Not All Cooking Oils Causes Heart Disease
This is definitely good news for fans of fried snacks french fries. Researchers in Spain found that cooking and frying with olive oil or sunflower oil does not give adverse effects to the heart. Olive oil certainly has many benefits for health as it also supports vitamin needs.
It is always known that risk factors that cause heart disease, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and obesity, are often associated with the habit of eating fried foods. Therefore, experts are trying to investigate the relationship.
For the purposes of research, experts observe the cooking habits and health of almost 41 thousand adults aged between 29 to 69 years old who did not have heart disease when the study began. The duration of the study was 11 years. The participants were divided into two groups depending on how often they ate fried foods.
Experts say that because the study was conducted in Spain, which often uses olive and sunflower oil for cooking, its findings may not be applicable in other countries due to the use of other types of cooking oil. For example, when solid foods are fried in oil and reused (such as common practice in Western countries), it absorbs fat from the oil that causes an increase in calories in food.
According to a research report published online on January 24, 2012 in the British Medical Journal, 606 diseases were known associated with heart disease and 1,134 deaths occurred during the period of continued research.
“In Mediterranean countries, where olive oil and sunflower oil are commonly used for frying and the people consume a lot of fried foods, both inside and outside their homes, association between fried food consumption with the risk of coronary heart disease or death was not revealed,” says lead researcher, Pilar Guallar-Castillon, from the Autonomous University of Madrid, as quoted by Health Day.
Meanwhile, according to Michael Leitzmann of the University of Regensburg in Germany, these findings challenge the belief that ‘frying food is generally bad for the heart’.
But he adds that this ‘does not mean that frequently eating fish and chips will not provide any consequences’. Leitzmann confirmed that specific aspects of frying foods, such as the type of oil used, is important to note.
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