Eating Foods Fried In Olive Or Sunflower Oil Not Tied To Heart Disease Or Earlier Death

In a new study published in BMJ on Tuesday, researchers find that consuming fried food is not linked to heart disease or earlier death, as long as the frying is done in in olive or sunflower oil. But they also note that the people they studied live in Spain, where like other Mediterranean countries they use olive or sunflower oil for frying, so this result would most likely be different in countries where people fry with solid and re-used oils.

Professor Pilar Guallar-Castillón from Autonomous University of Madrid, and colleagues set out to do the study because while high consumption of fried food has been tied to higher risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity, the link to heart disease itself had not been fully investigated.

People in Western countries use frying more than any other way of cooking food. Frying changes the nutritional content of food: it loses water and takes up fat, increasing its calorie content. Another thing that happens is that frying degrades oils, especially when re-used, creating more unhealthy trans fats and losing the healthier unsaturated fats. These unhealthier fats end up in the food that is eaten.
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