Video Transcript: The Healthiest Way to Eat Fried Food
Ty Bollinger: Now I want to ask you then, so as a general rule if you are cooking meat out on the grill, whether it’s grass fed or grain fed beef, or whatever it is… if you’re burning it then you’re producing those HCAs, heterocyclic amines that you talk about. You’re producing that if you’re burning the meat.
Dr. David Jockers: Absolutely! See you definitely want to stay away from burning the meat. So if you’re chargrilling it or whatever it is and if its got the blackened areas, those blackened areas—I always used to think they tasted great. I like the blackened area. But yeah. Those are carcinogens. We want to stay away from that. If you’re smoking it the smoke that’s coming up, that’s polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. We want to stay away from that too.
My preferred way of cooking meat is just on a good stainless steel pain, lots of coconut oil. I load up on the oil in there. The coconut oil will protect the meat. So I put that in there and I’m very generous with the oil because, again, we want a lot of these good fats and then I cook the meat in that. And I just cook it till it just lightly browned and that’s good.
Now if you are going to do the grill, okay, an outside grill, you’re going to do charcoal, things like that, you would certainly want to make sure you marinate it. And you can marinate in things like extra virgin olive oil, lemon, fresh squeezed lemon, and the lemon and the olive provide an antioxidant defense to help protect the meat from producing a lot of free radicals when you cook it. And again, just don’t let it smoke, don’t let it burn. Try to pull it off there a little quicker and you’re going to do a lot better with that.
Ty Bollinger: Great information on the coconut oil too. One of the things that we do as a family if the kids want something fried, we’ll fry it in coconut oil.
Dr. David Jockers: Absolutely!
Ty Bollinger: You know, some organic flour on the chicken or whatever, dip it in the coconut oil and it tastes great.
Dr. David Jockers: Oh yeah.
Ty Bollinger: But it’s actually healthy. You can actually eat a fried food that is healthy for you…
Dr. David Jockers: Exactly!
Ty Bollinger: …which is odd because we’re under the impression that all fried foods are bad. But the reason that all fried foods are bad, or that we thought that, is what?
Dr. David Jockers: Well again, it’s really a combination of things. Typically when you go and you get some sort of fried food − French fries, fried chicken − it’s going to be fried in a high omega-6 vegetable oil. Basically it’s going to create a trans fat because they take these polyunsaturated fats and they cook them at a high temperature. And these poly unsaturated fats can’t handle that. So they’re taking things like corn oil and soybean oil which are typically genetically modified as well. So you’ve got problems there.
But then they cook them at a really high temperature and they convert to trans fat. And so it’s just basically typical fried foods that you find in America are loaded, saturated with trans fatty acids which are extremely toxic and destructive in the body. So we definitely want to avoid that.
On top of that, they’re usually using the wrong type of batter so they’ve got a lot of gluten in there and genetically modified ingredients in whatever their batter is that they’re using with the chicken and the French fries. And of course, typically a chicken’s commercially raised and—so you got a whole bunch of problems right from the start.
Now if you were to take a pasture raised chicken that was raised properly, it’s going to, again, concentrate omega-3 fats, it’s going to have a lot more antioxidants in all of its cells, in all of its tissue. So now you’ve got a properly raised animal. Now you use something like coconut flour, which is gluten-free, low carb, good fibers, and you put that in there and then you deep fry it in coconut oil. You’re going to have a lot less problems with that. It’s going to be a lot better for the body. So that’s the way to do it.
Ty Bollinger: I think I’m going to have to go right now because I’m getting kind of hungry because it’s amazing the way—and again, the key is to use the proper ingredients.
Dr. David Jockers: That’s right.
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I would like to know what you can use to substitute for the coconut oil…..I am not fond of that taste or smell? ……. and I unfortunately luv my meat charred…. 🙁
You can buy a coconut oil that doesn’t taste of coconut. It’s been extracted differently. That’s what I put in my porridge in the morning cos I get bored of everything tasting of coconut!
I never fry my food. I either grill or roast it. Even I try not to char my meats and fish too much. I use olive oil and squeezed lemon for my grilled fish and meat. I make French fries, but only occasionally. I never buy coconut oil, because it is organic and my father complains that organic stuff is too organic.
I love what you all do here and I support this cause so much, it’s definitely helped open me up to a lot of amazing information to help my mom who is battling stage IV colon cancer.
But just because something is doused in coconut oil doesn’t make it healthy. There are already a lot of fats in animal flesh, so by doing that wouldn’t we just be adding more fat? I’m not saying fat is necessarily bad, but there is absolutely, definitely a limit.
And what about the acrylamide that potatoes (and other plants) produce when overheated (especially fried)?
Gosh! I agree with Melissa. Fried foods are to be avoided. Just making them slightly better by frying in coconut oil doesn’t make them healthy.