By James Colquhoun and Laurentine Ten Bosch
Fat and oil have had a bad rap over the years. The “fat free” 80s led to the demise of these once revered staples, which has only been intensified with highly processed and refined vegetable oils and trans fats increasingly permeating our modern foods. Despite what you may have been told, oils are an essential part of cooking in every kitchen and can support overall health.
Choosing the best oils to cook with doesn’t need to be daunting; it simply comes down to a two-step approach. First, is the oil or fat in its nutritious raw form and suitable for human consumption in balanced amounts? And second, does the oil have a high smoke point? In other words, can it resist high temperatures before oxidizing, which can create harmful free radicals?
With that in mind, here are among the best all-around oils that you can safely cook with and enjoy:
Coconut Cooking Oil
Coconut oil is one of the best additions to any whole-foods pantry. The largest portion of fat in coconut oil comes from a healthy saturated fat called lauric acid, which has been proven to encourage your body to burn fat and raise HDL (good) cholesterol in your blood, which may help reduce heart disease risk.1
When it comes to cooking, coconut oil is resistant to oxidizing at high temperatures, which makes it a great stable oil for cooking. Plus, its delightfully fragrant flavor makes it ideal for many Asian-inspired dishes.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
No kitchen is complete without cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil. But what sets this apart from your regular olive oil? It’s that the first extraction from the olive is done without any heat or chemicals that destroy its integrity. Extra virgin olive oil has widespread health benefits, including improving heart health, promoting brain function, and having potential anti-cancer benefits.2 Remember to avoid cooking with extra virgin olive oil at high temperature to prevent oxidizing.
Grass-fed Butter
Unlike milk, butter has very low amounts of lactose—the protein in milk to which many people react. So, if you don’t react well to milk, you may still do okay with butter. This has to do with how butter is made. And if you choose to include small amounts of dairy in your diet, good quality, organic, grass-fed butter is a good option. We also occasionally use both butter and olive oil when cooking, as this can help to avoid the butter from burning.
Studies have shown that grass-fed dairy is a richer source than non-grass-fed for vitamin A, omega-3 fatty acids, and up to 500 percent more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which is linked to promising anticancer effects and vitamin K2.3 It’s still a concentrated source of fats and calories, so enjoy in moderation.
Grass-fed Ghee
Ghee is the holy grail of dairy products. It is a form of highly clarified butter that has traditionally been used in Indian cooking and Ayurveda. The process of converting butter to ghee involves melting it to remove the milk solids, resulting in significantly fewer dairy sugars and proteins. This simple change in form may make it a great alternative for anyone navigating a dairy intolerance or lactose sensitivity. Unlike butter, ghee won’t turn rancid at room temperature and retains its flavor and freshness for up to a year.
While other fats and oils can slow down the body’s digestive process and give us that heavy feeling in our stomach, ghee stimulates the digestive system by encouraging the secretion of stomach acids to break down food. Ghee is one of our must-reach-for cooking essentials, because of both its nutty flavor and high burning temperature.
Best Gluten-Free Flours for Baking
It’s estimated that one percent of the global population has celiac disease, with another seven percent having some form of gluten sensitivity.4 And this number is on the rise.
Gluten sensitivity, or even excessive consumption of gluten (like we have in the modern Western diet), can contribute to cascading cases of inflammation, autoimmune disease, and chronic health conditions. Autoimmune disease can have a long-term impact on your health if not treated carefully, including increasing your risk of heart disease, cancer, and gut inflammation.
One thing we have realized is that it’s not only the gluten that’s contributing to chronic health concerns, but also the farming process. Monocropping (the practice of growing a single crop year after year on the same land), especially wheat, can have devastating impacts on your health due to the increasing amounts of pesticides and chemicals used.
If you’re reaching for a gluten-free blend on your grocer’s shelf, more often than not you’ll find it packed with chemically made preservatives, thickeners, stabilizers, and colors to help it mimic the texture of wheat. So, where you can, make sure to buy organic gluten-free flours with the least ingredients possible.
When starting out with gluten-free baking and cooking, much of the texture and taste issues are directly related to the types of flours used. Luckily, over the years, we’ve tried nearly every gluten-free flour imaginable, and here are three of the best that we recommend.
Manioc/Cassava Flour
This root vegetable blend is one of the closest textures you’ll find to “the real deal.” Normally, multiple flours and additives are blended to achieve a gluten like texture, but that’s not the case with cassava. The flour (derived from the starchy tuber) has high carbohydrate content, making it a valuable food in many indigenous cultures. Unlike other alternatives, cassava flour is very mild and neutral in flavor, as well as low in both fat and sugar. It’s also not grainy or gritty in texture—rather, it’s soft and powdery. Plus, the blend is great for everyone as it is free of gluten, grain, and nuts!
Tapioca Flour
From time to time, the terms cassava flour and tapioca flour are used interchangeably. However, there are some very important differences to note. Tapioca is a starch extracted from the cassava root through a process of washing and pulping. The wet pulp is then squeezed to extract a starchy liquid. Once all the water evaporates from the starchy liquid, the tapioca flour remains.
Tapioca is an almost pure starch, meaning it possesses similar binding properties to gluten. It contains small amounts of protein, fat, and fiber but still has a valuable role in digestion. It is a source of resistant starch, which, as the name implies, makes it resistant to certain functions in the digestive system.
Resistant starch is linked to benefits such as feeding the friendly bacteria in the gut, thereby reducing gut inflammation and harmful bacteria, and lowering blood sugar levels.5
Almond Meal
If nuts are still a mainstay in your diet, almond meal is another great substitute for plain wheat flour—especially when it comes to baking. It has a sweet, buttery, and slightly nutty flavor, with a texture perfect for cakes and crumbles. It is also one of the most nutritious flour substitutes, as it is high in protein, manganese, vitamin E, and monounsaturated fats; low in carbohydrates; and contains fiber.
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James Colquhoun and Laurentine Ten Bosch are the filmmaking duo behind Food Matters, Hungry for Change, and Transcendence seasons 1 and 2 and the founders of Food Matters and FMTV. Together they founded the Food Matters community to help give people the tools (films, books, articles, and guided programs) to take charge of their own health. You can visit them online at www.foodmatters.com.
Well Being Journal reprinted this excerpt with permission from The Food Matters Cookbook: A Simple Gluten-Free Guide to Transforming Your Health One Meal at a Time by James Colquhoun and Laurentine Ten Bosch (Hay House Inc; April 2022)
References
- Deen et al. “Chemical Composition and Health Benefits of Coconut Oil: An Overview,” Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 101, No 6 (April 2021):2182-93.
- Yubero-Serrano et al. “Extra Virgin Olive Oil: More Than a Healthy Fat,” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 72, Suppelemtn 1 (July 2019): 8-17.
- Knowles et al. “Adding Nutritional Value to Meat and Milk from Pasture Fed Livestock,” New Zealand Veterinary Journal 52, No 6 (December 2004): 342-51.
- Srihari Mahadov and Peter H R Green. “Celiac Disease,” Gastroenterology & Hepatology 7, No 8 (August 2011): 554-56.
- Baiao et al. “Polyphenols from Root, Tubercles and Grains Cropped In Brazil: Chemical and Nutritional Characterization and Their Effects on Human Health and Diseases,” Nutrients 9, No 9 (September 2017): 1044.
