Jane Clarke: Overheating oil harms your heart

Tag : Vegetable Cooking Oil

If the establishment is not diligent about this, you could findthat the vegetable oil around your fried food contains trans fats,because the oil has been heated over and over again.
This is why there's a call for fastfood outlets to be under somesort of regulation, to protect consumers from buying takeaway foodthat's high in these dangerous fats.
As for giving you a guide for which oils to cook with, it reallydoesn't matter - you can use anything as long as you don't allowthe oil to get too hot and start to smoke, as this is when itstarts to break down into trans fats.
On the other hand, if the oil is too cool, the food will soak itup, increasing the fat and calorie content of whatever you'refrying. One temperature test is to drop a piece of bread into thepan and if it sizzles and bubbles within a few seconds, it's aboutright. If the oil starts to smoke, it's getting too hot.
I follow a diet rich in organic fruit and vegetables, fish andmeat. For the past year, after my main evening meal, I havesuffered from flatulence and frequent visits to the loo.

I suspect it is the vegetables, but would hate to have to excludethem from my diet. I keep a food diary, but can't pinpoint whichveg are to blame. I can have a curry or bacon and egg with noproblems! Jane Evans, by e-mail
Jane says... How annoying for you, and how ironic that you can have a curry - something that irritates many more stomachs than good old healthyfruit and vegetables.
First it might be worth changing your main cooked meal to themiddle of the day, or eating earlier in the evening. Often thestomach and bowel deal better with a larger meal earlier in theday. Also, if you wait too long for your evening meal you can endup eating too quickly and gulping lots of air; then going to bednot so long afterwards plays havoc with the gut.
The rawness of the vegetables and fruit may have something to dowith it, too; these contain lots of fibre and sugar and can be hardto digest.
You are displaying some symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (Isuggest asking your doctor to investigate this).
People with this condition do better with cooked fruit andvegetables - cooking changes the structure of these foods,softening the skin and breaking down some of the fibre and sugar,making them easier to digest.
Why not cook some of the delicious berries and soft stone fruits(peaches, apricots, nectarines) that are available at this time ofyear, then let them cool down to make a compote-style pudding?
You can also make delicious salads with cooked vegetables, drizzledwith oil and lemon juice. These can be easier, again, for the gutthan lots of raw lettuce and cucumber.
Roasted tomatoes - served warm with buffalo mozzarella - can bebetter than raw (and the flavours are fantastic).
And when you roast tomatoes this raises their concentration oflycopene, an antioxidant-that can reduce the risk of prostate andbreast cancer. Lycopene is more easily absorbed by the body whenconsumed with a little vegetable oil, such as a drizzle of oliveoil.
As cooking fruit and vegetables reduces their vitamin C content,steam or microwave them rather than boiling.
You could try minced beef rather than steak, as smaller pieces ofmeat might suit you better. Experiment with the texture of foods,keeping a note of how you feel afterwards for a couple of weeks andseeing if you spot any patterns.
Traditional mint or fennel tea after a meal can be a gooddigestive, but make sure it's not too hot. You don't mentionwhether you're a coffee or strong black tea drinker, or a fizzydrink fan, but if you are, try to have less - caffeine and gassydrinks irritate a sensitive gut. Enlarge