100 Healthy Living Tips #9 - Add Heart Healthy Oils to Your Diet

Evidence is piling up that healthy fats are essential to good health. They help protect your body from age-related diseases like heart disease and arthritis and high blood pressure and cholesterol. So which fats are heart healthy? The oils which contain unsaturated fats such as olive oil, flax oil, walnut, peanut and grapeseed oils help you stay healthy and contain omega 3 and omega 9 fatty acids. An added bonus is that these oils provide a wonderful variety of tastes for any cook.

So today's healthy living tip is to replace less healthy oils, like vegetable oil and corn oil, with these healthier oil alternatives.

So what is the best way to use these heart healthy oils? My two favorite oils are olive oil and grapeseed oil, which offer different flavors and different ways t use them.

1.  Olive Oil - Look for Extra Virgin or cold pressed. Contrary to popular beliefs, olive oil shouldn't be used for cooking at high heat as it looses important flavor and nutrients. Instead use olive oil in salad dressing, as a condiment to dip your bread and other low temperature uses. Olive oil contains Omega 9 oils a healthy
monounsaturated fat which is important in your diet.

Make a healthier salad by making your own salad dressing.


2. Grapeseed Oil is a wonderful oil for oil because it has a very high smoke temp (480°F/250°C for refined oil) so it is resistant to break down during cooking. Grapeseed oil can be used in Chinese stir fry and in place of peanut oil. Grapeseed oils is high in polyunsaturates and anti-oxidants which helps it to resist becoming rancid better than many vegetable oils.

Read more about the health benefits of grapeseed oil. 

3.  Flaxseed oil is most often sold as a food supplement and not for cooking. It contains an Omega-3 fatty acid called alfa-linolenic acid.

4.  Walnut Oil - Should also be used for low heat cooking applications and salad dressings. Adds a deliciously nutty flavor and is loaded with omega 3 fatty acids.

5.  Peanut Oil - Has a light flavor which doesn't detract from recipe flavorings and can be used in Chinese cooking. Peanut Oil has a high smoke point so can be used in high temperature cooking but is lower in polyunsaturated fats than grapeseed oil.

One thing to remember in adding fats to your diet is that although essential to good health, whether they are heart-healthy or not, they do add the same amount of calories to your daily diet.



Check out our other 100 Healthy Living Tips. More are added daily.