Human beings find fried food absolutely delicious. Our brains are hard-wired to respond to food that is high in sugar and salt, as these nutrients were hard to come by when we lived in caves and on the savannah. Packets of jelly babies and potato chips weren’t available at every corner shop for pre-modern humans, so we developed a taste for these vital components of a healthy diet. In modern times, however, our bodies still crave the taste of fried food despite the fact that it’s very easy to consume sugar, fat, and salt every day. If you’re looking to improve your diet without compromising when it comes to eating the food you love, you can vary the ingredients of your meals to make them a bit more utilitarian in spirit. For example, the traditional recipe for bacon and eggs calls for a generous helping of butter, which is hardly the healthiest way to start your day. You could replace the butter with a low-fat option that doesn’t compromise on the flavor of your bacon and eggs, such as healthy cooking oil.
Sunflower Cooking Oil
For centuries, human beings have been using oil to flavor their food, preserve otherwise perishable items, and lubricate cooking utensils. You can press and extract cooking oil from a variety of plants, but none are as healthy as sunflower oil, which is commonly used to fry food and is even found in some cosmetic products, where it is used as an emollient. Most of the world’s sunflower oil today comes from Ukraine and Argentina, although other countries such as Australia often produce sunflowers specifically for domestic consumption. As modern sunflower oil is extremely low in oleic acid, it’s correspondingly low in saturated fats, making it a healthy option for frying your meals. Sunflower oil is also high in vitamin E, although it generally lacks most other vitamins. Unless you’re planning on drinking sunflower oil to forgo food, however, this doesn’t present too much of an issue. You can eat healthy with sunflower oil for cooking, particularly if you measure the nutritional content of the other ingredients in your meals.
The Versatility of Sunflower Oil
Sunflower oil is fantastic for both low- and extremely high-temperature cooking. Accordingly, it’s very popular in many Asian cuisines, which often require the rapid searing of ingredients and sharp, sudden spikes in temperature. Although unrefined olive oil is available as well, refined olive oil is far more stable than most other forms of oil, meaning that it can withstand extremely high heat without bursting into flames. Unrefined olive oil has a deeper amber color than the refined variety, and is significantly less stable, and better suited to raw food or low-temperature cooking. In some Eastern European countries, unrefined sunflower oil is actually used as a salad dressing, and it’s likely that many of your favorite foods already contain sunflower oil as an essential ingredient. For example, modern potato chips often feature sunflower oil in the cooking process, as it has mild preservative properties. You’re probably already enjoying sunflower oil whenever you pick up a packet of chips, so why not add it to your healthy cooking repertoire?