Use Only These Healthy Oils in Cooking
Walk into any kitchen conversation about health, and sooner or later someone asks the same question: which oil is actually good for me? Olive, mustard, coconut, ghee — everyone has an opinion, and most of it is contradictory. This article breaks down what a handful of traditional and modern oils actually offer, where each one shines, and where it falls short, so you can stop guessing and start cooking with intention.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Great Oil, Wrong Job for High Heat
Extra virgin olive oil is genuinely one of the healthiest oils available, and its reputation is well earned. The catch is temperature. Olive oil isn't built for high-heat cooking — when you push it past its comfort zone, it breaks down and loses much of what makes it valuable in the first place. Use it for dressings, drizzling, and lower-heat preparations rather than deep frying or high-flame sautéing.
Mustard Oil: A Kitchen Staple With Real Limits
Mustard oil has been a fixture in Indian kitchens for generations, and it earns that place. It's linked to benefits for hair and for teeth, and it carries a good dose of omega-6 fatty acids. But more isn't automatically better — because of that fatty acid load, it's not meant to be your only oil, used at every meal, every single day. Ayurveda has relied on mustard oil for centuries, and that long track record counts for something, but the same tradition treats it as one tool among several, not a everyday default.
Sesame (Til) Oil: Good for Skin and Teeth, Used With Intention
Sesame oil shows up as another oil worth having in rotation, particularly valued for skin and dental health. Like the others on this list, it's best used specifically and thoughtfully rather than poured indiscriminately into every dish — a spoonful with purpose, not a default cooking medium.
Coconut Oil: A Southern Staple With Antibacterial Properties
Coconut oil has been used for centuries in South Indian households, and it's credited with helping the skin and offering antifungal and antibacterial properties. It's a genuinely useful oil, but it isn't universally the right fit for every age group or every body — worth introducing thoughtfully rather than assuming it suits everyone the same way.
Groundnut (Peanut) Oil: Built for High-Temperature Cooking
Groundnut oil, sometimes called peanut oil, is well suited to high-temperature cooking, much like mustard oil in that respect. It's a solid, dependable option for frying and similar cooking that needs heat stability. That said, it doesn't agree with everyone — some people notice mild stomach discomfort with it, so pay attention to how your own body responds rather than assuming it's universally tolerated.
Ghee: A High-Value Oil, If the Quality Is Right
Ghee gets singled out as one of the most valuable oils in the list — a genuine gift when the quality is high. It has a notably high smoke point, which makes it forgiving for cooking, and it's traditionally associated with supporting immunity and mental clarity. But the benefit is entirely tied to quality. Ghee made from good-quality milk, ideally from a healthy cow, behaves very differently from cheap, adulterated versions sold cheaply. Poor-quality ghee doesn't deliver the same benefits and can even work against you. If you have access to good-quality ghee, it deserves a regular place in your diet.
Butter: A Close Cousin to Ghee, With Its Own Place
Butter, when made from good-quality milk, is described as being almost as valuable as ghee — though it behaves a bit differently in cooking and doesn't hold up quite as cleanly at higher temperatures. Good-quality butter still deserves a place in a balanced diet, used with the same attention to quality that applies to ghee.
What to Avoid: Reused, Refined, and Roadside Oils
The clearest warning in this video isn't about which "good" oil to pick — it's about which oils to actively avoid. Oil that gets reused again and again, especially the kind used at street food stalls and fried multiple times over, is flagged as genuinely harmful, breaking the body down from the inside over time rather than nourishing it. The advice is blunt: if you're unsure about an oil, trace where it comes from and how it's been used before it reached your food. Heavily refined oils, including soybean oil, fall into this same cautionary category — they're processed in ways that strip away the qualities that make an oil worth using in the first place.
A Note on Sugar
Alongside the oil advice, there's a brief but pointed reminder about sugar: cutting back matters. If you already use sugar, the suggestion is to be more deliberate about it — save it for specific uses rather than using it freely, since regular, ongoing sugar intake carries its own long-term cost to the body.