Fats and Oils

All oil is 100 percent fat and contains 120 calories per tablespoon. Even though oil is high in calories, it is very low in nutrients and contains no fiber; it is a food that has no nutritional value.

Oil is a processed food, usually extracted from a plant with a petroleum chemical such as hexane, which is a colorless, flammable liquid, derived from the distillation of petroleum and used as a solvent. When you chemically extract oil from a whole food (such as olives and various nuts and seeds), you leave behind nutrients and empty calories.

Don’t get me wrong you do need some fat in your diet. But when you consume whole foods, such as walnuts, sesame seeds, or flaxseed, instead of their extracted oils, you get all the fibers, flavonoids, and nutrients they contain. For example, whole, unprocessed seeds provide folate, iron, calcium, niacin, lignans, and flavonoids; the oils from those seeds provide none of those.