Get the Hexane Outta Here!

The truth behind refined cooking oils

My sister and I visiting with Ann Siever at Il Fiorello.

Happy Summer Solstice everyone! I hope you’re enjoying the outdoors, getting some sun on your body, and maybe even burning some old shit to welcome in the new.

If you read last Saturdays’ piece The Essential Oils, you got a taste for the difference between refined and unrefined oils. But I left out some of my research into the dozens of culinary fats you can choose from, and how many of these lipids are heavily processed into formulations that could be dangerous.

If you’re hearing a lot of the chatter about seed oils, let me tell you, it’s legit. Our reliance on over-processed and chemically adulterated seed oils is alarming. To keep things short last week, I didn’t go into great detail on the actual refining process. But I still wanted to share what I learned.

I also mentioned last week that olive oil was the answer to avoiding most refined oil hurdles. But after spending some time on Tuesday at a fantastic California Olive Grove, Il Fiorello, I learned even that industry isn’t immune to adulteration.

Anyway, I wanted to share more of my research with my paid subscribers (shameless plug), especially the lack of labeling for refined oils, and the growing trend of refining traditionally unrefined oils–like olive oil. With your support, I’ll continue my research into cooking fats because…enlightened omnivores want to know!

And for those of you with a free subscription, you can always consider upgrading to a paid subscription to get access to additional content like today, or the more than 30 archived articles. In the meantime, check out all the other free content like my first Enlightened Omnivore Podcast with Mushroom Expert Rachel Linzer. Every week, I post one free article, and once a month I’ll be posting a new podcast, so keep a look out!

This weekend’s upcoming written piece will build off my conversation with Rachel on Mushrooms in SPACE!!!!

Happy Solstice and be well!

The Essential Oils: Refined vs. Unrefined

One more thing to consider when researching cooking oils is how the fat was extracted? Unfortunately, most of our cooking oils–like most of our foods–are highly processed or refined during production. Referred to as “refined oils,” these fats have been chemically extracted and sometimes degummed, deodorized and even bleached before arriving at the grocery store. More discouraging, these processed oils are the most popular, user friendly, and cheapest cooking fats available. Great!