Coconut oil for cooking

Coconut oil is more easily digested than other fats because it contains medium chain fatty acids. Medium-chain fatty acids are rapidly broken down and converted into energy putting less strain on the liver, pancreas and digestive system. Medium-chain fatty acids are not deposited as fat unlike long chain fatty acid found in animal fats.

Coconut oil contains one of the same compounds - lauric acid – found in mother’s milk. Lauric acid breaks down into monolaurin after digestion which is responsible for strengthening the immune system. It improves the immune system by destroying viruses such as HIV, herpes, influenza and pathogenic bacteria.

For centuries, Asian, India and Polynesian communities have been using coconut oil as a nutritious food source and effective medicine. It forms a staple part of their diet and researchers have linked this with their low rates of heart disease, cancer and other degenerative disease.
Coconut oil for cooking

What is a refined vegetable oil?

Vegetables oils are recovered from plants by chemical extraction using solvent extracts. The most common extraction solvent is petroleum-derived hexane.

Crude vegetable oils contain trace amounts of naturally occurring materials such as proteinaceous material, free fatty acids, and phosphatides. Therefore crude vegetable oils have to be refined to remove undesirable substances.

Refined vegetable oil is a vegetable oil obtained by expression, neutralized with alkali, bleached with absorbent earth and/or activated carbon, and deodorized with steam.

Neutralization or conventional caustic refining has been protected for over a century and has become the most widely used process for purifying oils.

The typical oil refining process includes degumming, chemical or physical refining, bleaching, vinterization, and deodorization. Refined oils should not contained more than 0.25% free fatty acids and 0.10% moisture by weight.
What is a refined vegetable oil?

Corn oil as an ingredient

Corn oil is a polyunsaturated vegetable oil. It is one of the most widely used cooking oils. Corn oil is often used in deep-fat frying and in the preparation of margarine.

Corn oil is rich in unsaturated fatty acids, that is, fatty acids whose carbon atoms are deficient in hydrogen atoms. It is more strongly flavored than other oils.

Corn oil has a high level of the essential fatty acid linoleic acid and less saturated fat than many other oils. The principle end products, all in foods as consumer or institutional products, are:
*Salad and cooking oil, 100% corn oil
*Blends of butter (40%) and corn margarine (60%)
*Mayonnaise and emulsion-type salad dressings
*As an oil ingredient in a variety of package food including:
-Spaghetti sauce
-Potato chips and snack foods
-Baking mixes
-Frostings and whipped toppings
-Crumb coatings for meat and poultry
-Baked goods

To prepare corn oil, the germ is first separated from the starchy endosperm by steaming milling an sifting and is then heated and pressed to yield oil.
Corn oil as an ingredient