The Best and Worst Cooking Oils for Your Body and Brain

No one talks about the oil you cook with. While most focus on what they eat, how they cook matters too if they care about their health. With so many oils crowding grocery store shelves today, it can feel overwhelming to choose the right one. Some oils offer a real health boost, while others are best used with caution. In this guide, I’ll share exactly which oils I use to support my health and which ones I avoid. Use it to cook your next tasty meal and take better care of your body at the same time.

A Note on Evolution

To understand which oils are healthy and which are not, let’s take a look at evolution. Throughout human history, our diet has centered around whole, unprocessed foods. If the entire existence of humans were represented as a 24-hour day, the introduction of processed foods, modern agriculture, and industrialized products like refined oils would have occurred in just the last 12 minutes. This sudden shift poses a challenge for our genes, which are still rooted in the dietary patterns of our early ancestors. When it comes to cooking oils, choose oils that reflect the simplicity of our early diet, and avoid the highly processed ones that our bodies are not designed to handle.

What I Avoid

Vegetable/Seed Oils ❌

When you see “vegetable oil” on a label, it’s not made from vegetables like broccoli or carrots. It’s usually soybean oil or a blend of other refined oils like corn, canola, sunflower, or grapeseed. I used to spray PAM vegetable oil on my pan every morning to cook eggs, thinking I was making a smart, healthy choice. You’ve probably used these oils too for sautéing, baking, marinades, or as a nonstick solution in the kitchen.

The problem is how these oils are made. To extract oil from tiny seeds like soybeans or corn, manufacturers use extreme heat, pressure, and chemical solvents. That harsh process creates unstable molecules called free radicals, which can damage your cells and DNA when consumed. In simple terms, these oils speed up aging. They weaken your skin’s elasticity and reduce collagen, leading to wrinkles and dullness. They also interfere with how your cells produce energy, which can leave you feeling tired.

These damaged fats are seen as “foreign” by your body. Since your genes aren’t adapted to this kind of processed food, your immune system reacts with unnecessary inflammation. Over time, this chronic low-grade inflammation has been linked to faster aging and nearly every major chronic disease. Seed oils aren’t just used for home cooking. They are hiding in almost every packaged food on store shelves, including chips, crackers, sauces, and frozen meals.

Our ancestors never ate oils that were this highly processed. Our bodies evolved to thrive on simple, whole fats. When we eat modern seed oils, we’re throwing our bodies a curveball it doesn’t know how to hit.

Margarine/Shortening ❌

If you’ve got margarine or shortening in your freezer, toss them. You may have used them for baking or spreading, but one of their main ingredients is something called partially hydrogenated oil, also known as trans fat. These fats are man-made. They're created in a factory by adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oil to make it more solid and last longer on the shelf. Sounds clever, but your body has no idea what to do with them.

Imagine your cells are like tiny bricks that build your body. Each brick has a fatty wall. Now imagine building a wall using warped, fake bricks. That’s what happens when you eat trans fats. Your body uses the fat you eat to build those walls. If it uses trans fats, the walls become weak and dysfunctional. That means your cells stop working the way they should.

Trans fats clog your arteries like sludge in a pipe. They mess with your brain too, making it harder for memory signals to fire. One 2015 study found that people who ate the most trans fats remembered 12 fewer words on a recall test than those who ate none.

Trans fats were such a disaster for public health that the FDA banned them from processed foods starting in 2020. But some old products might still be around, and some restaurants may still sneak them in. Always check the ingredients list. If you see “partially hydrogenated vegetable oil,” put it back on the shelf.

What I Use Instead

Extra Virgin Olive Oil 🫒

This oil comes from cold-pressing whole olives, which means the oil is squeezed out without heat or chemicals. That gentle process keeps the antioxidants and healthy fats intact. Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fat, which is good for your heart, brain, and skin. It also has anti-inflammatory compounds called polyphenols, which help fight disease and help you stay younger. I use EVOO every day on salads, and occasionally for low-heat cooking (it gets unstable at high heat like seed oils), and drizzling on veggies or meats.

Coconut Oil 🥥

Coconut oil is made by pressing the white meat of coconuts. Coconut oil is high in saturated fat, a topic that has been debated for years, but more people are starting to realize it’s not the villain it was made out to be. Our ancestors ate saturated fats from animals and coconuts for thousands of years without modern diseases, so our bodies are well-adapted to using them for energy and building strong cells. Saturated fats are beneficial for brain health, contributing to the structure of neurons and playing a role in the signaling process. Your brain is made up of 50% saturated fat! This fat is stable at high heat, so it doesn’t break down into harmful compounds. I throw in some coconut oil into my protein shake, and make homemade popcorn with it, one of my favorite snacks!

Avocado Oil 🥑

Avocado oil is made by cold-pressing the flesh of the avocado (the green stuff, not the seed). That means it’s full of nutrients and hasn’t been damaged by high heat or chemicals. It has a high smoke point (meaning it doesn’t break down easily when hot), so it’s perfect for roasting, sautéing, or grilling. It’s rich in monounsaturated fats, just like olive oil, which helps reduce inflammation and support heart and brain health.

Grassfed Butter 🧈

Butter comes from churning cream, and if it’s from grass-fed cows, it contains more healthy fats like omega-3s and CLA, which are insanely good for your brain. Butter is also high in saturated fat, which is crucial for strong cells. If you’re frying eggs, butter makes them taste ten times better than any other oil I’ve listed.

Go Back to What Worked

Seed oils, margarine, and shortening are all fake fats made in factories. They’re new to the human diet, and our bodies don’t know what to do with them. These man-made oils break down into toxic compounds that damage your cells, and DNA, and age you faster.

Our ancestors didn’t cook with industrial seed oils. Less processed fats like olive, coconut, avocado, and butter are the kinds of fats our genes are built to handle. When you give your body what it’s evolved to run on, your cells become stronger, your energy improves, and your body functions the way it was designed to.

So don’t overthink it. If an oil has been used for thousands of years, you’re probably safe. If it was invented in a lab less than 100 years ago, toss it.

Sources:

Trust me, bro. (Kidding.) What I shared here is inspired by Genius Foods by Max Lugavere, one of my favorite reads on brain health, nutrition, and the science behind what we eat.