Dietitian Shares The 1 Cooking Oil Rule They Follow For A Healthy Heart
Some people worry that seed oils (like sunflower, peanut, and soybean oil) are bad for us because they contain an omega-6 fatty acid (linoleic acid).
But this, experts claim, does not actually cause the inflammation it's accused of creating.
Kerry Beeson, a qualified nutritional therapist at Prep Kitchen, previously told HuffPost UK: 'Seed oils are objectively quite healthy, in that they're typically low in saturated fats.'
Writing for UC Davis Health, cardiovascular dietitian Margie Junker, who focuses on how our diets affect heart health, shared that she loved flax and peanut oil.
'Liquid plant oils are rich in unsaturated fats, which reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and heart disease risk,' she said.
But, she added, she avoids one particular type of fat for cooking.
'I stay away from fats that are hard at room temperature, such as bacon grease, shortening and margarine,' she told the university.
According to the World Cancer Research Fund, most cooking fats are higher in saturated fats.
'Too much fat in your diet, especially saturated fats, can raise your cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease,' the NHS added.
Other solid cooking fats include ghee, lard, and butter.
'I also avoid tropical oils (coconut, palm, and palm kernel), animal fats (butter and lard), and partially hydrogenated fats,' Junker shared.
Coconut oil has some of the highest saturated fat levels of all common cooking oils (86% to butter's 52%).
So, while Junker said she 'occasionally' adds coconut oil or butter to a dish for flavour, she chooses not to cook with them.
The British Heart Foundation recommends rapeseed oil as their best pick alongside olive oil, while Junker likes avocado oil most.
But though some oils and fats are higher in saturated fats than others, fats of any kind should not make up more than 35% of our diet.
'Current UK government guidelines advise cutting down on all fats and replacing saturated fat with some unsaturated fat,' the NHS shared.
Combining lower-saturated fats with moderation is key to better heart health.
Are Seed Oils Really Bad For You? I Asked A Nutritional Therapist
The Only 3 Cooking Oils Mary Berry Says We Need
Sorry, Your Essential Oils Are Essentially Useless
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Personal trainer, 43, saved by partner when heart stopped on dog walk
A superfit personal trainer almost died from a sudden cardiac arrest just yards from her front door while walking her dog - but her partner saved her life with CPR. Emma Houldsworth, 43, had been on a dog walk on April 26 for less than 10 minutes when she had to sit down on the pavement because she felt tired. The personal trainer says she then 'blacked out' and stopped breathing. Her partner Paul Tilley, who completed first aid training during his previous job as a bouncer, acted quickly to perform CPR - breaking three of Emma's ribs in the process. The 43-year-old says she was 'lucky' that a number of passersby also stepped in to help save her life, including an off-duty nurse and a man who ran to fetch a defibrillator. The nurse took over and began performing CPR, while another member of the public took the couple's eight-year-old pug, Pedro. READ MORE: Leeds man's 'horrid' choice between brother in ambulance and saving woman's life READ MORE: Leeds e-bike rider in hospital with serious head injury after crash An ambulance crew arrived at the scene and after being shocked with the defibrillator three times, Emma's heart started beating again. The mum-of-two was rushed to Leeds General Infirmary where she was placed in intensive care. Emma, who describes herself as 'really fit and healthy', believes that working long hours and feeling stressed may have contributed to the sudden cardiac arrest. She was discharged from hospital on May 10 and has had an implantable cardioverter defibrillator fitted in order to help her heart beat at a normal rhythm and hopefully prevent another cardiac arrest in the future. She is 'grateful' that her partner knew CPR - and says it could have been a very different ending if he hadn't acted so quickly. Emma from Leeds, West Yorkshire, said: "It turned into the dog walk from hell. "Luckily my partner knows CPR so he pulled me away from the wall and started chest compressions. He still had the dog, so he was trying to get him in between his legs. "He started shouting and then there was an off-duty nurse who was passing. She took over the CPR, somebody else came over and took the dog and another person ran to fetch the defibrillator from the working men's club up the road. "An ambulance came and they were trying to keep me alive at the side of the road. "It's just great that my partner acted so quickly and that he knew CPR because if he didn't then I wouldn't be here now. "Without all of those people working together it would have been a very different story. Sometimes we'll go hiking in the mountains where we're far away from people so luckily we were in the street just up from where we live and there were plenty of people around. "I'm just so grateful. It's like it was meant to be that that nurse was passing at the time. "There are lots of