Plant oils



Plant oils are among the most calorie dense of all foods. A pound of oil has nearly four thousand calories*, around twice the total calories you need in an entire day. They are also a very low-nutrient food, since all the useful fiber, protein, and micronutrients of the plant have been thrown away, leaving isolated plant fat. The result is a food with an extremely low ratio of nutrients to calories.

Since oils have very little flavor, their main role in cooking is to add calories. Calorically dense foods generally taste appealing, not surprising since all of your ancestors going back to one-celled organisms were battling for a limited supply of calories. But in modern developed countries, we have the opposite problem--- too many readily available calories.

The bottom line is that there is always something better to eat than plant oil.

It is especially important to avoid cooking methods that involve heated oil, which produces toxic compounds. The healthy fats--- seeds, nuts and avocadoes--- can be used in almost any nutritarian recipe to add flavor, micronutrients, and some additional plant protein. Add seeds or chopped nuts to salads and cooked vegetables, use nuts as the base of blended salad dressings, blend seeds and nuts into smoothies, blended salads, soups, and vegetable-based soups. Who needs oils?

Olive oil calls for special comment. It is frequently said to be "healthy" or "heart-healthy". This arises from the fact that people from southern Europe, eating the traditional "Mediterranean diet", have somewhat less heart disease than northern Europeans. It's true that the fats in olive oil are a bit better than those of other commonly used oils. But there's no magic nutrient in olive oil that makes your arteries healthier. The main reason the Mediterranean diet produces less artery disease is that it contains a lot more vegetables and fresh fruit. It's still an unhealthy diet, just not as unhealthy. Our goal should not be to make artery disease advance more slowly, in order to have a better chance of dying of something else first. It should be to avoid artery disease entirely, or to stop its advance and begin artery healing, which is one of the most dramatic benefits of a nutritarian eating style.

* Oils are almost pure fat, which has about nine calories per gram. A pound is about 450 grams, so a pound of oil has around 450 times 9 calories.