What’s your personal health ranking for cooking oils?

Fwiw, I'm pretty convinced that the anti-seed oil crowd is approximately as grounded in science as the anti-vaccine crowd - that is to say, not at all.

1. Extra virgin olive oil for anything where the taste is a good thing
2. Any oil with high monounsaturates and zero saturates (the rest being polyunsaturates). This may be a seed oil.

Extra virgin olive oil (and it has to be extra virgin) is known and scientifically proven to be very good for you.

Seed oils are today highly controversial - I avoided them for many years - but current science research suggests that they are perfectly safe, and indeed good for lowering cholesterol.

Here's a real scientist, working and published in exactly this area, talking about this exact question: https://youtu.be/VRlleOTBq7k?si=trB8t5xRjOJml5ug

They are all quite unhealthy and claims about magical compounds within this or that refined oil are largely nonsense. That said, plant-based oils are generally much less bad for you than butter and lard, and increasing unsaturated fat proportion is a good idea.

Oil in general is overused as an ingredient when savory flavors can be achieved with mushrooms, msg, nutritional yeast, tomato, and more. However it is certainly useful as a tool for heat transfer in cooking but can be used in much lower quantities for that purpose than you might expect.

I generally use avocado oil for any very high heat cooking surface like a wok, olive oil or avocado oil for other general high heat cooking surface, and nice flavorful olive oil or spiced olive oil for oil as an ingredient.

Well, there's a FLAVOR ranking and a HEALTH ranking. :)

Tops for both are avocado oil and extra virgin olive oil.

My general preference is Lucini Olive Oil, they have Italian and Argentinian variants depending on how much you want to spend, and it's readily available pretty much everywhere.

https://www.delish.com/kitchen-tools/cookware-reviews/g46931475/best-olive-oil-brands-ranked/

For frying I use avocado oil, it has a high smoke point.

Avocado, grapeseed, or coconut for high heat. Olive for dressings and marinades. Butter for flavored frying (eggs, rice, etc.). Olive for skin and herbal infusions. Argan for my daughter's hair. Motor for the car. WD40 for squeaks.

Coconut, olive, anything else just for occasional flavor but better if avoided, canola and soy are the worst. that's my personal unresearched ranking.

"don't care taste good"

Seed oils are probably bad for you but the rest are either good or neutral. Olive or avocado oil is probably at the top but I don't think there's anything wrong with butter either

In order from least healthy to most healthy:

• Moldy Gym Sock Drippings Oil
• Dumpster Guac Grease
• Three-Year-Expired Sunflower “Oil” That’s Now a Solid
• Fish Tank Backwash Extract
• Hair Salon Sweepings Oil
• Used Frying Oil from a Carnival Deep-Fryer
• Regular Olive Oil (Extra Virgin)
• Plain Old Canola Oil

I was in a post on reddit sometime when we all got lectured about how every vegetable oil sucks and it's better to eat lard or duck fat or tallow. "You clearly don't know about lipids". Haven't figured out of that's true or not but I'd definitely rather use butter than margarine.

FYI, there was a similar thread recently on !yurop@lemm.ee

Mayonnaise

All oils crumble in the presence of the Almighty olive oil