In this article, You will find the best salt, sugar, and oil for cooking in order to enhance your flavor and your health too.

Food is an integral part of our life. There is a famous quote by Greek physician Hippocrates, “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food”. Food is required for the proper functioning of the body and only when we stop eating the proper food in its supposed form, does it lead to all kinds of disorders and its related disease.

Ingredients that go into our food play a great role in the health factor. We don’t realize the number of chemicals laced and introduced into our food via some basic and simple ingredients. In fact, it was my best friend Sharada who actually told me about some of the harmful chemicals in my ingredients. Ever since I have been trying to keep everyday harmful ingredients out of my home. But to start with, I went to the most consumed but simple ingredients which are Salt, Oil, and Sugar. You consume all these ingredients pretty much in every single meal. So it is very important to make sure that they are harmless.

Salt

All our food contributes to the perfect and smooth functioning of our body. Salt helps in communicating information between nerves and muscle movements. With all these simple benefits of the everyday boring ingredient, it is highly important that you use pure or clean salt.

As much as I want to tell you that Himalayan salt has more nutrition than any other salt, I can’t because all types of salts such as Sea salt, Celtic salt, Table salt also contain a trace amount of minerals. But I do recommend shifting to Himalayan pink salt. Wonder why?

Picture speaks louder than words. So check out the ingredient list picture to identify the difference between Himalayan salt vs table salt.

Himalayan salt is in its pure form and no other chemical has been added to avoid caking. On the other hand table salt has been highly processed in the name of cleaning which in turn wipes out the trace amount of minerals present in salt. Also, they add calcium silicate to prevent caking which again is not harmful to the body “as long as it is under the FDA regulated amounts such as 2% for salt and 5% for baking powder“.

Another one of the justified additions is Potassium Iodide as a supplement for iodine, “for better functioning of the thyroid gland”. I would rather get my Iodine from my food such as kale, cranberries, black-eyed peas, milk, yogurt, egg, seafood, etc., Because of the iodine addition, dextrose commonly known as sugar needs to be added for the stability of the iodine.

I would rather prefer the boring salt to remain boring with clumps without the chemical addition.

** Sea salt, Celtic salts are as good as Himalayan salt with no chemicals added or processed but recent research suggests that due to the pollution in the sea there is the presence of heavy metals such as lead. For this reason, I have avoided these salts and prefer Himalayan salt.

Sugar

While most of the health experts, AMA, and NHS recommend around 24 to 30 grams of sugar per day. It is always better to keep the sugar intake as low as possible. Our brain is the major consumer of sugar in our body. We consume sugar required by our body in the form of carbohydrates in rice, potato, etc., in addition to raw sugar granules.

Even though, our consumption should be at 30 grams. It is always better to consume low glycemic index sugar in order to prevent the spike in insulin. From the below chart, it is extremely clear that coconut palm sugar, agave syrup, and monk fruit sweetener are the best alternative to white sugar which has the highest GI value.

*Also for those who live in India have healthier options like palm sugar (GI – 35 – 40) (Tamil Name – Karupatti, panai kalkandu) which also contains iron, calcium, and magnesium.

**Honey has several health benefits but still has a high GI.

Other than the GI index, another reason that you may want to avoid white and other refined sugar is because of their unethical agricultural practice by deforestation, destroying marshland and the amount of fertilizer and weed spray used which leads to soil pollution.

Oil

Despite popular belief that the sugar industry tries to impose on us, oil consumption in itself does not cause high cholesterol levels in our bodies. In fact, it is required for the various functions of the body such as fat-soluble vitamin absorption and storage, brain function and growth, reproduction, and basic metabolism. They also play a vital role in skincare.

Having said that, we have to be careful about what oils we consume. While the good oil will provide us with ample benefits, choosing the bad oils actually cause more harm than good. So we have different types of oil that we have to use for cooking at different temperatures and appropriately.

Refined Oil

Never to use at all. But why. They are heated up to 1200 degrees F and the chemical called Hexane is also used to remove oil from the seed. According to oil manufacturers, hexane is completely dissolved while heating to 1200 degrees F but some experts suggest that there is still a possibility that nanoparticles might still be present in the oil. On top of it, the overheating changes the molecular structure of oil in turn creating transfat which is not recognized by our human body to digest instead is stored in the liver as such. So refined oil is bad news everyone.

Expeller pressed oil

For cooking at high temperature, deep frying, etc., They use a Machine to squeeze the oil out of the seeds, the heat that created here is actually from the friction of the machine squeezing and within the par limit that oil could handle without changing its molecular structure. So it has all the benefits of the vegetables, fruit or flower seeds. Also, make sure that it is Organic and Non-GMO. Peanut oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil or grapeseed oil are all good as long as it is not refined, organic and Non-GMO. 

Cold-pressed oil

For salad dressing, cooking at low temperature. They grind the seeds, fruits, or vegetables into a paste. Then another tool or oil stone is used to press and remove the oil to separate. In order to be cold-pressed the temperature of the paste and oil cannot be more than 122 degrees, F. In order to achieve this some manufacturers may use a cold room or other processes to keep oil cool and not heat up during the oil removal. Since the oil was never heated to a higher temperature, most antioxidants and nutrients are preserved in the oil.

Make sure to check out my other articles on “liveclean.eatclean.” here and recipes that uses quality ingredients!!

References:

• Food additives.net “What is Calcium Silicate (E552) in Food and Uses In Salts & Supplements?”
• Healthline.com “Is Pink Himalayan Salt Better Than Regular Salt?”, “Types of Salt: Himalayan vs Kosher vs Regular vs Sea Salt”, “Coconut Sugar — A Healthy Sugar Alternative or a Big, Fat Lie?”
• motherearthnews.com “Sugar Facts and Myths: Why Sugar is Bad for You”
• dietdatabase.com “Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load”
• medium.com “Coconut Sugar vs. Brown Sugar: A Duel between Two Sweeteners”
• Rachel Hosie (2017) www.independent.co.uk “SUGAR HAS BENEFITS FOR YOUR BRAIN HEALTH, SAYS DOCTOR”
• Ashwin Rajagopalan (2018) food.ndtv.com “Karupatti Or Palm Jaggery – Tamil Nadu’s Alternative To Sugar”
• Mariasol Vargas spoonuniversity.com “Expeller Pressed vs Cold Pressed: Which Type of Oil You Should Choose”
• www.medicalnewstoday.com
• other resources in websites on the world wide web.