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How good (or bad) is sunflower oil for cooking? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by XiELEd@lemmy.world to c/askscience@kbin.social

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I've seen this question asked on Reddit multiple times, and the comments usually say that sunflower oil is not healthy because it contains high amounts of linoleic acid, HOWEVER, all of them were in the context of the high amounts of Omega-6 in the American diet which doesn't apply to me... so I would like some answers with less American diet bias.

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[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

I use extra virgin olive oil for marinades and salad dressing (and an olive oil spread instead of butter or margarine) and rapeseed oil (usually just labelled as vegetable oil here in the UK) for frying. The latter has a high smoke point, is lower in saturated fat compared to sunflower oil (also higher in monounsaturated and lower in polyunsaturated fats, a bit like olive oil although that has even better proportions of the two) and has better levels of Omega 3.

Here's a bit of a review.

And why you might want to avoid sunflower oil:

vegetable fats can change during the cooking process, breaking down into harmful chemicals, including aldehydes.

...

The stability of the oil is important too: some oils, like sunflower oil, are more likely to oxidise when heated – or combine with oxygen in the air – producing harmful compounds in greater quantities. A 2012 study by researchers at Spain’s University of the Basque Country reported that aldehydes can react with our hormones and enzymes.

With the issues with sunflower oil after the invasion of Ukraine the UK's Food Standards Agency drew up a report about the substitution of other oils, which has plenty of data.

A switch away from sunflower oil should reduce levels of heart disease, following this paper:

Zatonski et al. [25] examined trends of mortality due to coronary heart disease (CHD) and fat consumption in eleven Eastern and Central European countries from 1990 until 2002. They observed that, in countries where sunflower oil remained the primary oil (such as Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria), the rate of CHD remained stable from 1990 onward. Meanwhile, in countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which started to use rapeseed oil, a strong decline in CHD mortality was observed. This finding is confirmed in our study. Although both oils are rich in PUFAs, rapeseed oil contains more α-linoleic acid (ALA, C18:3), an omega-3 fatty acid with atheroprotective properties. Moreover, ALA is partly converted to eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which may protect against CHD and cerebrovascular diseases [26, 27].