PUFA: The One With More to Lose
Give a fat two or three double bonds instead of one, and you've got a polyunsaturated fatty acid aka PUFA. More double bonds sounds harmless. It isn't. Every extra one is another spot oxygen can attack. While deep frying and repeated reheating the damage cascades into genuinely unpleasant byproducts: 4-HNE, malondialdehyde, acrolein, 4-HHE, compounds with real toxicology research behind them.
Olive oil mainly consists of two PUFAs: linoleic acid (C18:2) and linolenic acid (C18:3). These two are omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, respectively. They are healthy fats when eaten raw, but when heated, they are very harmful. Majority of seed oils have high content of PUFAs, for that reason they make a poor choice as a cooking oil. On the other hand, olive oil has only less than 1% of linolenic acid, which makes it a safe cooking oil choice.
Olive oil runs low on PUFA and high on MUFA. That ratio isn't luck. It's exactly why this oil was the safer bet in a hot pan long before anyone had the mechanism to explain why.
Written by Raj Mahat
Analytical Chemist
Metabolomics/ Lipidomics
EVOO Sommelier- O.N.A.O.O., Italy
Certified EVOO Sommelier- ESAO, Spain
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