Hello, I love cooking Indian dishes and have been using ExtraVirgin Olive oil for a while.?

recently I have been told that heat is the biggest enemy of EV Olive Oil. but I am aware its the best type of olive oil as well. Now I cant decide whether to continue using EV Olive oil for my cooking or not. Please advice. Please give alternate suggestions if possible. ThanksHello, I love cooking Indian dishes and have been using ExtraVirgin Olive oil for a while.?
Most Indian cooks (esp in India) prefer to use either veg or canola oil for cooking Indian food, it imparts a cleaner taste.


Indians dont use olive oil.





Alot of Indians also use ghee (clarified butter), it has a high burning temp but is also high in fat. On the plus side, it's an anti-oxidant.





I suggest you try cooking with different types of oil and see which you prefer best (both as a cooking medium and taste wise). Try vegetable, canola or even blends. I know alot of people also use safflower or grapeseed oil. Peanut oil is good for frying.Hello, I love cooking Indian dishes and have been using ExtraVirgin Olive oil for a while.?
Heat is the biggest enemy of *all* edible oils, as it causes oxidation.





Don't sweat it. I use peanut oil for my french fryer and for baking, and use EVOO for salad oil. For frying, I either use EVOO or I use animal fats, such as bacon drippings.
hi- best to use normal olive oil for frying- extra virgin is best used in salad dressings and other low temperature cooking- whole point of extra virgin is the flavour- as soon as you blast it with heat you lose most of the aromatic flavours.
Heat is only an enemy of E.V.O. oil in as much as it destroys the health benefits of this particular oil. Indian food is better served by using Ghee or peanut oil. If you have to use olive oil and heat you might as well use just a plain 100% olive oil that is not extra virgin.
use ghee. Its a sort of butter actual indians use not Olive Oil
Heating the oil up by itself can ruin it if you let it heat too long but once you start adding food it's fine. Keep using it, there is nothing better.
Some interesting facts, highlighted in a new scientific review from Spain, suggest that extra virgin olive oil may hold the key to a public health mystery.











It all starts with the famous “Seven Countries Study”, which was the first to find heart-health benefits in the so-called Mediterranean Diet.











Subsequent studies confirmed that people living in the countries that surround the ancient sea enjoy better heart health, compared with Northern Europe or the US.











But as a reader reminded us recently, folks at the Weston A. Price foundation, whose domain is traditional diets and their health effects, have taken pains to highlight some inconvenient truths about the Seven Countries Study and the ';official'; Mediterranean Diet.











It turns out that the Greek and Italian peoples in the Seven Countries Study ate diets that bear little resemblance to the the idealized ';Mediterranean Diet';, to which most nutrition gurus say we should aspire: one full of veggies, fruits, beans, and fish, with modest amounts of whole grains and olive oil and only small amounts of meat, poultry, and cheese.











Indeed, such a diet is ideal for optimal health. But it isn’t what most Mediterranean people ate then or eat today.











Typical Italians, Greeks and Spaniards of the 1960’s and 70’s, living when and where the famed Seven Countries Study occurred, ate lots of meat, cheese, refined white bread, white pasta, not much fish at all, and modest amounts of greens. And that picture hasn’t changed much in the intervening decades.











The author of a new olive oil health review puts her finger on an explanation that’s obvious in hindsight, because she and other researchers have found a key part of the missing puzzle of the Mediterranean Diet: the potent antioxidants in extra virgin grade oil, or EVOO for short.











As Barcelona’s Dr. Maria-Isabel Covas writes in her new paper, “Olive oil is the main fat in the Mediterranean diet. The wide range of anti-atherogenic [plaque-preventing/stabilizing] effects associated with olive oil consumption could contribute to explain the low rate of cardiovascular mortality found in Southern European Mediterranean countries, in comparison with other western countries, despite a high prevalence of CHD [coronary heart disease] factors.” (Covas MI 2007)











By ';... high prevalence of CHD [coronary heart disease] factors'; she means the high smoking rates and diets full of pork, sausage, cheese, and white bread actually found among people in Mediterranean regions.














The monounsaturated “Scandinavian Diet”: More clues to the mystery





The fatty acid that predominates in olive oil – a monounsaturated one called oleic acid -- is also one of the main fatty acids in the animal foods consumed widely in Western diets, such as poultry and pork.











