The Definitive Buying Guide for Brain-Friendly Cooking Oils

And, the oils you should be totally avoiding.

There you are, standing in the cooking aisle in the grocery store, pondering which one to buy. On one hand, you want to choose the best oil for your health that has the best flavor. And by that I mean: the brain-friendliest oil with the best fat profile and health-promoting nutrients. On the other hand, you don’t want to spend a fortune on cooking oil. Is olive oil the best? Should you splurge on extra-virgin? What’s the deal with canola, coconut, and ghee? And, can you eat butter and still eat brain-friendly?

Once you begin to read the labels, you encounter a cacophony of important-seeming terms: cold-pressed, heart-healthy, blended, unrefined, non-GMO. With so many choices, most of which are marketed to be “healthy” when they are anything but, choosing the best oil can be a daunting task. (Last week I talked about 4 common myths about cooking oils.)

Even if you use only olive oil in your cooking, purchasing a good product can be a challenge. You may have read about olive oil fraud, which includes when olive oil is mixed with inferior oils, but still labeled “extra-virgin,” or pooled from many countries yet labeled “bottled in Italy,” or has green chlorophyll added to vegetable oil, but is labeled olive oil. 

If all this sounds baffling, don’t worry. I’ve put together a handy cheat sheet for you that includes brands I like: The Brain Health Kitchen Guide to Cooking Oils. Find it at the end of this letter. Download and print or save to your phone to refer back to when grocery shopping.

Here, I break down the science for you: the cooking oils with most brain health virtues, the ones to avoid, and how to choose which oils to cook with depending on what you are making.

There are only a handful of oils I call Brain-Friendly. There’s another group of oils that are just okay—I call these Occasional Oils since I only rarely use them in the Brain Health Kitchen; they don’t check off enough brain-healthy boxes to warrant everyday use. Most cooking oils are on my Oils to Avoid list, the ones with the most inflammatory ingredients and unhealthy fats.