 I'm Chef Robin. Welcome to our hands in the kitchen workshop. Today we're going to be talking about fats in the heart healthy kitchen, fats and oils. First we want to kind of get a handle on what fat actually is, the benefit and harmful effects of fat, too little fat, too much fat, then delve into the meaty types of fats because that's where it really gets confusing. There are different kinds of fats in our diet. Some are more beneficial than others. You want to speak about that and then actually take fats and oils into the kitchen and figure out which are the best ones to use for which item, which cooking techniques we want to do. So let's talk first about what fat actually is. So fat is one of the body's basic nutrients that provide energy. Along with proteins and carbohydrates, fats are really essential. There's an RDA for fats, the recommended daily allowance which is recognized by the American Cancer Association, the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association recommends total fats 20 to 35 percent of your daily calorie intake. So if you think of a plate and that's all of the calories that you can have for the day, the amount of fat as far as calorie intake is one little fifth slice of that plate. So not a huge amount. Four fifths of the rest of the plate should be something other than fat. So knowing the American diet, we know that probably people are getting way too much fat. So we really want to try and stay in that parameter of 20 percent to 35 percent of our daily calorie allowance or 44 to 78 grams. I'm saying grams because that's what's usually listed on the nutritional label on products in the grocery store so you can actually see what kind of fat content that product has you're taking home. Saturated fats we're going to talk about. The recommendation of that is much lower. Only 10 percent of our diet should actually be coming from saturated fats. So to boil that all down one gram of fat is going to be equal to nine calories. It sounds like a little amount but it's really remarkable how much fat is actually in things that we eat. So fat is essential in our diet. We actually need to consume fat for energy. We need to consume fat for healthy cell growth. We need to consume fat to protect our organs. There's a little bit, should be a little bit of fat around our organs to protect them from damage too much fat. We know a little damage but we do need some nutrient absorption. Eating some fats helps us to absorb different nutrients from different foods and also hormone production. All of those five things our body requires fat to make it happen. So you can't have a total total total lean diet. You need to have some fat for energy, cell growth, organ projection, and so on. But as we know most people consume consume consume and consume too much fat and that leads to obesity. That leads to rising, raising that cholesterol. That leads to an increase of heart disease and increased risk of stroke and increased risk of cancer because we're just overloading our body with excess that it doesn't know what to do with and what happens is bad things happen. So we really want to kind of like be aware of and stay within the limits and the recommendations that are given us as far as fat is concerned. We're going to talk about these four different types of fats. There's also a fifth fat trans fat which is really dangerous to us but most food manufacturers now do not allow trans fats in their products. We'll talk about that a little bit more. But let's start off with the one that was also recommended to keep at 10% or less. That is saturated fat. If you think about the word saturated a towel that's saturated with water can be rung out. It's so full of something. In the towels case it's water but saturated fat is fat substance on fat. So it's really dramatically not coming with anything else but calories for you. And saturated fats are usually in a solid form. Saturated fats one of the most familiar to us is butter. It comes from an animal. Saturated fats mostly come from animals. This is vegetable shortening. Vegetable shortening comes from various plant oils but it goes through a process called hydrogenation that makes it change into a solid. That process takes away any beneficial nutrients that those plant items might have had in order to become this spreadable creamy substance called shortening. The reason people use shortening is because in cooking process flour has gluten. Gluten tends to become a long protein when it is mixed with water or kneaded into bread which is great. It becomes these long strands of protein that make our bread rise up and our loaf of bread stays straight and sliceable so that we have a nice slice of bread. But in a pie crust that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for something flaky. So shortening shortens the gluten strands. It tends to coat all of the gluten strands in an oily substance and shortens them so that you get that flake in that pie crust or biscuit that you wouldn't get by adding just a different fat. Other bad fats and I hate to label any food as bad. Bad is not eating food. We all need to eat food. They're called the nutritional bad guys because they're the ones that tend to clog our arteries, tend to make us more overweight, tend to not be assimilated in our body in a healthy way. So that's why they have gotten this label as the nutritional bad guys because they don't really bring anything healthy to the table other than just fat on fat. Margarine is also a highly processed ingredient. Lard comes straight from animals. If you look at lard or butter or shortening and you see that solidness you kind of can almost visualize your little heart arteries