A nutritional scientist has spoken about fears that using a ‘superfood’ said to help with heart disease, inflammation and type 2 diabetes to cook with could cause cancer. Tim Spector professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and founder of the Zoe health app has said that just a spoonful of olive oil a day could have a big impact on health. But he has hit back at suggestions that using it to cook could be harmful.
Speaking on the Zoe podcast he said: “There are stories about are you destroying it when you heat it up? Is it dangerous when you heat it up? There was this idea that there was a smoke point that you got to with olive oil that made it dangerous or bad for your health. “They gave you cancer. I think a lot of this stuff probably propagated by the competition, and it turns out that normal levels of cooking you don’t really get above about 180 degrees.
So that’s not really a problem.” Prof Spector said that having it raw - especially with the higher costing extra virgin olive oil - was still the best way to eat it for the best health benefits with it being a mistake to cook with high quality oil - which can be very expensive. He said: “You do lose some of the polyphenols by heating it.
Under regular cooking, you lost about 40% of the polyphenols. If you cook with it, you’re not getting the same benefits as you would if you’re having on a salad. Therefore, if you’ve got a very high quality olive oil, you may prefer to keep that as.