Frying your food in lard is healthier than using sunflower oil, say scientists

(NaturalNews) For many decades now, we've been fed a lot of misinformation about the foods we eat and which ones are healthy or not.

For example, since the early 20th century, we've been told that lard – rendered and clarified pig fat – is an unhealthy substance that should be replaced with vegetable oils.

Well, guess what? The truth is nearly the opposite. It's true that lard intake should be limited, but frying foods in lard is far more healthy than doing so in most vegetable oils, according to more recent studies.

In fact, when heated to frying temperatures, many vegetable oils actually release toxic substances which can cause a range of serious health problems, including cancer, dementia and heart disease.

Professor Martin Grootveld of De Montfort University at Leicester, whose field of expertise is bio-analytical chemistry and chemical pathology, was recently asked to conduct a study to determine which cooking oils are the healthiest.

His findings challenged the common wisdom regarding the use of saturated fats versus polyunsaturated fats. We have long been told that polyunsaturated fats, such as the ones found in sunflower oil, for example, are healthier than the saturated fats found in butter and lard.

From an article posted on the De Montfort University website:

When fats and oils are heated the molecular structure changes, producing chemicals called aldehydes that may cause heart disease and cancer.

Professor Grootveld's team found sunflower oil and corn oil produced aldehydes at levels 20 times higher than recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Grootveld and his team found that foods cooked in rapeseed oil, butter, goose fat or olive oil produced far less of the toxic aldehydes found in sunflower oil, corn oil and other commonly used vegetable oils.

So how did lard get a bad reputation?

Lard is only one of the foods we've been warned away from, and as with many supposedly "unhealthy" foods, the real reason is that someone wanted to sell us a replacement.

In the case of lard, we were lied to by Procter & Gamble, who wanted to sell its new product – Crisco – which was invented in a lab way back in 1907.

The short version of the story is this:

In 1906, Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle was published. The book was a somewhat sensationalist expose of the meat industry and conditions in the slaughterhouses of Chicago. It was technically a work of fiction, but his description of workers falling into boiling vats of lard was enough to seriously turn stomachs.

However disgusted by the thought of eating lard the public may have been after reading the book, there was no viable replacement on the market until Procter & Gamble began marketing vegetable shortening.

The company was interested in finding a way to sell the cottonseed oil it owned in vast quantities since the market for the candles it sold was shrinking due to the invention of the electric light bulb.

From NPR.com:

In 1907, a German chemist, E.C. Kayser, showed up at Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati with a marvelous invention. It was a ball of fat. It looked like lard. It cooked like lard. But there was no pig involved. It was hydrogenated cottonseed oil."

The company was able, through clever marketing, to convince an already "queasy" public (due to Sinclair's book), that its lab-created product was cleaner and healthier.

Procter & Gamble... launched an ad campaign that made people think about the horrible stories of adulterated lard. The ads touted how pure and wholesome Crisco was. The company packaged the product in white and claimed "the stomach welcomes Crisco."

The rest is history. In the 1950s, scientists further diminished lard's reputation by claiming that saturated fats caused heart disease. By that point, lard was becoming widely shunned.

The moral of this entire story is that whenever you are told that a product made in a lab is better for you than a natural substance that has been used for thousands of years, a bit of healthy skepticism may be in order...

Sources:

DMU.ac.uk

DailyMail.co.uk

NPR.org

Sourced:  http://www.naturalnews.com/052021_lard_canola_oil_cooking_oils.html#ixzz3ryXhiPfY

Toxic rapeseed and other low-grade oils with additives are being passed off as olive oil

As much as 50 percent of the olive oil sold in the U.S. is not actually pure olive oil, as some brands claiming to be "extra-virgin" or "100 percent Italian," for instance, have actually been adulterated with toxic rapeseed oil, more popularly known as canola oil, soybean oil, and other low-grade oils. In his new book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, olive oil expert Tom Mueller explains that not all olive oil is the same, and offers advice on how to spot authentic olive oil amidst all the imposters.

During a recent interview with Terry Gross from NPR's Fresh Air, Mueller explains how olive oil adulteration is much more widespread than people think, if they are even aware of it at all. For olive oil to truly be considered "extra-virgin," it has to come from fresh, crushed olives, and not be refined in any way or contain any chemical solvents. It also has to pass certain tests of integrity in order to be considered legitimate, for which many of the brands popularly sold today would fail.

"The legal definition simply says it has to pass certain chemical tests, and in a sensory way it has to taste and smell vaguely of fresh olives, because it's a fruit, and have no faults," said Mueller. "But many of the extra-virgin olive oils on our shelves today in America don't clear [the legal definition]."

Beige olive oil in plastic bottles is most likely adulterated

Real extra-virgin olive oil should have a vibrant, almost peppery flavor, for instance, and not taste bland or watered down. It is also typically stored in dark, glass bottles so that its array of health-promoting antioxidants, its taste, and its forceful green color -- yes, olive oil should be green, not yellowish in color -- are not harmed by light or damaging UV rays from the sun. For this reason, avoiding olive oil in clear, plastic bottles is recommended.

"What [real olive oil] gets you from a health perspective is a cocktail of 200-plus highly beneficial ingredients that explain why olive oil has been the heart of the Mediterranean diet," added Mueller during his interview with NPR. "Bad olives have free radicals and impurities, and then you've lost that wonderful cocktail ... that you get from fresh fruit, from real extra-virgin olive oil."

Most imported extra-virgin olive oil appears questionable in authenticity

The University of California, Davis published a report on olive oil back in 2010 entitled Tests indicate that imported 'extra virgin' olive oil often fails international and USDA standards. In this report, researchers found that 69 percent of imported and ten percent of California-based oils labeled as olive oil did not pass International Olive Council (IOC) and US Department of Agriculture sensory standards for extra virgin olive oil.

Of those brands tested, the following failed to meet extra-virgin olive oil standards:

• Bertolli
• Carapelli
• Filippo Berio
• Mazzola
• Mezzetta
• Newman's Own
• Pompeian
• Rachel Ray
• Safeway
• Star
• Whole Foods

The following brands were found to meet extra-virgin olive oil standards as part of the study:

• Corto Olive
• California Olive Ranch
• Kirkland Organic
• Lucero (Ascolano)
• McEvoy Ranch Organic

You can read the entire UC Davis Study here:
http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu

Be sure to avoid any olive oil labeled as "light," as these are the lowest quality olive oils available. Also, be sure to choose either California-based olive oils, the vast majority of which are legitimate, or imported olive oils certified by IOC.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.npr.org

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/035124_olive_oil_adulterated_canola.html#ixzz1o57McDV5