![\"\"](\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/IMG_0531-e1334301482780.jpg\" "\\"Fats")
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Fat is back.<\/strong><\/p>\n After decades in exile, being blamed for everything from obesity to the Star Wars prequel trilogy, fat is slowly starting to clear its name.<\/p>\n There really wasn\u2019t anything of substance to hold against it in the first place, but a perfect storm of bad science, media sensationalism, and misguided governmental programs helped to cement the idea in most peoples\u2019 minds that fat is bad<\/em>.<\/p>\n But people started questioning authority. They saw how little they succeeded on low-fat diets (and hated eating food that tasted worse than the cardboard boxes they came in).<\/p>\n No doubt fat has a long way to go until it reaches a true renaissance, but that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t enjoy a little debauchery while getting healthy at the same time right now<\/em>.<\/p>\n Adding fat to your food is one surefire way to turn up the flavor to 11. Here\u2019s a list of the best ones to keep on hand, plus some guidance on how to navigate the rest.<\/p>\n First, all fat was bad.<\/p>\n Then, unsaturated fat was good while only saturated fat was bad.<\/p>\n Now, omega\u20133 and omega\u20136 polyunsaturated fats are all the rage, while trans fats are the devil. (Oh yeah, and saturated fat is still bad.)<\/p>\n Get used to it folks. The nutrition world is just going to get more and more complex, and what\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d is always going to be changing.<\/p>\n You can get really hung up on what science says is \u201cgood food\u201d and \u201cbad food\u201d today, but it\u2019s going to be a completely different story tomorrow.<\/strong><\/p>\n My criteria for food healthiness goes something like this: The longer humans have been eating something, the more you should eat of it.<\/em><\/p>\n Evolution is cruel force, and it ensures that no species can survive on a diet of food that will kill it before it can reproduce.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve said it before, but it\u2019s impossible that meat and animal products are 1% as bad as you hear about in the mainstream media. We would have gone extinct long ago if this was the case.<\/em><\/p>\n Admittedly, this rule of thumb isn\u2019t terribly scientific in the strictest sense, but if it works why not keep using it?<\/p>\n The one thing worth taking away from nutritionism for this article is that saturated fats are better for cooking than unsaturated fats<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Saturated fats are stable and non-reactive, while unsaturated fats (particularly polyunsaturated fats) are susceptible to oxidation.<\/p>\n Furthermore, all fats have a \u201csmoke point\u201d temperature where they should no longer be used.<\/p>\n Bottom line: you shouldn\u2019t set off your smoke detector when you are heating up oil in your kitchen.<\/p>\n Butter\u2019s had a rough go of it.<\/p>\n After The Great Fat Scare, most people ditched it en masse<\/em> for such monstrosities as margarine.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s time to put butter back in the fridge.<\/strong><\/p>\n Time has vindicated most fat from the charges laid against it. And the trans-fat controversy of a few years back shows that food from fields and farms is almost always better than that from factories and laboratories.<\/p>\n Humans have been eating butter for thousands of years, so the likelihood of it being dangerous is quite low.<\/p>\n Butter is dirt cheap and can be bought just about everywhere, from the farmers market to the gas station.<\/p>\n Plain butter is best for topping off cooked food or low-heat cooking. It contains solids that burn at a low temperature.<\/p>\n One solution is to use ghee instead, which is butter that has had the solids strained out.<\/p>\n Ghee can be found in most co-ops and natural foods stores, or you can make it yourself by melting down butter and straining it through cheesecloth.<\/p>\n If that sounds like a pain, you might just want to stick with another of the high-saturated fats I list later.<\/p>\n Thanks to the popularity of the Mediterranean diet and low-saturated fat diets in general, olive oil can be found at any supermarket you go to.<\/p>\n However, this is one thing that I suggest you don\u2019t just grab whatever\u2019s cheapest.<\/p>\n Olive oil goes rancid, which means it not only can taste off, but may potentially be detrimental to your health as well.<\/em><\/p>\n Colavita and Goya are two prominent brands that you can find most places. You can always go to your Fancy Pants Food store if you want to increase the likelihood of you getting the good stuff. Trader Joe\u2019s is a good budget option if you have one nearby.<\/p>\n Technically speaking, olive oil stands up to heat relatively well, but it really is at its best when you use it as-is, as a topping for meat and veggies, or a component of an easy-to-make sauce such as vinaigrette.