Even a seasoned cook will probably be baffled by the plethora of choices in cooking oil these days.
To name but a few more familiar: peanut oil, corn oil, canola oil, olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, grapeseed oil, and soybean oil.
Help is now at hand in a Consumer Council study focusing on the fatty acid compositions of various oil types for domestic cooking.
In addition to fatty acid composition, the study also drew consumers' awareness to the presence of adulteration in cooking oil in the market.
In enforcement by the Customs and Excise Department (C&ED) between February and May last year, 2 out of 58 cooking oil samples were detected to have been adulterated.
A corn oil sample was found to contain no corn oil at all but only soybean oil. The other one labeled as pure peanut oil, was found to contain only 50% peanut oil with the other half soybean oil. Soybean oil was about 30% cheaper in import price at the time.
The suppliers concerned will be charged under the Trade Descriptions Ordinance.
According to the health advice of the World Health Organization (WHO), intake of fat from various food sources should be within 15 to 30% of daily energy intake.
For example, an adult with a daily energy intake of 2,000 kcal may consume between about 33 to 67g of fat in total as 1g fat provides about 9 kcal. (One teaspoon of edible oil contains 45 kcal)
The study compared the fatty acid compositions, namely, saturated fatty acids, mono-unsaturated fatty acids and poly-unsaturated fatty acids, of the various oil types (all vegetable oils).
Since saturated fatty acids will raise "bad" cholesterol level in blood and the risk of heart disease and unsaturated fatty acids is beneficial to the health of the heart, consumers will do well to choose cooking oils low in the former and high in the latter content.
Coconut oil and palm oil topped the content of saturated fatty acids at 91.9% and 51.6% respectively.
On the other hand, mono-unsaturated fatty acids is abundant in olive oil (75%) canola oil (64.1%) and peanut oil (48.6%) while poly-unsaturated fatty acids is plentiful in grapeseed oil (73.1%), soybean oil (60%) and corn oil (57.4%).
Consumers are advised to reduce animal fats as it contains a lot of harmful saturated fats.
Plant oils, with the exception of coconut oil and palm oil, are better choices as most of them contain far less saturated fat, and more unsaturated fats.
The study noted that trans-fatty acids could be produced during the refining process of edible oils.
Reuse of cooking oil is not recommended and should be minimized as a small amount of acrolein may be produced. Acrolein is a substance found to be toxic in animal experiments though the toxic effect from small amount of acrolein in edible oil to human is yet to be confirmed.
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