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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

Over the years I've learned to take advice like this with a large grain of salt. Every couple of years this sort of advice seems to get reversed. I still remember reading about olive oil being bad for frying because it was supposedly less resistant to high temperatures and decomposed into something not too healthy.

It's been the same with eggs, coffee, and many other things.

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>I still remember reading about olive oil being bad for frying because it was supposedly less resistant to high temperatures and decomposed into something not too healthy.

This hasn't changed. Olive oil has one of the lowest smoke points of all cooking oils. Once it's burning, you're eating all kinds of things, some of which aren't good for you.

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/05/cooking-fats-101-whats-a-...]

Olive oil's smoke point is highly dependent on the variety. Refined olive oil is just as useful for high-heat frying as just about any other. Extra virgin, on the other hand, is not something you want to cook with.

In Turkey we have a variety known as "naturel sizma", which is what comes off the olives before pressing even begins. In contrast to other olive oil varieties, it's appearance is cloudy, and you can barely warm it before it starts smoking.

Really? I only ever cook with extra virgin olive oil. I really can't tell the difference :P

You need this: http://www.oreilly.com/free/cooking-for-geeks-2ed.csp

Seriously your cooking can get a lot better aka will taste a ton better because your not cooking at the right temperature for most of your food.

PS My wife said the same thing when we got married. She would now slap out of any one's hands if they even tried to use Virgin Olive Oil on anything besides salad dressings and hummus.

PSS Food channel quick cooking shows are really poor.

I agree in general, but in many parts of Italy they generally fry everything in extra virgin olive oil.

Olive Oil and Virgin Olive Oil have different smoke points. Are you sure it is Extra Virgin Olive Oil???

That's because possibly there wasn't a difference. http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-extra-virgin-o...

The linked article doesn't mention anything about things "not being good for you". It simply says that if you burn the oil it might not taste very good.

Nor does it say that Olive oil has the lowest smoke point, except Extra Virgin.

Which is just as well: the idea that olive oil is particularly bad for cooking is utter nonsense. There's no evidence for it at all. If you have can link to a peer reviewed Chemistry or Medical paper that says differently, then I'm willing to change my opinion.

> This hasn't changed

Serious Eats has at least given conflicting advice on the topic less than a year after that article was published: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/03/cooking-with-olive-oil-fa...

Which I think perfectly illustrates the problem.

This is true if you're heating oil in a pan, but once there's food in the pan, the temperature stays close to the boiling point of water, and almost no oils will smoke at that temperature.

That's because "olive oil" is not a monolithic substance, it is a category of substances. Extra light olive oil, which is clearer and lacking most of the flavour compounds and solids of extra virgin olive oil, is just fine for frying and sautéing.

And how. I had no idea.

After reading about counterfeit Italian olive oil, I tried California Olive Ranch. Good stuff! Then I pre-ordered some of their harvest reserve. Wow! Also makes for easy Christmas gifts.

Now I randomly pick a grower from this list. Mostly good so far.

CA Olive Oil Council https://www.cooc.com/2015-competition-winners/

> with a large grain of salt

This made me stumble, as in this context I wasn't sure if you were being literal or figurative.

Depends who's lobbying I guess, butter vs margarine, coffee vs tea, lard vs sunflower oil. Joking aside traditional western Europe cuisine was based on lard frying (people also ate large amount of eggs which is also supposed to be bad for you) and many of them reached 100 years and more. Of course env pollution was not that big, but limited calories intake plus animal fats and physical activity contributed to their longevity greatly.

Untreated lard and hydrogenated lard are basically two different fats (I mean technically the difference is fairly small but it's as different as any two vegetable oils)

Dunno how bad burnt olive oil can be for you. But there certainly are many kinds of olive oils, and some of them (especially extra virgin) are very likely to get very bad taste when heated to high temperatures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oil#Types_of_oils_and_...

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