<\/p>\n Coconut oil is the \u201cit\u201d fat of the moment. More and more supermarkets are carrying it every day. I\u2019ve even noticed Trader Joe\u2019s start to stock it in the last few months.<\/p>\n It has the \u201chealth halo\u201d of being a vegetable oil while having the tastiness of a highly-saturated fat.<\/p>\n In fact, coconut oil is one of nature\u2019s most highly concentrated sources of saturated fat<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Which can only mean one thing\u2026<\/p>\n Coconut oil is perhaps the best frying oil you can buy.<\/strong><\/p>\n Unlike the fragile oils composed of unsaturated fat, coconut oil holds up well for heavy-duty tasks such as searing meat.<\/p>\n Which isn\u2019t to detract from the taste, which is delicious. Even if you aren\u2019t a big fan of coconut, the refined oil mellows it out and makes it a great all-purpose frying oil.<\/p>\n Coconut oil will set you back more than butter or olive oil, but it\u2019s a good idea to keep a jar around, if only for high-heat frying.<\/p>\n Sesame oil is one of the oldest vegetable oils and is still manufactured by a labor-intensive method.<\/p>\n It has an extraordinarily high amount of unstable and pro-inflammatory omega\u20136 fatty acids, which is the reason that most vegetable oils make my short list of \u201cthings to avoid eating.\u201d<\/p>\n So why does sesame oil make the cut?<\/em><\/p>\n Because you use so little of it.<\/p>\n Think of sesame oil as kinda like hot sauce. The flavor\u2019s really concentrated, so you don\u2019t need a whole lot. You put a few dashes on your food and you\u2019re ready to go.<\/p>\n It\u2019s insanely flavorful. And particularly well-suited for Asian dishes.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found it to be pretty widely available, although not so much as olive oil. It tends to be a little more expensive, but a little goes a long way.<\/p>\n It\u2019s coming back!<\/em><\/p>\n No other fat has been a bigger victim of the low fat health fad than lard. In a matter of decades, it went from one of the most-consumed fats in America to one of the most difficult to find.<\/p>\n The apparent deathblow was dealt by vegetable shortening, which was marketed as a \u201chealthier\u201d alternative, even though the charge was led by Crisco, which is short for \u201ccrystallized cottonseed oil\u201d. (Ewwwww\u2026)<\/p>\n But sure enough, as people are becoming more and more skeptical of low-fat diets, lard is making its way onto more and more supermarket shelves.<\/p>\n Lard has a decently high smoke point, and the lack of solids make it a better choice than butter for frying, though perhaps not as good as coconut oil.<\/p>\n If you are going to track down lard, beware the hydrogenated stuff. You don\u2019t want your food messed with like that. Unfortunately, I\u2019ve found that this is the most common lard on the market.<\/p>\n The list of fats and oils doesn\u2019t stop there. There is an endless supply at your local supermarket vying for your attention.<\/p>\n Shelves are overflowing with nut and seed oils such as canola, sunflower, corn, soybean, and my favorite, plain ol\u2019 \u201cvegetable oil.\u201d (What\u2019s with the vague labeling, bub?)<\/p>\n These oils are almost always high in unstable (read: probably rancid) polyunsaturated fats and low in stable saturated fats. Best to avoid \u2019em.<\/p>\n Avocado oil and macadamia oil are a couple of recent entrants that seem highly decent on the surface. They\u2019re low in the omega\u20136 polyunsaturated fats that make me worry about the other nut and seed oils.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m by nature leery of foods that humans have been eating for less than 100 years, if for no other reason than the inability to really prove that humans can thrive long-term on them.<\/p>\n Palm oil seems good on the surface, but it\u2019s a horribly inefficient crop, taking up a lot of land and displacing endangered orangutans.<\/p>\n Fish oil and flax oil are used more as a supplementary food. But if you are avoiding most heavily-processed foods and eating seafood, you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\n Many other animal fats, such as tallow and duck fat, exist but are very difficult to find. (And are probably not worth the effort.<\/p>\n What are the fats you like to keep on hand?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fat is back. After decades in exile, being blamed for everything from obesity to the Star Wars prequel trilogy, fat is slowly starting to clear its name. There really wasn\u2019t anything of substance to hold against it in the first place, but a perfect storm of bad science, media sensationalism, and misguided governmental programs helped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2380"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2384,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions\/2384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Nutritionism Revisited<\/h2>\n
Butter<\/h2>\n
Olive Oil<\/h2>\n
Coconut Oil<\/h2>\n
Sesame Oil<\/h2>\n
Lard<\/h2>\n
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly<\/h2>\n