What is oil, why do we cook with it, and why do things taste so much better with it?
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It doesn’t seem like any of the top comments have mentioned Neuroscience so let me just add that your brain needs fat to think and function, and dietary fat is really important for brain function. Even taking something as simple as an Omega fatty acid supplement can improve alertness and wakefulness because of how important those fats are for your brain
So of course we have evolved to crave something so important
I’m addition to promoting mallard reaction and caramelization, oil also transports flavor better. It can pick up flavor molecules and carry them right to your waiting taste buds.
Oil is a lipid/fat with short molecule chains. This allows them to be liquid at room temp. Other fats like lard or butter are longer chain and are more solid. They all are chains of carbon with hydrogen sticking out like legs on a centipede with the carbon being the body of the centipede.
We cook with it for several reasons. First it acts as a lubricant to keep food from sticking to pans. Second it increases the surface area of the food in contact with the cooking surface leading to faster cooking and more even browning (Adam Ragusea has a video on this on YouTube)
It makes food taste better 3 ways. 1 our bodies are hardwired to want to eat calorie-dense food as a survival mechanism and oils/fats are very calorie dense. 2 the better browning mentioned above leads to more tasty chemicals through the Maillard (sp?) reactions. 3 some flavor chemicals cannot be dissolved into water but CAN be dissolved in the fat (like how nail polish is waterproof but acetone/polish remover can dissolve it). Our tongues can only really taste stuff that is dissolved either in water, oil, or our saliva so having oil present let’s those other flavors reach our taste receptors.
Truth be told vegetable oil is inedible oil derived from seeds and other plant waste (like cotton seeds.) good likelyhood that heart disease directly related to the use of seed oils in food since the mid 1800’s.
https://time.com/4291505/when-vegetable-oil-isnt-as-healthy-as-you-think/?amp=true
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6196963/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131111122105.htm
The shit goes Rancid (oxidizes) almost immediately after extraction and is boiled to very high temps to clarify it. If it wasn’t super heated it would smell like death.
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