Barefoot Healthy Hippie

When choosing oil to cook with there are three things to think of. One is the types of fat it contains, and another is the smoking point of the oil. Both are vitally important to your health for different reasons. Oils with too much saturated fat cause increased cholesterol and clogged arteries, while oils with a low smoke point become carcinogenic and can aid in causing cancer. The last thing to look for is if your oil is semi refined or unrefined, this makes a big difference in smoke points.

If you are too impatient or don’t care about the research, skip to the bottom to see the healthiest oil to cook and bake with!

Types of fats in oils:

Polyunsaturated fat tends to lower blood cholesterol levels. It is found mostly in plant sources.

Monounsaturated fat tends to lower LDL, bad cholesterol, levels. It is found in both plant and animal products.

Saturated fat increases cholesterol levels, these are the artery clogging fats. Most saturated fats are solid at room temperature.

These calculations are all in percent content of the oil. These are not grams of fat or percent daily content.

Oils with the highest percent polyunsaturated fat:

78 Safflower
77 Grapeseed
69 Sunfower
59 Corn
58 Soybean


Oils with the highest percent monounsaturated fat:

74 Olive
70 Avocado oil
58 Canola
49 Rice bran oil
47 Peanut


Oils with the highest percent total unsaturated fat:

93 Canola
91 Safflower
91 Grapeseed
88 Canola
86 Sunflower

Oils with the highest percent saturated fat:

86 Coconut
81 Palm Kernal
49 Palm
26 Cotton Seed
18 Peanut


The smoke point of an oil is the temperature at which it starts to smoke, or burn. It is dangerous to have a smoking oil because it’s only seconds away from its flash point, which means it’s about to start a fire, and also because once it begins to smoke it becomes carcinogenic which means it becomes a cancer causing agent.

Smoke point of oils in degrees Fahrenheit:

520 Refined (read expensive) Avocado oil
490 Rice bran oil
485 Grapeseed
480 Avocado oil
450 Peanut
450 Safflower
450 Soy
450 Sunflower
420 Extra Virgin Olive
410 Sesame
400 Canola

The unrefined or semi refined versions of these oils range from smoking at just over 212 to 350. They are only safe for boiling and in some cases low heat baking. They become carcinogenic either over water’s boiling point or baking at over 350.

The higher the smoke point the better chance you have of being able to fry something safely. Keep in mind that if you fry something until it’s black, your food becomes a carcinogen whether or not the oil is too hot.

If you are baking something that contains oil pick your oil carefully. If you have to bake your meal at 450 and you use Canola oil it will reach its smoke point if baked long enough. I don’t know how long you have to wait but I wouldn’t take the gamble. There are enough carcinogens in our everyday lives for me to be creating them on my own.

So here is the breakdown of the healthiest oils when you combine everything I have written. Due to a glitch in this blogging platform I can't make it a clear chart. The numbers mean, from left to right; Polyunsaturated fat%, Monounsaturated fat%, Saturated fat% and the Smoke Point in degrees Fahrenheit.


Avocado: 13, 70, 11, 520*

Rice bran: 33, 49, 20, 490*

Grapeseed: 77, 14, 9, 485*

Safflower: 78, 13, 9, 450*

Sunflower: 69, 20, 11, 450*

EV Olive: 12, 74, 14, 420*

What to do with this information?

Deep fry , pan fry or stir fry with Avocado, Rice Bran and Grapeseed oil and do everything else with the other oils. I always err on the side of caution and wouldn’t fry with the other oils because of their lower temperatures. Safflower and Grapeseed oil are the healthiest fats so I guess the number 1 prize goes to Grapeseed oil since it’s in both catagories.

Grapeseed is the winner!

Who knew milk was so complex? It didn’t used to be! There used to be one type of milk, straight from the cow. Now we have skim, 1%, 2%, whole milk, organic, rice milk, almond milk, soy milk, dry milk, evaporated milk, and milk with hormones and antibiotics added. This isn’t even an all inclusive list! If you are as confused as I was a few years ago, here is some information from “the other side of the tracks” to help you make the right choice for you.

The bad guys:

It starts with the cow. If the cow was given antibiotics and growth hormone- rBGH or rBST, it gets into the milk. The FDA says that there is nothing wrong with that (don’t get me started on the FDA), but I believe otherwise. Growth hormone makes cows sick, there are about 20 risks involved to the cow when they take GH, one of them is mastitis. Mastitis causes pus to get into the milk and they are treated with antibiotics to cure the mastitis, so that leads to antibiotics in the milk. Then the milk has to be ultra pasteurized which means it’s done at a higher heat and it kills all the bad and good stuff in the milk. Synthetic nutrients have to be added back in afterwards to make it nutritionally sound.

Pasteurized is healthier than ultra-pasteurized because it’s done at a lower heat and doesn’t kill as much of the good stuff.

Let’s move on to soy. Soy milk has been linked to early development in girls as young as six years old. There is a full article on that and other effects here. One of the things you will learn is “isoflavones in soy products can depress thyroid function and cause goiters in otherwise healthy children and adults.”

But take heart, it’s not all bad! Here is what you should know.

Cows who are grass fed produce milk that is higher in omega-3 fats and lower in omega-6 and saturated fats. If your carton says the milk is organic and/or free range do not necessarily mean grass fed. If a company is producing milk from grass fed cows they will be proud of it so look for that. It’s not common, but it’s a good place to start.

The difference between grass fed and organic is a grass fed cow is fed 100% grass while organic cows are fed 80% grass. On non-organic, conventional farms, only 40% of their food is grass.

We all know that organic milk is healthier than normal milk, but someone actually did take the time to study it, here is what they say: Newcastle University in the UK found that organic milk has 67% more antioxidants than milk from other cows.
“The organic milk contained 39 percent more heart-healthy omega-3 oils and 32 percent less of the less-healthy omega-6 oils. It also had 60 percent more conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, which studies have shown can reduce tumors, and also about 60 percent more of vaccenic acid, which may reduce the risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes.”

What about whole milk vs. lower fat varieties?

Children need whole milk to aid in brain development. Doctors say that until the age of 2 they need whole milk. I say don't stop at 2!

Whole milk is healthier than low fat milk. If you are worried about your weight and cholesterol remember that organic whole milk contains the vaccenic acid you just read about. Also, think about this. In the 50’s the milk option was full fat only, people ate butter, they ate whole foods and a small amount of processed foods. They hadn’t been invented yet. And people were a lot thinner on average than today. The obesity rates were much lower. This still works today, I was recently in the middle of the country for a few weeks, we were in an area where most people worked on farms and owned farms. They have their own cows and eat their own dairy products. The women were not stick thin like some women are, but there were very few obese people. I would wager that the average clothing size for women was about a 10, they looked healthy. These people eat whole foods, full fat everything and very little processed foods. I have also lived on either side of the country and I have found that there are about an equal number of obese people as there are stick thin people, and few of the healthy alternatives of in between.

I am a whole foods advocate, and that goes for milk too! Whole milk, as unprocessed as you can get it, will always be healthier because it’s the way nature intended it. People have never improved the health of a food with science.

On a personal level, my weight has always been hard for me to control. The first time I switched to whole foods I lost 15 pounds in the first month. I switched from fat free, sugar free etc to full fat and real sugar, whole wheat, the whole shebang. I didn’t count calories, I just fed my body what it needed. Whole foods!