circumstances where things could have been really different - it's just really lucky that things happened in the way that they did on that day." Emma was blue-lighted to Leeds General Infirmary where she was placed in intensive care for three nights. She says she is generally 'fit and healthy' and the only symptoms she experienced in the days before the cardiac arrest were tiredness and 'feeling run down'. Emma said: "I'm really healthy, I really look after myself. I eat really well and exercise regularly. I work a lot of hours so I think that contributed [to the cardiac arrest]. "I often work 13-hour days and I'm quite stressed a lot of the time. I wasn't prioritising my own self care - all of things that I encourage my clients to do. "In the days beforehand I was feeling pretty run down and tired but I didn't listen to my body and just pushed through it. "They were the only kind of warning signs that things weren't right." The mum-of-two now wants to reduce her working hours and focus on prioritising her health. She is keen to raise awareness that cardiac arrest can happen to people at any age - no matter how fit and healthy they are - and is encouraging people to listen to their bodies if they feel that something might be wrong. Emma said: "I want to work less hours and concentrate on making sure that I'm getting enough rest. "I also want to concentrate on my training, getting out on walks, going to yoga and spending time with the people I love - all of the things that I enjoy. "This experience has definitely shifted by priorities. "It's taught me that you can't just brush things off when you're busy, or try and push through when you're run down. "It's about listening to your body. If something's feeling off then it probably is so it's about prioritising yourself and not just looking after other people the other time and making sure you're looking after yourself. "I always thought that when people have heart problems that it just affected old people or that it was from years of smoking and drinking or not looking after themselves. "I love walking and hiking and training. I eat well and I do look after myself so I never thought that anything like that would happen to me."
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
Preventative AI Is Poised To Transform Health Insurance
Senior woman using health technology Backed by more than $250 million of venture capital from Creandum, Target Global, OurCrowd, Dai-ichi Life, and others, London-based startup YuLife is defining a new category—Preventative AI—at the intersection of insurance, AI, and wellness. Preventative AI transforms health insurance from static underwriting to adaptive, biometric-driven risk intelligence. Integrating wearable data, causal AI, and reinforcement learning, it enables proactive health interventions at scale. YuLife launched its proprietary, real-time Preventative AI platform today, replacing traditional risk assessment tools that rely on legacy datasets and backwards-looking models with a multi-layered, novel approach. It combines biometric streaming, causal modelling and federated learning, on top of which sits its patented, adaptive health questionnaire and predictive analytics engine. YuLife describes it as an 'adaptive risk engine' that continuously learns, engages, and optimizes, delivering value to users and underwriters in real-time. The health signals data for YuLife's AI comes from wearables and IoT devices via secure, low-latency pipelines. The data is normalized, de-duplicated and time-aligned in real time, ensuring that every heart-rate spike or sleep disturbance immediately informs the AI risk models. Analyzing the data, YuLife's Preventive AI platform dynamically tests hypotheses, uncovering the behaviors that drive beneficial outcomes. For example, does increasing midday steps result in a reduction of late-night restlessness? Individual records are not centralized to ensure privacy protection and only anonymized summaries are shared back from users' devices. A complimentary data source feeding the AI models is a dynamic, continuously customized survey of more than 300 questions about 23 wellbeing topics such as diet, mindful eating, and social connections. The design of the survey is based on the knowledge gained by the UK Biobank research, a large-scale, long-term health study. It has collected and continues to track in-depth genetic, lifestyle, and health data from over 500,000 participants aged 40–69, and is widely regarded as a gold standard for population health research. YuLife's analysis of the data allows it to identify emerging health risks in real time and deliver timely, personalized nudges (e.g., 'Try a 5-minute breathing exercise now') or unlock targeted rewards. It also uses game mechanics to drive frequent engagement, ensuring the AI platform learns from each interaction. Users are rewarded with YuCoin, driving long-term participation and measurable lifestyle improvements. The Preventative AI platform offers underwriters causal insights, indicating what will happen and why, while maintaining compliance with emerging AI governance frameworks. It is modular and cloud-native, enabling seamless integration with enterprise benefits platforms, insurance systems, and