Is cooking with lard good or bad? What oil should be the healthiest?

Is cooking with lard good or bad? What oil should be the healthiest? Lard refers to the fat extracted from the specific internal organs of pigs and the oil extracted from subcutaneous tissues such as abdomen and back. We usually use lard for two purposes, namely cooking and making cakes, especially cooking. Many people think that putting lard in cooking will make the dishes more nutritious and fragrant.

Benefits of adding lard to cooking

Putting lard in cooking is popular mainly because it tastes good. [1] Lard has a special flavor, which is incomparable to other oils. Even the most common vegetables with lard will become very attractive. This special taste comes from the decomposition products of trace protein and glyceride in oil at high temperature during cooking. Lard is rich in cholesterol, and people always talk about the discoloration of cholesterol. Actually, it is not. Cholesterol participates in the synthesis of cell membrane and is also an essential substance for human body. It is very necessary to eat animal fat properly.

Is it always good to put vegetable oil in cooking?

Vegetable oil provides a variety of essential nutrients for human health, mainly containing vitamins E, K, Ca, Fe, P, K and other minerals and fatty acids. Moreover, fatty acids in vegetable oil can make skin moist and shiny. [2-3]

But at high temperature, vegetable oil is easy to oxidize, which will not only reduce the nutritional value of oil, but also produce many harmful substances. Hydrogenated vegetable oil contains a lot of trans fatty acids, which are more harmful to human body than saturated fatty acids. For every 2% increase in trans fatty acids in the diet, the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases will increase by 25%.

Time magazine once published that hydrogenated vegetable oil does not exist in nature, which means that under natural circumstances, the human body cannot absorb and digest this oil. After eating, it will cause damage to the liver, and then destroy the human cell membrane, resulting in cell defects, affecting cell replication and regeneration in the future. Long-term and large-scale use will cause premature aging symptoms.

Vegetable oil is similar to soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower seed oil, safflower oil and wheat germ oil. And they contain super-high polyunsaturated fatty acids, so these oils are not suitable for high-temperature frying, let alone fried food. If you have to fry it, the color of the oil will become darker and the texture will become sticky after frying for a short time, and a large number of harmful substances will be produced gradually by oxidative polymerization. The ratio of saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids contained in peanut oil is about 3: 4: 3. The oleic acid, that is, monounsaturated fatty acids, is about half of the amount of tea seed oil. It is rich in vitamin E, has good flavor and heat resistance, and is suitable for general cooking. [4]

conclusion

Therefore, corn oil with high polyunsaturated fatty acids content is not suitable for repeated heating and frying; Peanut oil, low in polyunsaturated fatty acids, is suitable for cooking, but not for frying and frying; However, lard and other saturated fatty acids are high in content and crisp, which is suitable for high-temperature stir-frying and frying.