The Recipe Doctor
From low-fat recipes to recipes designed for persons with diabetes, Elaine Magee, MPH, RD, shares recipes and advice to create healthy meals that are guaranteed to please. [Editor's note: Elaine no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]
Canola or Coconut Oil—Will the Truly Best Oil Please Stand Up!
Some controversial if not erroneous information is being circulated on the benefits of coconut oil—just like there is with canola oil being toxic (which it is not). So . . . let's get to the basics and look at the 3 things I try to consider when rating cooking oil:
- How much of the preferable monounsaturated fats does it have? Coconut oil has .8 grams per tablespoon, whereas canola oil has 8 grams.
- How much of the preferable plant omega-3s does it have? (The grams of omega-3 are part of the polyunsaturated grams.) Canola oil is one of the only cooking oils that contain plant omega-3s, with 4 grams of total polyunsaturated fat per tablespoon.
- How much of the undesirable saturated fat does it have? Coconut oil is mostly saturated and has 11.8 grams per tablespoon, whereas canola oil has one of the lowest amounts, at 1 gram per tablespoon.
- Does it have any beneficial phytochemicals or vitamins? Coconut oil does appear to contain some beneficial phytosterols, and canola oil contains vitamin E along with the plant omega-3s.
Bottom line, I can see using small amounts of coconut oil for certain recipes in which the flavor is particularly helpful, but until evidence shows that this type of saturated fat isn't damaging, I would use other oils, like canola oil and olive oil (which contains mostly monounsaturated fat and phytochemicals found in olives) for most of my cooking and baking.
By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
The Recipe Doctor Blog
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