Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
What kind of fat you use in biscuits changes how crunchy they are, how easily they break, and how they taste.
Descriptive
Biscuits made with butter have more cholesterol than those made with other oils or fat mixes.
Biscuits made with a mix of coconut and sunflower oil have more saturated fat but last longer without going rancid than other versions.
Biscuits made with high-oleic sunflower oil have more of a certain healthy fat and vitamin E than those made with palm oil, which could make them nutritionally different.
This plant extract is way more powerful at fighting free radicals than most other wild berries tested in similar lab tests.
Quantitative
Plain avocado oil becomes unsafe for frying after about 10 days of heating, but with this plant extract, it can last 15 days before reaching the same safety limit.
Even though the ether extract has fewer antioxidants, the ones it has stick better to the oil because they’re more oil-friendly, which helps protect it.
Mechanistic
When you heat avocado oil slowly in air, it breaks down in about five or six clear stages, not all at once.
The alcohol-based plant extract works better than the ether-based one at protecting oil from breaking down when heated, because it has more antioxidants.
After heating for 6 days, the oil with plant extract has much less of the bad chemicals that form when oil goes bad, compared to plain oil.
Avocado oil is mostly made of healthy monounsaturated fats, with some polyunsaturated fats and a smaller amount of saturated fats, which makes it prone to going rancid when heated.
The alcohol-based plant extract is four times stronger at fighting free radicals than the ether-based one, according to lab tests.
The plant extract made with alcohol has way more natural antioxidant chemicals than the one made with ether or the oil itself.
When you heat avocado oil with this plant extract, it breaks down much slower than plain oil, so it stays safe to use for frying longer.
Adding a special plant extract to avocado oil makes it harder for the oil to break down when heated, so it lasts longer before going bad.
Mixing olive oil with more Picual (which has more monounsaturated fat) makes it less likely to form gummy polymers when heated, compared to mixing with more Arbequina.
The green color of olive oil comes from chlorophyll, and the amount varies a lot between types — Picual and its blends are the greenest, Manzanilla is the least green.
All olive oils start out with a good balance of fats that lower bad cholesterol, but when you cook them really hot, that balance gets ruined — especially in oils that started with less of the good fats.
Cooking olive oil at a lower heat doesn’t change its inflammatory potential much, but cooking it really hot makes it more likely to promote inflammation in the body.
Some olive oils have a better balance of two types of fats (omega-6 and omega-3) than others — Picual, Manzanilla, Cornicabra, and Sensation are in the healthy range, but Arbequina and its blends are way off.
All olive oils have a lot of one type of antioxidant called alpha-tocopherol — but the amount varies: Cornicabra has the most, Manzanilla has the least.
Some olive oils — like Picual and Cornicabra — hold up better when heated than others, like Arbequina and Manzanilla, because they lose fewer healthy compounds and form less gunk when cooked.
Heating olive oil really hot makes it get gunkier — about 4.5 times more than at a lower heat — but even at the highest temperature, it doesn’t get gunky enough to be considered unsafe by food safety standards.
When you cook olive oil at very high heat, the good unsaturated fats break down faster than the saturated ones — especially in oils that started with more unsaturated fats, making them less healthy for cooking.