or your blood arteries getting clogged up with that. So the good fats or better fats for you are the mono unsaturated fats which are liquid at room temperature. The most highly regarded oil or fat is extra virgin extra virgin olive oil or olive oil. It comes from olives, they get pressed, that oil that comes from them then gets refined but it's minimal. When it says extra virgin olive oil that means that it's the first pressing of the olives and the oil that comes from that. And so it's not really adulterated in very many ways. It's pretty much a clean product. It's filtered from the olive skins and pits and otherwise but it's pretty much what you see is what you get. You should always look for a dark bottle because olive oil can go rancid and we don't want sunlight or harsh grocery store lights to be on that oil. Once it's open it can be kept table shelf safe for up to two months. Other good mono unsaturated fats are canola oil which comes from the ramp seed. Canola is actually Canadian oil. People think that there's a plant called canola. There's really not a canola. But canola is pretty much an all-around go-to in the kitchen. It has a very subtle taste and it can be used for quite a few different items and products. I didn't bring an example of peanut oil. Peanut oil has a very distinct peanut taste. It does have what's called a high smoke point. It is a healthy fat for high heat cooking. So it's because of the flavor of the peanut oil it's not used necessarily for just cooking, everyday cooking in the kitchen. Olive oil, canola, and peanut are mono unsaturated fats which are healthier for you than the saturated. Mono means one time. So one time it has had something happen to it. Polly unsaturated fats are the next down on the line. They're also in a liquid form at room temperature. They also come just solely from plants. Examples of those are sesame oil. Sesame oil, sorry I have my hand on the label. Sesame oil. This is toasted sesame oil. It has a very distinct flavor. Coconut oil is a polyunsaturated fat. Not a lot of research has been done on coconut oil. It is thought to be not quite as healthy for you as some other oils. There's varying differences of opinion about coconut oil. Some people are all about it. Other health professionals are saying be hesitant. Don't make it your go to oil. It's much healthier for you to use more olive oil or use more canola oil. This is too expensive to use as a regular cooking product, but avocado oil is incredibly healthy for you. The raw avocado is a great way to get fat in your diet just with a little lemon and a little salt or even yourself. Again it's the process of going from this to oil or from olives to olive oil. You want to have the process be as less steps as possible. The more processed or kind of manipulated an item is from its raw form to the form that you see on the shelf is more time that the manufacturer can add other things to it that aren't necessarily healthy for you, whether they be added sweeteners, whether they be added fats, whether they be added colors. But if you can get most of your fat product or most of your fat needs from something that's not as adulterated as something like hydrogenated vegetable oil, it's better. So you want to try and keep as close to the raw form of an item as possible. Let's talk about omega-3 fat. Omega-3 fat is really something that has gotten a lot of air time I guess in terms of being something that's really great for you and a great brain food. You hardly ever see salmon recommended without somebody talking about the omega-3 fat and salmon and how healthy it is for you. Omega-3 fat actually comes in other plant and animal forms too other than just salmon and it's just a matter of making yourself aware. I was really surprised and excited to find out that one of the plant forms that contains omega-3 is Brussels sprouts. It's not in cabbage, it's not in broccoli, it's not in cauliflower, but it's in Brussels sprouts. What better idea to get Brussels sprouts in your diet in order to have great healthy omega-3 fat brain food? Also tuna. Tuna packed in water is a very inexpensive protein and fat form that your body is receptive to and that your pocketbook can actually afford. Sardines not my favorite go-to but they definitely do have omega-3 fat, walnuts and other nuts. Almonds have omega-3 fats which are healthy for you on a modified basis not handfuls but you know for snacking and flax seeds and chia seeds sprinkling them on cereals, flax seeds into your smoothie or another way to get this brain fat into your diet in a delivery system that's healthy for you. So saturated fats are the ones that we want to steer away from as far as day-to-day use. Monosaturated fats are the ones that we want to use more often in the kitchen. Polyunsaturated for specific reasons we might want to have them in the kitchen for flavors. And omega-3 is something that we would want to include in our diet on a regular basis and so again tuna is a great form of that in Brussels sprouts. Why not? I think that's great. So I made a little pros and cons and uses as far as the different fats and oils in the kitchen. Remembering which ones are better and healthier for you and I didn't use every single fat or oil that's out there. I just picked five that I feel like we are all familiar with and that we probably all have and that maybe we need to know a little bit more about in terms of whether we actually want to make use of them or not. So the first one is butter and again we spoke about butter being a saturated fat. Okay butter definitely is tasty and butter definitely has its use in the kitchen but if you are already maybe having too much of a weight issue or