperature at which an oil begins to break down does not correlate with its smoke point. Oils with very high smoke points can begin to break down at lower temperatures than an oil with a lower smoke point, like olive oil. And the smoking point of olive oil is not as low as commonly believed and could be considered ‘moderate.’ Another thing to keep in mind is that when you fry foods over high heat using oil, bad things do occur. Those volatile aldehydes, for instance, will occur when you cook a steak on a stove using olive oil, butter, soybean oil, etc. This doesn’t mean they are present in high enough amounts to be of concern to your health. Even in the comparison of olive oil to canola oil, the fact that you will be exposed to fewer volatile aldehydes when using olive oil is good, but this doesn’t mean you should be mortally afraid of canola oil. And, yes, canola oil is fine. Olive Oil is GREAT For Cooking! The fact is, test after test has demonstrated that olive oil retains its nutritional and health benefits even after being heated for ridiculous amounts of time. One test showed that while not all olive oil is the same, olive oil in general is remarkably resistant to heat-induced breakdown and clearly a superior choice to most other vegetable oils, being able to resist significant oxidation for up to 24 to 27 hours of heating!