There are cakes in the office! It's taking a lot of willpower to just sip on my water and ignore the sweet treats! Luckily I'm still quite full from my breakfast of Middle Farm bacon (delicious!), scrambled eggs and mushrooms. The bacon was fried in coconut oil and then I used the combined oil and bacon fat as a dressing for the salad I've got for lunch.
Cooking oil is an interesting one. There's a ton of articles on the web about which ones you should use and opinions all differ. Regardless of oil source I think minimal heating and processing is a must. Cold pressed virgin oils are my first choice. Beyond that it gets murkier.
Historically animal fats, butter and tropical coconut and palm oils seem to have been popular. No one would dispute that the prevalence of heart disease is a 20th century phenomenon. My reckoning is that these cooking fats have been around a lot longer than that without causing issues so in my book they're not the problem. Saturated fats are also more stable so better suited to the heat of cooking.
Olive oil is mostly monounsaturated fat and there is a wealth of research on its benefits. So much so that I can't ignore it but it's not an ideal cooking oil due its inability to remain stable at high heats. Perfect for dressings then.
Other oils I'm less sure of. I'm tempted to trust my gut and avoid most of them without a bit of further research. The rise in the use of polyunsaturated fats tracks worryingly close to the rise in heart disease. Rapeseed/Canola oil is particularly divisive. Maybe that dressing I have isn't so good after all?
I'll try to add in some links to this article later for a bit of extra curricular reading but this are just my thoughts on a very complicated topic.
Time for some lunch time interval sprints!
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