the doctor says that you need to start cutting back on fats, butter is not the go-to to put on your toast. Maybe tahini would be better. It is tasty, it is available, it is relatively inexpensive compared to some other items that we spend money on but high high calories, straight fat. It's a saturated fat, it's also it has to be refrigerated. Okay so it doesn't have a long shelf life and butter in the refrigerator also tends to pick up every other smell of anything else in your refrigerator. So it's just a very delicate product that maybe we don't need to rely on quite so much as we do. People do use it in baking, you can use it in moderate temperature cooking and some people do use it as a spread or topping but if you have issues with weight come away from that. The next one I want to talk about we did speak about shortening, how shortening got its name. Shortening is a very processed food. Shortening comes from the palm tree kernel, it comes from coconut oil, it comes from any number of different sorts of plants that are put together and then put through a process called hydrogenation that turns it into this spreadable fat. It brings nothing to the table, it brings no nutrition to the table. It's very high in calories, it will make you a flaky biscuit that then you'll put butter on and it's just like double on double fat but use it sparingly. It's not a healthy product for daily use. Canola oil, this is sometimes considered some people's workhorse in the kitchen. It can be used for sauteing, it has very little flavor at all. It can be used in baking for the same reason that it just has a very subtle flavor and doesn't add anything that detracts from what you're eating. It's low in saturated fat, it's relatively inexpensive and it has a fairly long shelf life. But it is a fat, again it is a fat. If you use too much canola oil on a day to day basis, if you go over that RDA that was suggested you're going to get inflammation just like with other fat products. So that's an extreme amount of use of canola, but some people go to extremes, we know, we've seen it. Sauteing, baking, even making salad dressings, you can use canola. Spressable oil is inexpensive and it has a long shelf life that is about the be in and end all of why it might be in your kitchen. It really is a very processed again product like shortening. It comes from a lot of different sort of plants to make vegetable oil and then it also goes through a hydrogenation process to keep it in a liquid form, but it does not have any nutritional value. It can also contain trans fats which is something that happens during hydrogenation which is very harmful for you and has been implicated in those other issues that we spoke about, obesity, heart disease, stroke risk, cancer risk. So when I was researching the only and I was looking at different chefs and what they were speaking about as far as different oils go, what they said about vegetable oil was you can use it to grease your baking pans and that's about it. That was all they had to say as far as it having a good use in your kitchen. My workhouse, my workhorse in the kitchen is olive oil. You do not have to buy extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil like I said is the first pressing and it to me is the most flavorful and because I like to make salad dressings and I like to have things that have that olive flavor to them. I usually get extra virgin olive oil. It has a low smoke point, smoke point, which is the point at which the oil will start to burn and completely change in composition on top of your stove when heat is added. So for sauteing you need to be very aware of that if extra virgin olive oil is the one you go to. Also on the shelf is just plain olive oil which has a higher smoke point. So if you are cooking a lot at the stove with olive oil you might want to consider just getting olive oil in general and maybe using that for your salad dressings as well. It will not have the incredible punch of an extra virgin but it will still be very tasty and it will also be able to go at a higher heat on top of the stove without setting off your fire on. The other oils that I have here are kind of we talked about coconut oil. I wouldn't use it for cooking. I wouldn't use it on a regular basis. It has a very pronounced coconut flavor. It's something that you might want to consider checking in with your health professional before it becomes a major part of your diet. The rulings are out as to whether it's very healthy for you or not. Some people claim it's the greatest thing ever. Other people not so much. Sesame oil is a very flavorful oil. It can be used for dressings. It can be used on the stove top. It definitely has a lower smoke point so it can begin to fill up your kitchen with smoke if you have it on too high heat. And then the avocado oil. Just remember these are for topping dishes with these specialty oils. You wouldn't be able to necessarily afford to cook with avocado oil and it also would give that distinct flavor but it is a healthy oil and maybe if just if you eat a lot of salads in the summertime you might want to have this just to dress your salad. Very tasty. I just want you to kind of take away from this little workshop on fats that there are distinct reasons to use one fat over the other. There are distinct reasons not to have a certain fat in your diet at all especially if you tend to be overweight or are trying to lose weight. But that fat is essential. You shouldn't cut it out of your diet in extreme manner but try to get it in your diet through your food or your food items such as a more healthier oil to use on a regular basis. Anyway, thanks. We'll be seeing you in the kitchen.