The Safest Cooking Oils to Use for 16 Different Types of Meals
Updated: Feb. 28, 2018
If you have one go-to-bottle of oil for all of your cooking needs, you could be putting your health at risk.
Smoke point explained
Different types of oils have different smoke points — the threshold at which the oil becomes unstable. For high-heat cooking, you want a high smoke point. “It’s an oil that is stable under higher temperatures, meaning it won’t get oxidized, smoke, and become rancid and potentially harmful for consumption,” explains Morgan. You know you’ve reached an oil’s smoke point if your pan starts, well, smoking. “What’s happening is that the oil is decomposing or oxidizing and creating carcinogenic, or cancer-causing free radicals that just turned your attempt at healthy cooking into a recipe for cellular damage,” says Chanté Wiegand, ND, and the director of education of The Synergy Company, a producer of organic supplements.
