Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagel and you're listening to the nutrition

divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous. I've talked

about the pros and cons of various kinds of oil and how to store them in previous shows,

but several of you have asked me to talk more specifically about what happens to oils when you heat them up,

and which ones are safest to cook with.

And that's the topic of today's show.

As a matter of fact, a few different things can go wrong when you're cooking with oil.

If you've ever put some oil in a skillet to heat up and then gotten

distracted by a phone call or something on TV, you probably ended up with a

kitchen full of acrid black smoke and a whaling smoke alarm. That is bad. Not only is the oil unusable at that point, but the smoke

that's produced when oil is overheated contains harmful chemicals that you really don't want

to be breathing in.

Not only do you not want your oil to smoke,

ideally you don't even want it to get hot enough to start changing color

because that's an indication that the oil has started to chemically degrade.

When oil starts to break down, free... that the oil has started to chemically degrade.

When oil starts to break down, free radicals form, along with other harmful compounds.

Now different oils have different smoke points, of course.

Some oils are going to start smoking at just over 200

degrees Fahrenheit and others can hold steady well past 500 degrees.

Obviously if you're going to be cooking at high temperatures you want to choose an oil with a higher smoke point.

So what determines that smoke point?

...