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Free Oils FREE OILS: The term refers to those fats and oils which are separated from the foodstuffs in which they naturally occur. For instance, peanut oil is a free oil and likewise we can say that lard is a free oil. Some examples of free vegetable oils are corn oil, olive oil, safflower oil, almond oil and the genetic cooking oils which may be a mixture of vegetable oils and added chemicals. These are the most commonly used oils in the typical vegetarian diet which exclude all animal fats. The fat content of these extracted oils are 100%. No proteins or carbohydrates are contained in these extracted oils. These extracted oils are very susceptible to pesticide residues. Many of the free vegetable oils have chemicals added to them to prevent them from becoming cloudy or going rancid. Unfortunately, however, almost all free oil undergoes a certain amount of oxidation and becomes rancid regardless of the preservative methods used. The great majority of all vegetable oils are heat-extracted. That is, they are raised to high temperatures in their manufacturing process in order to expel the oils from their vegetable sources. This heat causes a break down in the oil's original composition which renders it nutritionally unfit. Usually, only olive oil and avocado oil have any chance of being extracted without heating methods of some kind. ANIMAL: the most common free aqnimal oils are lard and butter. Strictly speaking these are not pure oils or fats. Butter is about 78% fat, while lard is 94% fat. Because of their high fat content and their use outside of their naturally occurring sources ( milk & meat ) they are discussed as examples of free animal oils. Like human beings, animals tend to store the accumulated pesticides, chemicals and additives from their diet in their fatty tissues. Consequently, lard and all animal fats are concentrated reservoirs of environmental poisons. The animal fats are usually superheated during their extraction and tend toward rapid rancidity almost immediately. Butter is usually coloured and salted and is suspect to the hormonal and additive contamination from the cow. Animal free oils are high in cholesterol and should not be included in a healthy diet. CHEMICAL: This is a new one. Thanks to the synthetic food industries and the availability of petroleum by-products, free oils made from chemicals are being introduced into the diet. These chemical oils appear in ice-creams, artificial coffee creamers, artificial butters etc.. Strangely enough, the people who consume these products often do so out of concern for their health. They seek to avoid cholesterol and instead eat chemical products by the petroleum industries. The plastic margarine and coffee creamer that people eat may have worse effect than the animal products they purport to replace. At least cream and butter have been part of some peoples diet for hundreds of years. Most of these chemical oils have been on the market for 15 to 20 years. No one has any idea as to the eventual harm they may cause. FATS IN COOKING: French fries, potato chips, cakes, snacks, almost all the convenience foods and junk foods eaten, contain high percentages of heated fats. When fats and oils are heated to a high degree as in cooking or frying, they become carcinogenic- capable of causing cancer. Heated oils are extremely toxic. The digestive process for the assimilation of fats requires that the fats be emulsified. Fats that have been heated in cooking cannot be emulsified or digested. Since the body cannot use them, these overheated fats must be eliminated. If the body has no use for the substance and cannot effectively eliminate it from the system, then the body stores it where it can do the least harm or walls it off by creating a tumour around it. Besides the heated fats themselves, the foods that are saturated with these cooked fats are also indigestible and poisonous. Starches such as potatoes, pastries, breads, etc.. that are soaked in hot fat become impossible for the body to convert to sugar - the essential part of starch digestion. These foods then are worse than nutritionally useless since they also place a strain on the body to eliminate them. Any food value associated with oils or fats are lost when they are heated. As fats reach 350 degrees temperatures, the standard range for frying and cooking, they begin to decompose totally and lose all their vitamins and minerals. They also prevent the absorption of any other fat-soluble vitamins and so contribute to the nutrient starvation of the body. WHOLESOME SOURCES OF FAT IN THE DIET: First, there are no such things as "fat-free foods." All foods that are part of the human dietary contain fats. Every cell of every living plant and animal contains fat. There are, of course, different fat contents of foods natural to the human diet. FOOD % FAT Vegetables 0.10 to 1.0 Fruits 0.50 to 1.0 Mother's milk 3.0 to 4.2 Avocados 15 to 22 Seeds 30 to 50 Coconut 33 to 36 Nuts 55 to 70 Notice that mother's milk, the food nature supplies for an infant to double its weight in 6 months, is composed of about 4% fat. In fact, the content of mother's milk is much closer to the fat content of fruits than it is to nuts or seeds. We could deduct from these comparisons that the need for high-fat foods ( over 5% fat ) is probably very slight or non-existent. If we do eat foods that are high in fat, we should make sure that they are of the highest possible quality and that they are eaten in small quantities appropriately combined with other foods. Until then, The Crazy Nut team