Reusing Cooking Oil Is Linked To Dangers To Our Health

Warming up your foods with used cooking oil can be an extremely bad idea, scientists warn. Reusing cooking oil, especially sunflower oil, olive oil or other type of vegetable oil for re-heating your meals is linked to a great deal of harmful effects and increased risks of very serious diseases, including certain types of cancer, brain disorders, and many more. These findings of the expert group from the University of the Basque Country, Spain, were recently published in Food Chemistry magazine and reported in many world’s mass media, in order to rise public awareness about the issue.

Spanish scientists carried out a series of lab tests using three types of oils. Those were two vegetable oils, namely sunflower oil and olive oil, and flaxseed oil. The latter is not commonly used by us for cooking, but has been chosen for the experiment as an excellent source of omega 3 fatty acids. The experiment involved continuous heating of the mentioned three types of oil in an industrial fryer at the temperature of about 190 C. The oils underwent a prolonged heating process for 40 hours (8 hours a day) for olive oil and sunflower oil, and about 20 hours of heating – for flaxseed oil.

It turned out that used cooking oil has excessive amounts of toxic elements aldehydes, which has been mentioned in biomedical studies before and can cause not only environmental pollution but also very serious health conditions in humans. Maria Dolores Guillen, one of the study leaders and Professor at Department of Pharmacy and Food Technology of the UPV SNIC, commented to the mass media as the following: “It was known that at frying temperature, oil releases aldehydes that pollute the atmosphere and can be inhaled, so we decided to research into whether these remain in the oil after they are heated, and they do.”

It was found out that toxic aldehydes appear in great amounts as a result of degradation of common fatty acids in used cooking oil. Some of such aldehydes are volatile and are released to the atmosphere during the frying process. But some of those are heavy and remain in the foods we consume after reusing cooking oil for warming up our foods. Moreover, Spanish scientists found out that these aldehydes are extremely reactive and interact with enzymes, hormones, proteins, and other compounds, altering their functioning and putting our health to danger. According to the report about the study, reusing cooking oil can be linked to increased risks of such diseases as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurogenerative conditions, as well as several most common types of cancer, like pancreatic cancer and others.

Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.

Comments are closed.