OILS, FATS, AND NUTS

Seeds, nuts, and vegetables are the sources for most of the nutrient oils that are available today. Like all other foods, oils lose more of their nutritive value the more they are processed. Organic, cold-

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pressed oils are the only way to go. If you are highly motivated, have a chef's imagination, and want to experiment with different flavors, preparing meals with a wide variety of oils can be a lot of fun, and can take some of the boredom out of your diet. However, if you are not nearly so motivated, don't feel that you will be auto­matically depleting yourself of nutrition that cannot be obtained elsewhere.

Unless they are organically grown and properly extracted, many oils contain toxins. Not only are the source crops grown with the lib­eral use of highly toxic pesticides and only slightly less toxic inor­ganic fertilizers, but the extraction processes typically employ high heat and a variety of toxic chemicals to produce the oils. The final products also have little remaining nutritive value due to the nature of the extraction process. Do not delude yourself into thinking that you are expanding your base of positive nutrition by including a wide variety of nonorganically produced oils in your foods or in their preparation.

While a number of different oils, produced correctly, can be pos­itive additions to your diet, it is very important to realize that nearly all unrefined oils have a low smoke point. For this reason, they are not suitable for high-temperature frying, as the smoke is indicative of destruction of the fatty acids and glycerol that are present. Of course, you should avoid high-temperature frying anyway, because this type of food preparation readily destroys much of the nutrient content, while producing products capable of causing cancer, in­cluding free radicals. However, whenever you do prepare food in such a manner, you shouldn't make the entire process even more nutritively negative with the wrong choice of cooking agent.

Butter and olive oil are probably the two best choices for routine cooking and light frying, or sauteing. A somewhat expensive deriv­ative of butter—ghee, or clarified butter—is an even better choice than butter, since it won't burn as easily. If organically produced, al­mond, hazelnut, and sesame oils can also be used for baking and sauteing. Other organic vegetable and nut oils, such as canola, flax,

102 Optimal Nutrition for Optimal Health

pistachio, pumpkin, safflower, sunflower, and walnut, should gen­erally just be consumed in salads or added to food after it is cooked. While safflower and sunflower oils can also be used in baking, it is probably easiest to get used to a few comfortable oil choices for cooking and to approach the remainder of good oils as another form of supplementation.

Just as with fruits and fruit juices, it is always best to eat whole food and properly digest it to get optimal nutrition. Eating fresh nuts, seeds, and vegetables will also be more desirable than just adding their extracted oils to other foods or just taking those oils directly as nutritional supplements. Nuts and seeds are excellent single-item snacks, and you should go for the raw ones rather than the roasted ones whenever possible.