Alternatives To Cooking Oils

Westwood

I'd just like to know what alternatives are their to cooking oils . these are very high calorie around 120 per tablespoon and contain large amounts of fat. I know in extra virgin these are relatively healthy fats but the calories are not. So I’d like to remove this from my diet asap, but cant seem to find a suitable alternative. I enjoy stir fry’s etc so I’d always need something. ive read that a fruit puree would be a good method (aint seen these at the supermarket before?) any others? Would be grateful for some tips.....
thanks

staker

I don't know about nutritional values but we(gf and i) switched to grapeseed oil a while back. It gives a nice taste to fried veg, meats imo

Westwood

thanks for the reply, my gf picked up a bottle the other day funnily enough and the calorie content is outrages aswell. its something I just want to cut out entirely, nip it in the bud as they say:pac:

Piste

Try the 1cal spray, you'll need more than one spray, but usually no more than five for something dry like vegetables, and most fatty meats like steak and burgers can be cooked in their own juices.

rubadub

All fats are around the same calorie values. Low fat spreads are diluted with water and held together with gelatine, upon heating the water boils off.

You can get black "magic sheets" in supermarkets in the tinfoil section. They are around €5 and reusable. They are nonstick, very nonstick. I use them in a wok it just falls into it. You can cut them to size for a frying pan. You can get away without using any oil at all with them, just do not go to too high a heat and keep an eye on it, or use a tiny bit of oil. Those spray oils are a rip off, you can just wipe a pan with a corner of a paper kitchen towel, this covers it in oil without having to put lots on to whirl it around to cover it.

Fat is an essential part of your diet anyway. I eat a lot of fat in my diet.

Piste

This might be a stupid question, but if you have a lot of spare fat on your body can you use that as your fat source (the fat you "need") or will your body still demand an external source of fat?

EileenG

Get a good non-stick frying pan with a close fitting glass lid. The lid make a huge difference, things cook in their own juices and don't burn. You'll find you hardly ever need to add oil to anything for cooking.

Mind you, you do need fat in your diet. Cutting out all fat will just tell your body to hoard the fat you've got on your hips because there is none coming in.

At the very least, you should be getting lots of fish oil, whether in the form of oily fish or fish oil capsules, but you should also be getting a mixture of mono-unsaturated, poly-unsaturates (preferably fish or nuts) and saturates. Yes, I know Gillian McKeith thinks sat fats are the devil, but they keep your testosterone levels high and your bones strong.

The evil fats that you need to avoid are the transfats, the sort you get in refined and processed foods. Butter is better than margarine made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

Westwood

Many thanks EileenG and rubadub. Great advice to alternative cooking. I mainly have a wok to do most of cooking on and has been abused with cooking oil to help aid the cooking process, which always seems to be untrue. yes new kitchen utensils are the key me thinks Where would one best find non stick crockery?
Ive just had enough of feeling like **** after a meal and wanting to go to bed!! i feel it must have something to do with the way it’s prepared. I am well aware of needing good fats in your diet, its just I feel adding that amount of calories at your main source of food is unjustifiable. And could possibly make that up on healthy snakes, like peanut butter and avocado etc.
Ive recently changed from being an all out 7 slices of bread a day and 10 boxes of the nearest and dearest processed foods you can imagine. My diet now consists of eggs, nuts, every Veg and fruit you can imagine, and all the whole protein foul I can muster. I have shed the **** over the past couple of weeks and feel great. But miss my fried foods something fierce. So any other recommendations for alternative frying oils are very much appreciated
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EileenG

You can use oil, just use less. Put some good olive oil into some sort of spray bottle (what about those 100ml bottles sold for going on holiday?) and only use the amount you need. You don't need to swim in it.

I also use butter and coconut oil for cooking, as they are both good at handling high temperatures. I tend to keep my lovely extra virgin olive oil for salads. And with butter, it's easier to see exactly how much you are using.

Good job on ditching all the bread and junk. It's not easy to do.

Ok, in my kitchen I have a big deep non-stick pan with a lid, which I use at least twice a day. There is very little I can't cook in that.

I also have silicon bread tins and muffin moulds, which I use for all sorts of things, just because you can pop food out of them without having to grease or oil them first. They also go in the freezer, so you can use them as ice-cream moulds if necessary.

