Eating oil is not only for adding color and flavor to dishes, but more importantly, it is an important source of energy and essential fatty acids. So do you know how to choose and match cooking oil?
How to choose cooking oil
Essential fatty acids are essential for maintaining normal metabolism in the body. They cannot be synthesized by the body itself or synthesized at a slow rate that cannot meet the body's needs, so they must be supplied through food.
Cooking oil provides about 50% of the fatty acids needed by the body. Oil contains saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids are essential fatty acids. These three fatty acids have their own benefits for the body and are indispensable. Among them, saturated fatty acids provide energy to the body, monounsaturated fatty acids have the effect of reducing blood cholesterol, and polyunsaturated fatty acids can enhance memory and thinking ability. Once the intake of fatty acids is imbalanced, it will lead to nutritional imbalance, and then lead to the occurrence of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Therefore, fatty acids need to be ingested in a balanced manner every day.
The "Chinese Dietary Reference Intakes (2013 Edition)" clearly states that the intake of saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids should be balanced.
In daily life, everyone pays attention to food diversity, but no matter what dishes they eat, cooking oil is indispensable. However, because it is used daily and in every meal, people only focus on the taste it brings to the dishes, but neglect the importance of cooking oil in terms of health.
Unhealthy to use a single type of oil, cooking oil should also be diversified
The reasonable combination of fatty acids is closely related to the selection of cooking oil. Due to dietary habits and regional influences, many families have been consuming the same type of vegetable oil for a long time. However, the composition of fatty acids in different types of oil is different, and their nutritional characteristics are also different. It is difficult to achieve a reasonable combination of fatty acids by consuming a single type of oil for a long time.
Just as food needs to be properly combined to be healthy, cooking oil should also be diversified and properly combined. If you simply mix peanut oil, rapeseed oil, olive oil, etc. randomly, or use peanut oil this week and rapeseed oil next week, these practices are actually not scientific enough. Advocating the diversification of oil consumption is fundamentally for the purpose of a reasonable combination of fatty acids, and these practices only involve the mixing and rotation of single oils, which cannot truly achieve a reasonable combination of fatty acids in cooking oil.
Choosing oil, reasonable combination of fatty acids is the key
In fact, to eat oil scientifically and healthily, reasonable combination is important, and blended oil is a good method to achieve a reasonable combination.
The "Chinese Dietary Guidelines" points out that blended oil is made by blending multiple refined oils. Because it is made by selecting multiple vegetable oils, it is more nutritious. At the same time, each oil has its own nutritional characteristics and can meet the nutritional needs of different people, making it more suitable for the whole family to consume.
The key to blending lies in "harmony". There are tips for selecting blended oil. Nowadays, there are many types of blended oil on the market, but not all of them can truly meet the standard of a reasonable combination of fatty acids. Therefore, when buying blended oil, you must choose blended oil that helps to achieve a reasonable combination of fatty acids. If you can pay more attention to the brand's qualifications and whether it has patent certification when purchasing, it will help you better choose blended oil that suits the health needs of the whole family.
