Monday Challenge:

Avoid Added Oil

Think olive oil is healthy? Think again.

Most people agree that sugar is bad for you. Sugar is a refined food. But oil is a refined food also – it is a refined fat. And oil has two times the calories as refined sugar!

If vegans cut out all animal products and saturated fats (thus cholesterol) they can still get heart disease. Why? The main source appears to be vegetable oils, olive oil, and coconut oil.

Do you slather oil on everything you cook? Did you know there’s oil in almost every restaurant food?

Oil is bad for many reasons:

• Oil raises LDL cholesterol which is bad for heart health.

• Oil, even olive oil, damages the endothelial lining of our arteries (thereby paving the way for plaque formation).

• Eating foods with added oil can encourage blood coagulation which create thrombosis that leads to heart attacks and strokes.

• Oil in your diet creates intramyocellular lipids (fat inside your muscle cells) that interferes with insulin’s ability to enter cells which leads to diabetes.

• Consumption of too much oil can cause acne on your skin and foods that are fried in oils can worsen the health of your skin .

• At 120 calories per tablespoon, oil calories can add up making it challenging to lose or maintain weight. In fact, oil stimulates appetite and does not satiate.

We do need some fats in our diets - how do you get them? Eat the whole, plant food and not just the extracted fats.

In other words, get your olive oil by tossing a few olives on your salad and make salad dressings with nuts and seeds, not oil. Don't add vegetable oils when cooking – it’s easy to roast, bake, and sauté foods without oil.

So I ask you: Why would you waste calories on something that has no nutrients in it other than fat? And why would anyone believe that highly concentrated fat is healthy?

Your challenge this week is to avoid added oil - eat the whole plant food and not just the extracted fats Learn how to prepare and cook your food without added oils.

How will you avoid refined oil this week?

Let me know in the comments below.

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