guys, coconut oil!

[Fahrenheit]

As far as health (esp. heart health) is concerned you'll want to use a high quality EVOO.

[FathomFear]

Saying that coconut oil is "better" than olive oil is like saying that a Skor bar is "better for you" than, say, an O'Henry bar. While it might end up being an accurate statement, you can't forget the ultimate point--that neither are ideal things to be putting in your body. Your goal should be to reduce oil consumption to a minimum. High calories + high saturated fat + low nutrient = bad news, no matter which way you cut it.

[belfpala]

Ghee (derived from grass-fed butter; known as "clarified butter") is the best thing you can use in cooking mediums - nothing else compares.

Clarified butter is amazing, and easy to make from regular butter (or if you're lazy, find it sold as ghee, usually in the asian section of your supermarket).

As someone else mentioned above, using one kind of oil for all purposes is sort of foolish. They all have different properties, flavors, smoke points, and so on. Just off the top of my head, I use basic vegetable oil, three kinds of olive oils, safflower oil, coconut oil, peanut oil, a variety of other nut oils, and more. Oh, and shouldn't forget the "oils" that are solid at room temp: butter, lard, and shortening.

Healthwise... well, just be sensible. Safflower oil has the "best" distribution of fats, even compared to olive oil (it also has a neutral flavor, unlike olive oil, which is desireable sometimes and has a higher smoke point). Coconut oil has probably the "worst" distribution of fats--mostly saturated. That doesn't mean it's bad. Just be sensible with it.

p.s. try making popcorn with coconut oil... nomtastic.

Edit: oh, one thing that annoys me. Many recipes you'll find will say something like, "Add the oil to a pan and heat on high until smoking." NO. You've already destroyed your oil at that point, creating god knows what compounds in there; at best they'll give an off-flavor to your food, at worst they'll turn you into a mutant zombie or something.

[Bakis]

and palm oil is bad for the environment due to deforistation.
Gogo olive oil!

[Stanton Biston]

Edit: oh, one thing that annoys me. Many recipes you'll find will say something like, "Add the oil to a pan and heat on high until smoking." NO. You've already destroyed your oil at that point, creating god knows what compounds in there; at best they'll give an off-flavor to your food, at worst they'll turn you into a mutant zombie or something.

Yeah, if you do this to the more sensitive oils (I'm looking at you cold press EVOO), the taste is horrific and you will wish you turned into a mutant zombie.

[BLCalliente]

Low calorie fat. Another fallacy. Calories don't make you fat, the types of calories you eat do. If you notice, a lot of people diet by eating less, and tend to either not lose too much fat, or gain it all back after their diet. A lot of the times, if that person ate MORE of the right kinds of foods, they would actually lose weight, because the body is then getting the nutrients it needs, and doesn't need to store them for future use due to eating too little.. If you want to do some research in a place that doesn't have "trendy" words to try and make you believe without showing much of anything other then fancy words. Check out this book.

Not really true.

There is only 1 kind of calorie.

Fat has 9 calories per gram. Protein has 4. Even table sugar is only 4.5/g.

If you eat a high protein / low fat diet, you will take in a lot fewer calories than on a high fat diet.

So while you are right in saying that you can eat more of the right foods and lose weight, your initial premise that calories don't make you fat is clearly false.

[Aalyy]

Calories make you fat, calories is energy. If you take in more energy than your body needs, the excess will be turned into fat. There are of course calories that become fat easier than others of course. Like high gi carbs that spike your insulin and create too much energy at once and has nowhere else to go than fatstores. Also too much fatty foods, which has the lowest thermic reaction of all food and is easily digested. Only 1-2 % of the energy is spendt digesting fat, unlike protein that uses up 30% of the energy to be digested.

Not quite! Your hormones direct your body to burn fat or store it. What you eat determines whether you store fat or burn it. Carbs make your body store fat because they raise insulin which sets off the cascade of hormones and enzymes that inhibit fat burning and facilitate its storage. If you eat a ton of carbs and exercise to burn them off then you're fine otherwise you're just storing them as fat. Dietary fat doesn't have this affect on fat storing hormones. Of course if you overeat anything you'll get fat but as a general rule carbs are much more fattening than dietary fat.

[BLCalliente]

Saying that coconut oil is "better" than olive oil is like saying that a Skor bar is "better for you" than, say, an O'Henry bar. While it might end up being an accurate statement, you can't forget the ultimate point--that neither are ideal things to be putting in your body. Your goal should be to reduce oil consumption to a minimum. High calories + high saturated fat + low nutrient = bad news, no matter which way you cut it.

Ridiculous statement.

Olive oil is about 14% saturated fat and and a whopping 78% monounsaturated (very healthy) fat.

It isn't high calorie + high saturated fat + low nutrient as you say.

[Aalyy]

On the original topic: coconut oil is a delicious healthy fat. I use it in black coffee, soo good. I only cook certain foods in it because it does make them taste slightly coconutty. I like it for curries, sauteed veggies, and breading chicken in coconut flour and frying it up in coconut oil or baked coconut shrimp. It's good in baked goods instead of butter too. It has a very high smoke point because its a saturated fat so it's fine to cook with. If anyone reads "saturated fat" and it raises alarm bells...it's fine. Saturated fats are natural and healthy for us. We've all been fed a load of BS about the connection between saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease. Natural fats, even those from animals like lard, butter, or coconut oil, are healthy.

http://www.organicfacts.net/organic-...conut-oil.html
http://www.musclehack.com/the-satura...yth-destroyed/