Eat
Upgrade Your Fats: How to Pick the Healthiest Cooking Oil
by  Grace McCalmon



Fat used to be a four-letter word, at least, nutritionally speaking. But we now know that fat plays an essential role in a healthy diet. We need fat to produce hormones, make strong cell membranes, help us absorb fat-soluble vitamins, and, perhaps most importantly, to make our food taste good! But the health-promoting properties of certain fats and oils can change just based on how you cook with them.
When cooking, it’s important to know what type of oil to use and when.
 But from canola to coconut, there are a ton of options out there. How to choose? Let’s find out.
TYPES OF FATS
There are three types of fat: saturated, unsaturated, and polyunsaturated, and, when it comes to cooking, “The first thing you need to know is degree of saturation,” says Dr. Cate Shanahan, M.D., nutrition council for the Los Angeles Lakers and author of Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food. This is because the more saturated a fat, the…