Should you or shouldn’t you cook with olive oil?
Olive oil is extremely healthy. It’s not only loaded with beneficial fatty acids and powerful antioxidants but also a dietary staple. However, many people believe that it’s unsuitable for cooking due to its unsaturated fat content. Others claim that it’s an excellent choice for cooking — even for high-heat methods like frying. It is important to choose cooking fats that are stable when heated, as some oils can form carcinogenic compounds during cooking. Olive oil contains mostly monounsaturated fatty acids, which are largely resistant to heat. Olive oil contains Vitamin E and many powerful antioxidants, which give numerous health benefits. Many studies have exposed olive oil to high heat for long periods of time. Even under such extreme conditions, the olive oil does not form significant amounts of harmful compounds. Extra virgin olive oil’s smoke point is somewhere around 374–405°F (190–207°C). This makes it a good choice for most cooking methods. It’s okay to cook with olive oil. It has some unique qualities that make it stable under cooking conditions.
There are two reasons why olive oil outperforms other vegetable oils when it’s heated. First, it contains polyphenols and tocopherols which act to protect the oil from oxidation. Second, it’s made up of mostly monounsaturated fat – that’s the one with only one double bond, which makes it more stable in heat than fats with high amounts of polyunsaturated fats which have more double bonds. Between these two properties, olive oil can fry with the best of them. It is thought that the phenolic compounds in olive oil – polyphenols and tocopherols – may influence olive oil’s stability in heat even more than its monounsaturated fat content. The phenolic compounds donate radical hydrogen to alkylperoxyl radicals to form a stabilized radical.
Olive oil may become harmful. One study fried olive oil varieties to see how they stood up to high heat, and only after 24-27 hours of frying (depending on the type) were they considered to be harmful. Vegetable oil, on the other hand, was only able to go for 15 hours. Despite lower amounts of vitamin E, olive oil still ended up less oxidized than the vegetable oil.
the polyphenol content of olive oil predicted its susceptibility to oxidation; varieties with more polyphenols were less prone to oxidation while those with less became more oxidized.
Other researchers heated extra virgin olive oil to 350°F for 36 hours and found that while there was some degradation in the phenolic compounds content, the oil kept most of its nutritional value.
Reference
http://www.eatingwell.com/article/69450/why-you-shouldnt-always-cook-with-olive-oil/
