Dietary guidelines suggest adults consume no more than 30 to 35 percent of their calories from fats. Yet the fat food group is a complex one, ranging from the obviously healthy walnuts and avocados to the more mysterious world of margarine, cooking oils, solid tropical oils and butter. Fortunately, a fairly simple rule exists for these kinds of fats -- liquids are healthier than solids.
Margarine
Margarine, a vegetable-based butter substitute, is available in both hard, or stick, and spreadable, or tub, forms. Stick margarines and some tub margarines are poor choices for healthy cooking because they use hydrogenated oils, notes Harvard School of Public Health. Even if margarine uses a healthy fat like canola or olive oil as its base fat, partial hydrogenation -- the process of turning the liquid into a semi-solid spread -- adds trans fat.
While both trans fats and saturated fats are less desirable than cholesterol-lowering monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, institutions like the HSPH suggest that trans fat is more harmful than saturated fat. For consumers, this advice means that if you must buy a solid fat, it's better to use either butter or fully-hydrogenated margarine, which contain saturated fat, than partially-hydrogenated margarine, which piles on the trans fats.
Canola Oil
A liquid vegetable oil made from rape seeds, canola oil represents a cholesterol-fighting fat. Canola oil is one of the major "good fats" in the monounsaturated family. Monounsaturated fats fight heart disease and diabetes by improving blood cholesterol and blood sugar levels. Canola oil has a mild taste and a high smoking point, so it may be used a variety of cooking applications, including salad dressing, baking, stir-frying and roasting.
Healthy Strategies
Avoid margarine in cooking whenever possible. If you need a spreadable fat, use either low-fat cream cheese, fully-hydrogenated margarine or even a small amount of butter. Alternatively, consider eating breads and vegetables Mediterranean-style by dipping rolls into a small amount of olive oil instead of spreading them with margarine, or drizzling canola or olive oil over cooked vegetables and baked potatoes rather topping them with a pat of butter or margarine. Canola and other healthy cooking oils are easy to use instead of margarine. Use an equivalent amount of canola oil instead of melted butter in baking recipes, and sauté or roast foods with liquid vegetable oils rather than melted butter or margarine.
Alternatives
Other monounsaturated cooking oils include olive and peanut oils. Polyunsaturated fat, another "good" fat, appears in corn, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, soy, nut and seed oils. Cooks also lower the fat content in baked goods by substituting mashed bananas, applesauce or pumpkin puree for at least some of the oil or butter in the recipe. Mashed avocado and drained yogurt may also stand in for margarine, butter and sour cream as a topping for savory foods.
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