healthcare networks. YuLife has validated its AI through academic partnerships, and early deployment data shows significant reductions in risk indicators and claims. AI and wearable technology are revolutionizing health and wellness by enabling personalized, data-driven care. From early disease detection to real-time health monitoring, these innovations are helping individuals take control of their health while also supporting healthcare providers in delivering better outcomes. In its most recent survey of the $2 trillion global wellness market, McKinsey found that younger generations are increasingly prioritizing wellness. Nearly 30% of Gen Zers (people born between 1997 and 2012) and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) in the United States report prioritizing wellness 'a lot more' compared with one year ago, versus up to 23% of older generations. 'Older consumers,' says McKinsey, 'still represent a meaningful opportunity for wellness players, especially in advanced markets with ageing populations.' YuLife highlights a few data points to explain the urgent need to redefine health insurance: 68% of consumers do not trust their insurer, and almost no engagement or value is delivered to consumers daily. At the same time, approximately 80% of chronic disease and premature death could be prevented by not smoking, being physically active, and adhering to a healthful dietary pattern. The estimated cost of chronic disease is expected to reach $47 trillion worldwide by 2030. Enlisting AI to proactively help consumers adjust their lifestyle habits and improve their health could be an essential step in reducing this global burden.
Associated Press
2 hours ago
- Associated Press
‘Our Journey with Lobular Breast Cancer' documentary to premiere at Raindance Film Festival
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, June 24, 2025 / / -- A new documentary highlighting the campaign for research funding into lobular breast cancer will premiere at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival in London this June. 'Our Journey with Lobular Breast Cancer' tells the story of the Lobular Moon Shot Project, launched in 2023 by Dr Susan Michaelis. The campaign has won support from 365 MPs in the House of Commons calling for a five-year, £20 million research programme into invasive lobular breast cancer, the second most common form of breast cancer in the UK. Invasive lobular breast cancer is difficult to detect with standard mammograms or ultrasounds and currently has no treatment tailored to its unique biology. With an estimated 3.75 million diagnoses worldwide over the next decade, the disease behaves differently from the more common ductal breast cancer and remains an urgent clinical need. Produced by Fact Not Fiction Films, the documentary will be screened at Vue Piccadilly. The world premiere is scheduled for 5pm on Tuesday 24 June, followed by an additional screening at 12.30pm on Wednesday 25 June. Director Tristan Loraine, nominated for Best Director UK Feature, has two films showing at the festival this year. The Lobular Moon Shot Project aims to raise awareness and secure public funding for a major research initiative led by the Manchester Breast Centre at the University of Manchester. The centre will collaborate with other institutions to deepen global understanding of the disease and develop targeted treatments. Campaigners say the project's estimated £20 million budget over five years is vital to accelerate progress. - Tickets and more information are available on the Raindance website. - You can access the JustGiving fundraiser to make a donation. About The Lobular Moon Shot Project The Lobular Moon Shot Project was established in 2023 to address a critical gap in breast cancer research. Its mission is to secure funding for vital studies that will improve understanding of invasive lobular breast cancer (ILC) and support the development of targeted treatments. Alongside fundraising efforts, the project works to build political support to ensure governments provide dedicated funding for research into this disease. Although some research is currently underway worldwide, a coordinated large-scale study is urgently needed. The project calls for a £20 million investment over five years to accelerate progress. With approximately 1,000 people diagnosed globally every day—including 22 daily cases in the UK—the Lobular Moon Shot Project advocates for a 'moon shot' level of commitment to advance research and improve outcomes for those affected. About Fact Not Fiction Films Fact Not Fiction Films, founded in 2006 and based in West Sussex, England, is an award-winning production company specialising in documentaries, feature films, and corporate videos. The company focuses on stories that explore important public issues, combining creative passion with technical expertise and high-quality production standards. Its work is suitable for corporate clients, broadcast audiences, and theatrical releases. Fact Not Fiction Films is committed to creating engaging and impactful films that raise awareness of key topics and contribute to positive social change. Press Fact Not Fiction Films [email protected] Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
