“The tingling in my left side is gone.” How I gave up frying oil for five months

graduate of the Russian State University of Science and Technology, presenter of the Shop&Show TV channel, food blogger

I decided to give up any kind of oil when frying about a year and a half ago. My experiment lasted five months, but to some extent it continues to this day.

The reason for giving up my usual way of cooking was not because of any serious health problems. I just read articles about carcinogens that are formed in oil after heat treatment.

I bought myself a grill pan to fry meat, baking paper to fry vegetables in a regular pan, and started experimenting.

First of all, I had to pump up my cooking skills. Despite the promises of the grill pan manufacturers, the meat was sticking badly. Once I solved that problem, a new one appeared. My favorite chicken chops were turning out weird. Can you imagine the flavor of cold boiled meat that’s been reheated? That’s what they were.

The flavor of the side dishes changed, too. The potatoes, which I fried by putting parchment on the pan, seemed to stay half raw. I kept eating them, telling myself that I was just used to the unhealthy golden crust. But after a week or two, I developed an unpleasant sour taste in my mouth.

Having connected it with a large amount of undercooked potatoes in the diet, I decided to switch to other side dishes – buckwheat and pearl. By the way, looking ahead, I will say that the decision turned out to be correct. After half a year of eating buckwheat, my hemoglobin has risen slightly – from the usual 120 units to 125.

And the first pleasant bonus I noticed two months after giving up frying with oil. My skin became cleaner. I have a combined type – even after puberty, small rashes appeared on my forehead from time to time. They were especially noticeable at the end of the cycle. I don’t know if the refusal of fried oil products had an effect on it, but the rashes became less.

But I gained more pounds. After the same two months I noticed that my favorite jeans became a little tight. The thing is that the transition to a new diet was not easy for me – I could not finish half raw meat and potatoes, I missed pancakes and pancakes, and I fought the feeling of hunger with the help of sandwiches. My figure reacted immediately, I added two kilograms.

I had to put my waist and diet in order. Meat gives me satiety, so I started looking for a dish that can be cooked without oil, but it would have a good flavor. The solution was cutlets. In fact, I stewed them – instead of oil, I poured a large enough amount of water into a regular skillet. The chicken cutlets turned out dry and unpalatable, but the fish cutlets (from tilapia) turned out to taste good.

Another month passed and I noticed a new bonus – the unpleasant feeling after eating disappeared. When I ate fried foods with oil, I sometimes had unpleasant tingling in my left side. After changing my diet, they became a thing of the past.

At the same time, three months after the beginning of the experiment, I took a blood test. I have a biochemical blood test about once every six months to check what is going on in my body. I try to make sure that my blood sugar and cholesterol levels are normal.

I should add that my family had people with atherosclerosis (chronic arterial disease) and diabetes mellitus, so my heredity in this area is aggravated.

Blood glucose levels sometimes creep up to the dangerous mark of six units. Here I will note: I check the sugar in venous blood, and there the indicators are slightly different than in capillary blood (from the finger). The norm is not three to five units, but four to six.

I don’t know if it was due to not frying with oil, but my blood glucose levels were a little lower than normal. My standard reading is 5-5.2. This time the test showed a different number, 4.8. This encouraged me so much that I decided not to go back to my usual diet.

Alas, after another two months I had a breakdown. There were serious problems at work, and I gave up on healthy food and cooked myself a pan full of potatoes with meat, garlic and rosemary. Even more disappointing, a sharp pain in my stomach made me realize that I should have kept my cool after all.

I couldn’t stop frying food in oil completely. But I don’t cook potatoes that way anymore. Meat is also more and more often stewed. And the refusal of pancakes and fritters, which can not be cooked without frying in a frying pan, has become one of the wisest ZHOLE-decisions in my life.

How has all this affected my health and well-being?

Positive!!! I don’t see any dramatic changes in my weight (except that I lost those two kg and returned to my usual 55 kg), but I feel “lighter” – no heaviness in my stomach and bitter taste in my mouth. And glucose and cholesterol are now easier to keep under control.

Doctor’s opinion

Candidate of Medical Sciences, doctor of integrative, preventive and conventional medicine, nutritionist

Why give up frying with oil when you can choose the right product? It should contain saturated fats, which are practically not oxidized under the influence of high temperatures.

Oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids is the second problem of vegetable oil frying after carcinogens.

The gastrointestinal tract is constantly exposed to oxidized food compounds, some of which are absorbed into the lymph or directly into the bloodstream after digestion.

Another criterion to pay attention to when choosing oil for frying is the smoke point (the temperature at which the oil begins to smoke in the pan):

• 100-140 degrees is a moderate frying temperature;
• 140-160 is the temperature for the appearance of a golden crust;
• 180-250 – oven temperature.

The choice of oil for frying is always a controversial issue. In general, mustard oil with a smoking point of 254 degrees can be suitable – it is better to stew and bake on it.

If you want a golden crust – use ghee oil (or ghee). It is not afraid of anything, it is healthy fats, which have undergone sufficient heat treatment. You can safely fry on it. But just watch your consumption (for an adult – no more than 1 tbsp. per day).

By the way, you can still fry on lard. For those who eat it, of course, and normally tolerated.