Healthy Food Choices: Oils

Oils are natural parts of many foods and get a bad reputation for containing unhealthy fats. Try some tips for buying cooking oils in this healthy shopping video.

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Limit fat intake
Oils are unsaturated fats
Good fats can help cholesterol
Animal fat is saturated fat

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Michelle Cooper has been a registered dietician for more than 10 years. She currently works for the state of North Carolina for the New Hanover County School District in the Child Nutrition Department as the supervising registered dietician on staff. She specializes in child nutrition, child fitness and overall child health. She enjoys her job because it allows her to be a pivotal piece of child development.

MICHELLE COOPER: Next, we are going to be talking about oils. Oils, of course, are fat. And we want to limit our dietary fat intake to 30% of our calories or less everyday. However, oils, because they are liquid at room temperature, means that they are unsaturated. Fats that are hard at room temperature are saturated, and those are the ones that we want to avoid. We want to choose monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats of oils when possible. These help lower the LDL cholesterol in our blood and help raise the HDL cholesterol in our blood. Some oils to choose from would be olive oil, which is a monounsaturated fat, sunflower oil, which is a monounsaturated fat, and canola oil, which is a polyunsaturated fat. If you notice, all the oils that I have talked about so far are from vegetable sources. There are no unsaturated sources of animal fat. All animal fat is saturated. And that is why it is important when cooking to choose a vegetable oil over something like butter or lard. So when looking for fats or oils to use in your diet, make sure that you choose a source of either polyunsaturated, like the canola oil, or monounsaturated, like the olive oil. And try to limit that fat intake still to 30% or less of your daily caloric intake.

Healthy Food Choices: Oils Video

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