We were cruising through the cooking oils section of a grocery store and came across cold-pressed Avocado Oil, a wonderful product we had never heard of. We began using it for cooking and we learned it makes a great salad dressing oil. It has a mellow and buttery taste and it can be used in place of cooking oils, like vegetable oil, olive oil, canola oil or butter.

To our surprise, there are also some very notable benefits of Avocado Oil, including their high content of monounsaturated fats (the really good-for-us ones that protect healthy cholesterol), oleic acid, carotenoids, lutein and Vitamin E. All of these things do a terrific job at battling inflammation in the body and protecting its vital organs.

Avocado Oil is loaded with antioxidants and, as a bonus, will drastically increase the absorption of other antioxidants within the body. Tests have shown a 200%-400% increase! It protects the liver, heart, eyes and it even protects against aging.

One of the most interesting things we discovered about Avocado Oil is that it has an extraordinarily high flash point. All cooking oils have a flash point, which is a temperature it reaches, before releasing nasty chemical compounds, called Lipid Oxidation Products, into the body. They are unstable microscopic particles that set off a reaction of free radical damage to the body’s cells. Yikes!

LOPs breakdown the collagen and joints that keep our skin youthful and our bodies limber. They oxidize our healthy cholesterol, making it plaque-like, which damages the heart. They destroy the eye lens and create cataracts, not to mention their relentless attack on the molecular structure of our DNA.

Anytime fat or oil is raised above its safe temperature range, LOPs are released, and that is often. Chain restaurants reuse their oil over and over, constantly exceeding its safe temperature range, which releases extraordinary amounts of free radicals into the foods they are selling. Even home cooks are rarely aware of their own cooking oil’s flash point or its consequences.

That’s where Avocado Oil comes in. It has a flash point of 520°F! It would be difficult to reach that temperature in a home kitchen and hence, no LOPs invading our food! To give some perspective on this, Olive Oil has a flash point of only 350°F. Avocado Oil not only resists free radical damage in your cooking, it fights free radical damage in the body!

We are always keeping an eye out for ingredients and products that teach us something new. The addition of Avocado Oil to our mobile pantry has changed the way we eat and look forward to discovering more simple miracles that nature provides!