How is Olive Oil a Super Food?

How is Olive Oil a Super Food?
Leonardo Olive Oil January 24, 2017 Benefits of Olive Oil, Cooking with Olive Oil 7615 Views

Make sure you don’t overlook cooking oil when you make your list of healthy foods, as research studies suggest that olive oil can help improve the nutritional content of whatever you cook in it.

It has been observed that most of the people find themselves sandwiched between choosing healthy oil and tasty oil while setting their preferences for cooking oil. Olive oil is also an answer to such confusion.
The various commercially available variants of olive oil including olive pomace oil, olive oil – extra virgin and extra virgin oil ensure that you can enjoy taste while maintaining good health. These variants, in accordance with the need, can be used for cooking, spreading, dressing and frying foodstuffs.

And to know how cooking your food using olive oil can help you stay healthy, check out the olive oil benefits which make it a super food to look up to:

100% Natural
Being the only edible fat that can be consumed as a fruit product with no added preservatives and additives, extra virgin olive oil has the natural goodness of bioactive entities, called as oleic acids. Oleic acid is known to have beneficial effects on cancer, autoimmune, wound healing and inflammatory diseases.

Protective Effect against Cardiovascular Diseases
The use of olive oil in cooking is known to reduce the risk of obesity and heart diseases.
According to researchers, consumption of olive oil, especially the extra-virgin variety, may help reduce risks of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality in people having high risk of cardiovascular diseases. An important component of Mediterranean diet, the health benefits of olive oil against diabetes, a co-morbid condition to CVDs, is attributed to rich contents of monounsaturated fats (MUFA).

Helps you Stay Young
Rich in polyphenols, extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is known to reduce the risk of age-related morbid conditions and ensure longer life expectancy.
Oleic acid forms 85% of MUFA in olive oil, which also contributes to its age-related benefits. In addition, olive oil is also found to be decrease the risk of age-related macular degeneration, a common eye condition and major cause of vision loss in people aged 50 and above.

Takes care of your liver
Olive is known to keep your liver healthy. Studies suggest a significant improvements in liver conditions including fatty liver in people consuming olive oil while showing beneficial effects on measures of insulin resistance, liver span and lipids.

Olive oil is a super food. No doubts about that. And to avail the benefits, you just have to use it for cooking. With different variants available in the market, you can now use it for cooking anything from poori to pasta. However, you need to know about using the right variant for your dishes.

Your Go-to Oil for All Your Preparations
For conventional Indian cooking, the use of Extra Virgin Olive Oil is still very limited. While it is ideal for salad dressings, dips and flavoring, you would need to use other variants of olive oil for preparations that require frying, sauteing and stir frying etc. Here is a brief information the same:

Olive Pomace Oil: Ideal for frying food and all other forms of Indian Cooking

Olive Oil-Extra Light: Ideal for stir frying, sauteing and shallow frying

Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Recommended as a healthy alternative to butter, it is ideal for salads dressings, pastas, dips and other forms of flavoring.

 

 

References:

1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929050/

2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26775852

3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23278117

4 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929050/

5 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139807/

6 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23370395/

7 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4965131/

8 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24625239