We all love eating the streetwise chicken and fries on special occasions and for some on normal days but a big disadvantage of all the tasty and crispy fried stuff is that it leads to wastage of oil which we are tempted to save economically by reusing, ignoring the health risks that comes with it.
Reusing cooking oil in food preparation is a common practice to save costs. The economic reason is that oil is expensive and after the first use, there is a lot of oil remaining in the pot, which makes most people especially food vendors use it again and again without any concern for the health effect of this oil.
Usually snacks, breakfast, fried food items such as spring rolls, chicken, fish, French fries, samosa and many more. This act is mostly carried out in our homes, hotels, roadside food stall, and restaurants to save expenditure ignoring the health risks.
Experts say repeated heating of cooking oil accelerates oxidative degradation of lipids, forming hazardous reactive oxygen species which depletes the natural antioxidant content of the cooking oil. Repeated ingestion of food prepared using overheated oil severely compromises one’s antioxidant defence network, leading to pathologies such as diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and vascular inflammation.
How do we reduce the usage of reheated oil? There are so many ways to reduce reheating, overheating and reusing cooking oil. Eating home-cooked food, they are mostly fresh and healthy. By preparing your food at home, you can decide what ingredients go into your food thus from cooking oil to protein and fibre.
Food made by yourself provides you with the right balanced diet. Also, carry home-cooked food while travelling.
You cannot totally avoid eating outside but you can reduce the number of times you have to eat outside food.
Cooking food in small quantities. This is a very effective way to avoid reheating cooking oil.
Measuring ingredients used in cooking will help avoid wastage of food and reheating and overheating of cooking oil and it is very economical.
Cooking oils are capable of being filtered and recycled. The million-dollar question is, is that even possible? Used cooking oil can be processed into other products like cosmetics, stock feed, bio-fuel and many more, food vendors and households can sell their used cooking oil to companies that are into the processing of oil. This is much more economical than reusing and overheating oil which comes with many health complications.
Now we know how harmful using overheated oil can be. It is best to make the right estimate of the amount of oil required for cooking for a healthy body.
