One of the most advantageous things that you can do for your health lies in the sneaky ingredient details: oils.
That’s right- every packaged product you pull off of the shelf likely has one of these words amongst its ingredients:
- Canola oil
- Palm oil
- Soybean oil
- Vegetable oil
- Rapeseed oil
- Sunflower oil
- Corn oil
- Grapeseed oil
- Peanut oil
- Safflower oil
Even when you spot these oils on the label, your thought process may very well be, “these oils seem to be derived from plants, so what’s the harm?”
The answer to that question: systemic inflammation.
What is not so transparent is the long industrial processing that these oils undergo to come into existence. Seed oils must be ground, pulverized, pressed, extracted using a petroleum-based solvent, boiled, centrifuged, de-gummed, bleach, deodorized, and finally preserved to be put on the shelves.
These seed oils are not true to their deceiving labels and barely pass as food products, since they are so processed. They require heat, chemicals, and high pressures to extract what little oil there truly is.
The oils are highly unstable and thus can easily become oxidized. When you eat these oxidized oils, they cause what is known as “free radical damage” in the body causing inflammation, which can lead to a wide variety of different conditions.
Nationwide campaigns by big companies (like Procter & Gamble) paraded around vegetable oils as heart-healthy, causing restaurants and almost all packaged food companies to make the switch to these industrial seed oils.
What category in the grocery store are you most likely to see the highest content of these oils? The condiment section.
Sauces and other condiments of course have some of the highest oil ratios, making them one of the stealthiest of products to cause inflammation. You would be shocked at just how much soybean oil can be found in some of these condiments on the shelf.
So when you are making the decision, a few of the oils that have the green light include:
- Olive oil
- Avocado oil
- Grass-fed ghee
- Duck Fat
- Coconut oil
At Sustainable Cocina, having a high quality oil that provides a clean, rich flavor is one of the few reasons we started our brand. We felt like we couldn’t trust the other product’s oils on the market. Churri uses Olive oil from Spain that adds a nice smoky flavor and can be used for cooking or for dressing.