So you want to start eating healthy?

Let’s start with the basics – Cooking Oils & Fats

It’s time you started to clear out the crappy cooking oils lurking in your cupboards & pantries. You know the ones we mean, nasty “vegetable” oils that are actually highly refined seed oils from Genetically Modified plants such as rape, soy & corn. Those 4 litre bottles you buy on special have probably gone rancid by the time you get to the bottom of the bottle.

Hippocrates, the father of medicine said “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” for very good reason.

The food you eat on a daily basis can be either the most powerful & safest form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison that is quietly destroying your general health & wellbeing.

Every morsel of food, every molecule that you consume affects your health.

If health is a priority for you, then will want to be eating nourishing, health giving foods while limiting or eliminating toxic or health depleting foods.

So, where to start? Let’s go back to basics and look at the oils & fats your are cooking with.

What to look for on healthy Oils & Fats:

1. Ideally, only use cold pressed, virgin or extra virgin oils. Some refined cooking oils are also fine to use but read the label.

2. Flavour – your cooking oils either need to taste good like Avocado Oil or Olive oil that’s used in salads recipes that call for a quality oil. For recipes where you need a neutral oil that will not adversely affect the flavour of food, then refined Coconut Oil or Avocado oil are great choices.

3. Smoke Point – You need to have at least one or two oils you can cook with at high heat without damaging the fat which then makes it toxic. If your oil begins to smoke this is an indicator that it is now acrid, full of free radicals and unhealthy for you (it won’t taste good either) – throw it out and start over at a lower heat.

The preferred oils list:

1. Extra Virgin Avocado Oil – This is a great go-to cooking oil. It doesn’t add any flavour to the food I’m cooking and has a smoke point upwards of 500°F which is plenty hot for anything I might be preparing. Health benefits include being high in Oleic Acid – a heart healthy monounsaturated fat, it is said to improve arthritis symptoms and also has other reported benefits. Avocado oil can also be used cold, like olive oil.

2. Hemp Seed Oil – The health benefits of Hemp Seed Oil are well documented. Among them are being high in antioxidants, monounsaturated fats, heart protective, etc. Extra Virgin Hemp Seed Oil has a low smoke point of around 332°F/165°C – therefore it’s best used unheated as a dressing for your salads and veggies or to lightly sauté your vegetables at a low heat.

3. Coconut Oil – Coconut shrimp anyone? Or Chicken? This oil has a high smoke point 350°F for extra virgin and 450°F if refined. It does, however, taste like coconut. So, if coconut is not your favourite flavour then you may want to pass on this one. Health benefits all revolve around the medium chain triglycerides (MCT), including capric acid, found in coconut oil.

4. Cocavo Oils – a world first blend of Coconut Oil & Avocado Oil. Cocavo Oils bring the benefits of these 2 oils together in a real healthy fat packed super-oil

5. Cocavo Ghee – a unique blend of Grass Fed Ghee, Coconut Oil & Avocado Oil. The buttery flavour is wonderful and with a high smoke point, Cocavo Ghee will quickly become a pantry staple when cooking any recipe that calls for high heat.