Hayat Dietitian's Grocery Picks · Episode 2: The Cooking Oil Aisle
Including the piece of kitchen advice almost everyone has wrong
The 30-second verdict
Keep two oils in your kitchen, not one.
Extra virgin olive oil for dressings, drizzling, and everyday sautéing and stir-frying. It is more heat-stable than its reputation suggests, and it is the oil with the strongest cardiovascular evidence behind it.
Rice bran or refined avocado oil for genuine high heat: deep frying, aggressive wok work, anything where the pan is smoking hot.
Palm olein is stable and cheap and fine for occasional frying. Its saturated fat content is the reason it should not be your default everyday oil.
Why this aisle matters
Cooking oil is the most concentrated thing in your trolley. Every oil is nine calories per gram, all of them, without exception. The differences are entirely in the type of fat and what else the oil carries with it.
Two mechanisms are doing the work:
Fatty acid composition. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol relative to unsaturated fat. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats lower it. This relationship is one of the better-established findings in nutrition science, and replacing saturated with unsaturated fat is one of the few dietary changes with consistent evidence for cardiovascular benefit.
What survives the bottle. Unrefined oils retain polyphenols, tocopherols and other compounds that refining strips out. This is where extra virgin olive oil separates itself, and it also turns out to be why it handles heat better than people assume.
The honest bit: the olive oil smoke point myth
This is the correction that matters most in this episode, and it contradicts advice you have probably read many times, including in earlier versions of our own material.
The claim: extra virgin olive oil has a low smoke point, so heating it destroys the benefits and produces harmful compounds. Never cook with it.
What the evidence actually shows: extra virgin olive oil's smoke point sits around 190 to 210°C, comfortably above normal pan-frying and sautéing temperatures. More importantly, smoke point is a poor predictor of how an oil behaves when heated. What actually matters is oxidative stability, which depends on the fatty acid profile and the antioxidants present.
On that measure, extra virgin olive oil performs very well. It is high in monounsaturated fat, which resists oxidation, and it carries polyphenols and vitamin E that act as built-in protection. Laboratory studies comparing oils under realistic cooking conditions have repeatedly found EVOO producing fewer degradation products than several oils with much higher smoke points.
The practical upshot: you can absolutely stir-fry with extra virgin olive oil. You should still choose a more refined, higher smoke point oil for deep frying, both because of temperature and because good EVOO is expensive to use by the litre.
One caveat in the other direction: the polyphenols that make EVOO worth buying do degrade with prolonged high heat. Use it raw where you can, cook with it happily, and do not deep fry with it.
The other honest bit: the omega-6 argument
You will read that seed oils are inflammatory because of their omega-6 content. This is more contested than the internet suggests.
The proposed mechanism is that linoleic acid converts to arachidonic acid and then to inflammatory signalling molecules. It is biologically plausible. But controlled human trials that have increased linoleic acid intake have generally not found increases in inflammatory markers, and the observational evidence associates higher linoleic acid intake with lower, not higher, cardiovascular risk.
Our position: there is no strong case for treating corn, soybean or sunflower oil as harmful. There is a reasonable case for preferring monounsaturated-rich oils as your default, on the basis of better and more consistent evidence. That is a preference, not an alarm.
Where we would push back harder is on repeatedly reused frying oil, which genuinely does accumulate degradation products. That is a much better-evidenced concern than the omega-6 argument, and a far more common practice.
The shelf comparison
Per 100g. Approximate; check labels.
| Refined palm olein | Blended cooking oil | Extra virgin olive oil | Rice bran oil | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saturated | ~40 to 45g (highest) | ~30g | ~14g (lowest) | ~20g |
| Monounsaturated | ~40g | ~45g | ~73g (highest) | ~40g |
| Polyunsaturated | ~10g | ~20g | ~8g | ~35g |
| Smoke point | >230°C | >220°C | ~190 to 210°C | >230°C |
| Carries | Vitamin E tocotrienols | Varies by blend | Polyphenols, vitamin E | Oryzanol, vitamin E |
| Best for | Deep frying, budget high heat | General high heat | Almost everything else | High heat with a better fat profile |
| Price | Lowest | Low | Highest | Middle |
The Malaysian angle: palm oil, fairly
Palm oil is a Malaysian industry, a national export, and the default cooking oil in most kitchens here. It deserves an accurate assessment rather than either boosterism or reflexive criticism.
