Don't use vegetable oil, says experts: Butter, lard and olive oil are better

EXPERTS are warning of the health risks of cooking with vegetable oils, advising to use butter, lard or olive oil instead.

The healthiest for cooking is coconut oil, scientists say.

They found that cooking vegetable oils releases high concentrations of chemicals called aldehydes, which have been linked to illnesses including cancer, heart disease and dementia.

But heating up butter, olive oil and lard in tests produced lower levels of aldehydes, with coconut oil producing the least

Prof Grootveld, of De Montfort University in Leicester, who carried out a series of experiments, said: "For decades, the authorities have been warning us how bad butter and lard was.

"But we have found butter is very, very good for frying purposes and so is lard.

"People have been telling us how healthy polyunsaturates are in corn oil and sunflower oil.

But when you start messing around with them, subjecting them to high amounts of energy in the frying pan or the oven, they undergo a complex series of chemical reactions which results in the accumulation of large amounts of toxic compounds."

His team measured levels of "aldehydic lipid oxidation products" (LOPs), produced when oils were heated to varying temperatures.

Coconut oil produces the lowest levels of aldehydes, and three times more aldehydes were produced when heating corn oil and sunflower oil than butter, according to the tests.

Prof Grootveld 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).

Yet the NHS warns against cooking with butter and lard, with its website saying:

"Try to cut down on foods that are high in saturated fat and have smaller amounts of foods that are rich in unsaturated fat instead.

"For a healthy choice, use just a small amount of vegetable oil or reduced fat spread instead of butter, lard or ghee."

Prof Grootveld said: "This major problem has received scant or limited attention from the food industry and health researchers."

Fatty acids in vegetable oils also contribute to other health problems, separate research from the University of Oxford suggests.

Professor John Stein, Oxford's emeritus professor of neuroscience, said that partly as a result of corn and sunflower oils, "the human brain is changing in a way that is as serious as climate change threatens to be".

This is because vegetable oils are rich in omega 6 fatty acids, which lead to a reduction in omega 3 fatty acids in the brain, which are crucial for health.

"If you eat too much corn oil or sunflower oil, the brain is absorbing too much omega 6, and that effectively forces out omega 3," said Prof Stein.

"I believe the lack of omega 3 is a powerful contributory factor to such problems as increasing mental health issues and other problems such as dyslexia."

The experts advise banishing all vegetable oils - also found in baked goods like bread - and using other alternatives instead.

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