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Today, one of the top health stories emerging is the revelation that fried foods, even when consumed on practically a daily basis, do not cause heart disease.  This finding is from a study of patients in the Mediterrenean only, where the oils used for frying are limited to olive oil and sunflower oil.  Foods fried in either of those two oils, and the number of times the oil has been used, appear to have a strong bearing on the study.  Since the most unhealthy and popular cooking method in much of the Western Hemisphere is frying, the study has raised some eyebrows. It is pretty well known that foods that are fried in oil soak oil up, adding calories to the fried items.

The study does concede that consumption of enormous amounts of fried food can increase certain known heart disease risk factors; suobesity, hypertension and high cholesterol are the main concerns here.  From this announcement, people should not get the idea that if they start frying their chicken and potatoes in sunflower oil they are perfectly healthy.  In fact, for a person who has lived most of his or her life in the Western world, eating a Western diet, going to any fried food is probably a very dangerous idea.  The study only applies to people in one study who had lived a Mediterranean life, not people in the US who have been wolfing down burgers, greasy fries, and other bad news foods since they were old enough to point at the golden arches of McDonald’s.

Professor Pilar Guallar-Castillón from Autonomous University of Madrid led the study, which surveyed 40,757 adults aged between the ages of 26 and 69 over the course of eleven years. At the beginning of the study, none of the participants had heart disease.   The questions they were asked all had to do with their cooking methods when preparing individual and family meals.  Fried food was defined by the researchers as “food for which frying was the only cooking method used.” Participants responded to various questions about their diet and cooking methods, including specifically worded questions asking outright if the food was fried, crumbed, battered or sautéed.

Many of the participants reported on the highest end of a four tiered range that was rated according to how frequently fried foods were eaten.  Of the 40,757 participants in the study,
1,134 deaths were observed during a follow-up period,  and 606 other medical events were associated with heart disease as well.