In its favour: palm olein, the liquid fraction used for cooking, is genuinely stable at high temperatures. It resists oxidation well, which is exactly what you want when deep frying. It contains tocotrienols, a form of vitamin E that is relatively uncommon in other oils and is the subject of active research. It is inexpensive and locally produced.
Against: it is the highest in saturated fat of the common cooking oils. For a household frying occasionally, this is unremarkable. For a household using it for everything, every day, it contributes meaningfully to total saturated fat intake, and that matters if your LDL cholesterol is raised.
Our practical position: palm olein is a reasonable frying oil and a poor everyday default. Most Malaysian kitchens use it as both. Changing only the everyday use, and keeping it for the wok when you need real heat, captures most of the benefit without upending how you cook.
The reuse question. Reusing frying oil is near-universal here and is genuinely worth changing. Each heating cycle degrades the oil further. Strain it, keep it dark and covered, use it a small number of times rather than indefinitely, and discard it once it darkens, thickens or smells acrid.
Read the label
"Virgin" or "extra virgin" means minimally refined. It is the only reliable indicator that the oil retains its original compounds. Everything else on the front is marketing.
"Partially hydrogenated" is the one absolute red flag. It indicates industrial trans fats. These are now rare in Malaysian retail oils but check anyway, particularly on imported shortenings and margarines.
Saturated fat under 20% of total fat is a reasonable everyday threshold if you are managing cholesterol. Olive, canola, rice bran and sunflower clear it. Palm and coconut do not.
Dark glass or tin beats clear plastic. Light degrades oil. If your olive oil sits in a clear bottle on a sunny counter, it is deteriorating.
"Light" or "pure" olive oil is not lower in calories. It is more refined, with fewer polyphenols and a more neutral flavour. Fine for cooking, pointless for dressing.
Across the lifespan
Children. Fat is essential for growth and for absorbing fat-soluble vitamins. Do not run a low-fat kitchen for growing children. Focus on which fats, not how few.
Adults. The main lever is the everyday oil, because it is the one used most. Swapping the default from palm olein to olive or rice bran changes your saturated fat intake more than any occasional choice will.
Fifty and above, particularly with raised LDL or established cardiovascular disease. This is where the substitution earns its keep. Replacing saturated fat with monounsaturated fat is one of the better-evidenced dietary interventions available, and cooking oil is the easiest place to do it.
What we would put in your trolley
A mid-priced extra virgin olive oil in dark glass, used for dressings, drizzling and everyday cooking. Do not buy the most expensive one if that makes you ration it. An EVOO you use freely beats a better one you save for guests.
Rice bran oil for the wok and for frying. Very high smoke point, good fat profile, widely available, sensibly priced.
Palm olein only if you deep fry regularly and want to keep costs down.
Skip anything labelled partially hydrogenated, and skip the habit of reusing frying oil more than a few times.
How we handle this at HAYAT Longevity
Cooking fat is one of the first things we look at when a patient's LDL cholesterol is not where it should be, because it is usually invisible to the person eating it. Nobody counts the oil in a stir-fry. Our dietitians go through what you actually cook with, how much, and how often, alongside your lipid panel and body composition, then change the smallest number of things that will move the number.
Book a consultation with our medical and dietitian team: choose a consultation time
Written by R.D. Saffiyah Azhar, Clinical Dietitian. Clinically reviewed by Dr. Daniel Chong. HAYAT Longevity, Penang.
General nutritional information only, not individual medical or dietary advice. Nutritional values are approximate, taken from manufacturer information available at the time of writing, and formulations change. If you have a diagnosed medical condition, are pregnant, or take regular medication, please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making significant dietary changes.