Surprised? It gets better.











In a Swedish study published six years ago, comparing Swedish and Spanish women, the Spanish ladies clearly ate more fruit and vegetables than the Swedish women did ... no big surprise there.











The shocker was that blood levels of oleic acid were higher in the Swedes than in women from Spain’s Seville, and those levels correlated closely with the Swedes’ meat intake (Chajes V et al 2001).











Clearly, monounsaturated oleic acid alone is not what gives olive oil its heart-healthy properties, or we’d all be talking about the wonders of the “Scandinavian Diet”.











So why, despite eating diets that are not very heart-healthy – aside, that is, from using olive oil in place of butter and corn or canola oil – do Mediterranean peoples enjoy markedly lower rates of heart disease?











The answer lies in olive oil … but not, as we’ve seen, for the monounsaturated reasons once thought … at least not the whole answer.











Mono fats form hearty foundation … but aren’t enough





All grades of olive oil -- which contain equal proportions of monounsaturated oleic acid -- do six good things:











Raise HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels


Lower triglyceride levels


Lower the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol


Reduce oxidation of LDL cholesterol*


Lower blood pressure


Reduce damage to DNA from free radicals


*Oxidation of LDL cholesterol by free radicals plays a key role in promoting cardiovascular disease. Using olive oil as your primary dietary fat fills LDL particles with oxidation-resistant monounsaturated oleic acid, instead of the polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acids that predominate in other vegetable oils, like corn and safflower.











Until recently, these half-dozen beneficial effects had been attributed solely to monounsaturated fatty acids, which predominate only in olive oil and macadamia nut oil.











When in 2004 the US FDA began allowing olive oil labels to declare that eating about two tablespoons (23 g) of olive oil daily could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, they specified that labels had to say that this was “… due to the monounsaturated fat (MUFA) in olive oil.”











But that notion’s been clearly proven wrong.











In fact, extra virgin grade oil (EVOO) – the only kind with its antioxidants intact – appears substantially better for heart health, compared with “virgin” grade oil and especially with antioxidant-free “pure” grade, which can now simply be labeled “olive oil”.











We now know this, thanks to largely to the landmark “EurOlive” study, co-authored by Dr. Covas, on which we reported last fall (see “Extra Virgin Olive Oil Confirmed as Best Cardiac Prevention Choice”).











That trial examined the effects of the three grades of olive oil – which have very different amounts of antioxidant phenols, ranging from none to lots (in EVOO) -- on blood levels of triglycerides and cholesterol, and damage to blood lipids and arterial tissues from free oxygen radicals: so-called “oxidative stress”. (Covas MI, Nyyssonen K, et al 2006)











In the end, the high-phenol (Extra Virgin) olive oil outperformed the other two oils (Virgin and Pure grade) when it came to enhancing three factors helpful to cardiovascular health:











Lowest ratio of total cholesterol “good” HDL cholesterol


Biggest rise in HDL cholesterol


Biggest drop in levels of oxidized LDL cholesterol


And other studies prove that the phenol antioxidants in EVOO – which are scarcer in Virgin grades and utterly absent from Pure grade oils -- do wonders for the health and performance of the endothelial tissue that lines our arteries: a key factor in cardiac health.











All three oils reduced triglyceride levels to the same extent, which suggests that the monounsaturated oleic acid in all olive oils is largely responsible for this particular cardiovascular benefit.











You don’t take huge amounts of EVOO to help your heart. As Dr. Covas says in her new evidence review, “The fact that phenolic compounds from olive oil are bioavailable … even from doses … lower than those reported as usual in the Mediterranean diet … reinforces their possible protective role ...”











It looks like the actual diets of Italy, Greece, and Spain aren’t much like what's described as ';The Mediterranean Diet” … no matter how healthful this idealized version of Mediterranean reality has proven to be in many studies testing it.











And it’s increasingly clear that EVOO is something of a magic bullet that counteracts what in reality are some otherwise nutritionally mediocre Mediterranean-region diets that happen, fortunately, to feature the world’s heart-healthiest food oil very heavily
for real high heat or deep fat frying use peanut oil ,use evoo for saute and all other things