I have an oil spray, which had some cheap oil but I've filled with olive oil. I've also got chili oil, which I made by putting some dried chilis in olive oil and letting it infuse. It gives a real kick to food and a little goes a long way.

And I've got butter and coconut oil.

Piste

The silicon bread and cake tine are great, not only do baked things stick less but you can sorta jimmy them out of the mould without them falling to pieces.

g'em

Piste wrote: »

This might be a stupid question, but if you have a lot of spare fat on your body can you use that as your fat source (the fat you "need") or will your body still demand an external source of fat?

Not a stupid question at all. For one, the term "fat" encompasses a range of different lipids and oils and dietary fat and stored body fat are two quite different things. Your bodyfat is stored in the form of adipose tissue, which stores fats as triglycerides which is energy that has been extracted from food and stored dynamically in the cells (adipose is never truly stored as a blob in one cell, it is constantly being shunted from one cell to another and depending on where the fat is stored in your body it will have different metabolic roles - the fat in your tummy for example is closely associated with insulin resistance, hence the reason why abdominal fat is linked with an increased risk for type II diabetes).

Essentially the metabolism of dietary fat and triglycerides is the same so they're both used for energy the same way, but dietary fat is important for a few other reasons and very low fat diets (which most often result in a high-carbohydrate diet) are consistently shown to be a really bad idea for fat loss. Eating fat in the diet promotes satiety, eating high quantities of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats have a heart-protecting function (mono- and ply- fats have much higher fluidity than sat fats in the blood stream) and possibly most importantly foods high in Omega-3 fats like oily fish, flax and walnuts are vital because your body can't make Omega-3 and it's essential for healthy brain function. Also, many high fat foods like nuts and avocados contain other nutrients (zinc, vitamin E) that have a multitude of other health benefits.

MickeyD

I'm no expert on the topic, but some vitamins are only fat soluble, which means they dissolve in fat. If you don't get enough fat in your diet your body won't be able to use them. There's usually a store of such vitamins in your body already but if you go on long-term without fat completely you might run into nutritional defects. Conversely, if you take in a lot of fat soluble vitamins and fat it can be hard on the liver. The body can't expel a surplus as needed like water soluble ones.

EileenG

Bang on with the fat soluble vitamins, and oddly enough, it's women who seem to suffer most from a low fat diet.

Irish experts reckon that we are not getting enough vitamin D (sunlight, but also oily fish, butter, egg yolks) to sustain healthy pregnancies and breastfeeding. Irish babies are turning up with rickets, which used to be unheard of.

A low fat diet also tends to reduce fertility. Too much low fat dairy caused anovular infertility, and women trying to get pregnant should eat at least two portions a day of full fat dairy.

Lack of B6 makes it harder to carry a pregnancy to term, and makes you much more likely to miscarry. B6 is found in meat, oily fish, eggs and vegetables.

Magnesium is essential for strong bones, and a regular heart and blood pressure, but breastfeeding places a huge demand on the mother's reserves of magnesium. Best sources are cocoa, nuts, seeds and oily fish.

neuro-praxis

I gave up oils for a while for the same reasons as you and used those sprays that you buy in the supermarket - the Frylight range.

However I felt that I enjoyed my food less and also the quality of my skin disimproved, becoming flaky and dry, especially on my face.

Now I use 1 teaspoon of good oil per person for main meals, sometimes a little more. This is plenty of oil for a stir-fry, or for frying a base for a soup, sauce or stew (minced onion, for example), or for coating new potatoes in the oven. I use slightly lower heats to prevent burning in the frying pan.

There is no need to use as much as a tablespoon - you can use half that amount - 60 calories is not much to use up for the sake of the higher quality of taste in your food.

gas_ticket

Be very careful about removing fat from your diet. You absolutely need fats, and in surprisingly large quantities.

Fats are required to carry certain vitamins into the body and make them available. Look up "fat soluble vitamins" (ADE and K)

Also your essential fatty acids are required especially for brain function etc.

Personally I use some virgin coconut oil in my diet, and I'm not afraid of butter, although with pesticides etc I'd need the organic version.

I just use what is required. I also use virgin olive oil (lots of virgin in this post).

To lose weight, I try to exercise every day on the bike to work and that helps more than anything. Weather permitting, of course.

I get a lot of my free-from foods delivered by www.ecodirect.ie and by www.ballybrado.com