Let’s talk about fat, baby

IF you have been following me for a while, or using my recipes from the market caravan, you will notice that I use a lot of coconut oil, butter and olive oil in my cooking. That is no accident.

In relatively recent years, the food market has been flooded with ‘‘yellow oils’’; oils such as canola, rice bran and sunflower. Being low in saturated fat, these products have been promoted as the healthy choice. .

They are high heat and chemically processed oils, meaning that by the time they arrive on your supermarket shelf they are as far from their original form as can be.

In fact, when we consume them, our bodies have no way to process them, and they store them in your fat cells. Consuming ‘‘yellow oils’’ can cause inflammation in our bodies, which we know is the perfect environment for breeding illness and disease.

Unfortunately, because of the low price, accessibility, and misinformation about these products they are the first choice for many home users, most cafes and restaurants, and all but a few packaged products. Meaning that every meal, every bite, we are making it more difficult for our bodies to function well.

So what should you use? Well, that brings us back to our realfood, wholefood approach. Fats and oils that are stable, nutritious, and most easily used by our bodies are those that are made with real foods, as close to their original form as possible.

As a rule, I recommend:

High heat: cook with ghee, coldpressed coconut oil, dripping/lard.

Low heat: cook with butter, olive oil, nut oils (although olive oil has a high smoke point, it does lose some of its nutritional value as it heats).

Pour, dollop, and dress with coldpressed oils like avocado, olive, sesame, hemp and nut oils.

Eat nuts and seeds, nut and seed butters, avocados, coconut products, fish, quality meat and dairy products, eggs, bone broth.

Do your research, have the conversations. Think about how your grandparents cooked, how your great grandparents cooked. What fats and oils did they consume? I remember the roasting dish containing the dripping from previous roasts, being kept to reuse. Lets get back to that.