Calories make you fat and fat is almost 2x the calories per volume compared to protein and can be a wildly larger factor compared to things like vegetables (which are often mostly water) and some carb sources (which might be mostly air).
Personally, I vary my portion sizes by how calorifically dense it is but I know some people will add more food to their plate if, visually, it’s a smaller portion than what they think is “appropriate” and then end up overeating. If you’re that sort of person, then it could be risky to try and increase fat intake.
In terms of health, there’s certainly a minimum amount of fat that you need in your diet and, within that, there’s definitely minimums for the amount of omega 6s and 3s that you should try to get. People shouldn’t restrict fat unnecessarily but it does seem like you’re usually better to make up the bulk of your calories from plant sources and, from that side, you’re generally going to be getting the bulk from carbs (e.g. starches in potatoes and beans) and proteins (e.g. edamame and chia) more than fats. That’s also, generally, cheaper.
If you’re rucking for 8 hours a day, eating a high fat diet is probably the right choice for you. For an average, modern person with a car and a desk job, it’s probably better kept on the low end.
I’m not saying it’s the fat making me fat, it’s the imbalance between the calories in versus calories out that’s making me fat! Of course, right now with careful tracking, the balance is going in the other direction, but that means I have to watch that extra tablespoon of EVOO (the good stuff) going into the salad dressing, or doing without. 120 kcal is 120 kcal.
It was too bad that you didn’t get the olive oil you were looking for; grapeseed is completely different. Though I use it only in baked goods with a load of ingredients, I wondered if there might have been produced wrong. My neighbor mentioned the grapeseed might have been contaminated by heat at the bottling plant -who knows?
Since everyone’s sharing what they actually cook with and why, I’ll chime in.
We typically stock 3 oils in the house. One is plain old “olive oil”- not extra virgin or any sort of virgin. It’s typically yellow in the bottle. Right now we’ve got Bertolli “Cooking” olive oil, but we’ve used the Wal-Mart brand, some brand from the MIddle Eastern market that we’ve never heard of, and a few others. They all work well for relatively high heat applications like sauteing and general use where having an absolutely neutral oil isn’t necessary.
The second is plain old neutral vegetable oil. Usually whatever of canola, soybean, or corn is on sale. This gets used in places where even the mild taste of non-virgin olive oil would be out of place- some baking applications, Asian foods, etc…
The third is the good stuff; fairly high dollar imported extra virgin olive oil. This is what we use as a finishing oil or in dishes where we specifically want olive oil flavor. Right now, we’ve got both Il Borro and De Carlo Tenuta Torre di Mossa DOP Terra di Bari in our pantry. (we’re lucky enough that Dallas both has a fantastic Italian food store, and I work about 5-10 minutes away from it)
Be careful. They make a lot of different SKUs that look almost the same. Most of them are the usual imported blend of stuff from Turkey or wherever. A few SKUs are actually California-grown. But only a few.
The company started out as all-California-all-the-time. They sold out to the Dark Side a long time ago.
Whoa. California Olive Ranch sells different olive oils. Some of them are labeled as containing blends of olive oils from different countries. Are you saying that this one, labeled “100% California” ISN’T 100% California??
I did not follow your link to evaluate that specific SKU.
I’m merely pointing out the risk of buying from a company with “California ranch” in the name and assuming the product is the same. Something about your verbiage led me to suspect that might be the case with your understanding.
Sounds like you know the difference and we’re all good.
I think you’re both being honest and diligent in your research. And then, since I like picking on Amazon, you could be shopping for a lovely 100% California EVOO like this:
( if it doesn’t load, it’s the California Olive Ranch 100% California Bag-in_box 2L option)
And Amazon, ever so innocently (the /s is bleeding out, no?) suggests a “Competitively priced item” which is 50% less! Except (and credit where credit is due, it’s labeled as such) it’s a Blended Frankenoil from a variety of nations.
So yeah, always check, which both of you obviously do.
I don’t buy this olive oil from Amazon. I buy it from H-E-B. I just posted the Amazon link to show a picture of the bottle that says “100% California.”
My supermarket sells two “California ranch” brand olive oil products. One claims to be 100% Californian, and the other says it’s a blend of olive oils from around the world.
I’m inclined to believe what they say on the label.
But the evoo products are not "neutral cooking oils ".
Anything with oil can go rancid. Potato chips (although they usually don’t hang around long enough), nuts (I keep them in the fridge and use them pretty fast), whole wheat flour, and certainly bottled oils. I did massage therapy years ago, and we used almond oil and the like. We got to be very good at being able to detect rancid oil-- for one thing the oil would get into the sheets we used. Very hard to get out.
For me, the trick is to buy the smallest bottle of oil I can use. My desert climate is hot enough to make oils go rancid so it must be refrigerated or used in two weeks perhaps.
