Grilled/fried food and health

(SVGuss) #1

Hi!
One of the things I often hear is that fried meat (and not just meat) is bad for you.
Now on keto I do a lot of frying and grilling. Eggs - I mainly fry them, pork - I do it in aerogrill. The question is, what about the toxins that allegedly form during this processes?
I try not to use high temperature, I fry eggs at 120C, aerogrill is 150-175C.
Is it healthy? Thanks!

(Robert C) #2

There was a recent discussion about this here (the linked video is very interesting):

(Candy Lind) #3

First, the “frying is not healthy” college of thought goes back to the bad science that let to the awful diet guidelines most of us have been taught. FAT IS NOT BAD FOR YOU. Just make sure you are not using “manufactured” fats made from grain (or what they call “vegetable oil,” canola included). THOSE will kill you. Healthy fats for frying at high temps, when you’re going for crispy outside & moist-tender inside (350-375F, 175-190C): tallow (beef fat), lard (pig fat), coconut oil (refined if you don’t like the taste of coconut), avocado, ghee (clarified butter). That temp range will seal the food as it frys, and that makes the moisture in the food steam the interior into tender deliciousness.

Olive oil is not on this list because it is not supposed to be used under high temps. Use olive oil to cook at lower temps or for finishing & salad dressings. Butter is ok for pan frying at lower temps, but the milk solids will burn at high temps, thus ghee is on the list and butter is not. Most seed oils are not good for frying because smoke points are too low. Smoke Point is where you get the bad stuff happening with oils.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, keep using the air fryer if it’s working for you. I still have weight to lose, but I enjoy the satiety of eating fatty foods, so I’ve never invested in one.

HTH! KCKO. (Read that!)

(SVGuss) #4

Thank you people for your quick answers!
I should have probably said that when I aerogrill, I use a baking form (it’s like a frying pan, basically, just very thin), not actually a grill, so no fat lost :slight_smile: And I did quit vegetable oils, I do my own ghee and fat melted from lard. Why I do pork like this - because pork has much more fat than other common meats, but I can’t really make myself chew cooked (sort of boiled) lard. My mother loves it, I hate it :slight_smile: So I have to make sort of a barbecue from pork, then I enjoy it.
Thanks again for the links and advice! So far my conclusion is that what I do is rather safe.
PS what’s HTH! though?

#5

Usually: hope that helps

(Karen) #6

Lard, tallow

(*Tame Those Ghrelin Gremlins) #7

I cook all my meat in coconut oil when I want to make them with pork rind breading. Otherwise I use an air fryer.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

In standard terms, “fried” is associated with arterycloggingsaturatedfat, which is an invented concept. What we actually know is that frying with lard or tallow is perfectly healthy.

In keto terms, “frying is bad” only in the context of frying with vegetable (actually seed) oils, because they contain polyunsaturated fatty acids that not only cause inflammation when we eat too much of them, but when subjected to heat they also mutate into compounds unknown in nature that get into the walls of our cells and cause weird results (some are known, and people fear there are others we haven’t even had a chance to discover yet).

So keep on with the lard and ghee. You’re doing fine.

(Karim Wassef) #9

When grilling, avoid burning
When frying, use a high temp fat