Is Olive Oil Keto Friendly?

Short answer: Yes, all types of olive oil can be considered keto-friendly.

The ketogenic diet is a notoriously high-fat diet that began gaining popularity around 2018 and it’s been going strong ever since. In fact, a recent survey conducted by the International Food Information Council (IFIC) found that the keto diet was the 3rd most popular diet of 2020.

The problem: Many people, while well intentioned, are loading their keto diets with the wrong types of fats and low-quality, high-fat foods—for example, refined vegetable oils and seed oils, loads of butter, and highly processed meats like bacon and sausage. These foods, in excess, may promote inflammation and other health problems.

But, balancing your keto diet with anti-inflammatory, polyphenol-rich fats such as olive oil, along with plenty of low-carb, non-starchy veggies, can make all the difference in your long-term health. Keep reading to learn why olive oil deserves a spot in a healthy keto diet.

The keto diet is a high-fat, low-carb, moderate-protein diet with the primary goal of making you a fat-burner instead of a sugar-burner. In other words, it’s formulated this way so your body transitions from using glucose as its primary form of fuel to using fat and ketones as its primary form of fuel. When this happens, you’ve entered a metabolic state called “nutritional ketosis,” which has been associated with a number of health benefits such as weight loss, balanced blood sugar, improved appetite control, and enhanced brain health.

In order to enter nutritional ketosis, the keto diet requires your daily food intake to follow a specific macronutrient breakdown—meaning, a specific percentage of your calories must come from fat, protein, and carbs in order for your overall diet to be considered keto. The typical macro breakdown of a standard ketogenic diet is as follows:

• 70% fat
• 20% protein
• 10% carbohydrate (this typically works out to around 50 grams of total carbs, or 20-30 grams net carbs)

While the emerging research suggests there are some benefits to a ketogenic diet, the research is mixed when it comes to keto’s ability to combat inflammation (and unchecked inflammation, in turn, can lead to a number of chronic health problems over time). For example, one study found that following a keto diet triggered shifts in the composition of the gut microbiome that lowered inflammation, while other research has found that adopting a keto diet is associated with increased inflammation and cholesterol.

Why olive oil should be a staple in any healthy keto diet.

So, what causes a keto diet to either promote or prevent inflammation? It likely comes down to the specific foods and fats that you’re eating—not just the macronutrient breakdown.

For example, some studies suggest that the saturated fats found in red meat, processed meats, butter, and other full-fat dairy products (which some people eat in excessive quantities on a ketogenic diet) may contribute to increased LDL “bad” cholesterol levels and inflammation when consumed in excess. On the other hand, polyunsaturated fats (such as omega-3 fatty acids) and monounsaturated fats from foods like salmon, olive oil, olives, nuts, seeds, and avocados have all demonstrated anti-inflammatory effects.

This is why prioritizing olive oil as one of your main added fat sources can be so beneficial, especially when it’s used to replace some of the highly processed fats (e.g. trans fats, vegetable oils, seed oils) or saturated fats (e.g. lard, butter, bacon) in your diet.

Not only will olive oil get you closer to that 70% fat threshold, but it’s one of the best sources of oleic acid, a type of heart-healthy monounsaturated fat that’s been associated with reduced inflammation, cancer prevention, improved cholesterol levels, and reduced risk factors for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Additionally, compared to other fat sources, olive oil contains an abundance of bioactive polyphenol compounds such as hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol, oleuropein, and oleocanthal, which have antioxidant properties and protective effects against oxidative stress. Other fats that are typically considered “healthy fats” such as avocado oil, ghee, grass-fed butter, and coconut oil don’t contain nearly as many beneficial bioactive compounds as olive oil.

How to use olive oil on a keto diet.

Olive oil can be used to boost your intake of healthy fats in several ways. Try these:

• Take a spoonful of high-quality extra virgin olive oil to start your day
• Drizzle extra virgin olive oil onto any keto meal as a flavor enhancer
• Use EVOO in homemade salad dressings and marinades
• Make olive oil your cooking oil of choice. It’s great for sautéing, roasting, light frying, and baking. And yes, even extra virgin olive oil stands up to high-heat cooking.

Bottom line.
While ramping up your fat intake is crucial for entering nutritional ketosis, the specific types of fats you consume could make all the difference in your long-term health. Stick to mostly unsaturated fats like olive oil, and consume refined oils and saturated fats in moderation.

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Olive Oil and the Keto Diet

The keto­genic diet has been surg­ing in pop­u­lar­ity in recent years, with some mar­ket ana­lysts expect­ing adher­ence to the eat­ing pro­gram to con­tinue grow­ing over the next half-decade. The diet is already well-estab­lished in Europe as well as North America and is expand­ing in pop­u­lar­ity in Asia too.

The fat-cen­tric diet his­tor­i­cally was used to treat chil­dren and adults with epilepsy. However, mod­ern stud­ies have shown that adher­ing to a keto­genic diet may have a vari­ety of other health ben­e­fits, includ­ing weight loss and mit­i­gat­ing the effects of Type 2 dia­betes.

See Also:Olive Oil Basics

The diet works by hav­ing adher­ents replace car­bo­hy­drates and pro­teins with both sat­u­rated and unsat­u­rated fats. Many health experts and enthu­si­as­tic fol­low­ers of the keto­genic diet say includ­ing extra vir­gin olive oil in the diet is a great way to improve its effi­cacy.

What is the keto­genic diet?

The keto­genic diet – keto for short – is pri­mar­ily based on the con­sump­tion of fat, giv­ing less empha­sis to the other two macronu­tri­ents – pro­teins and car­bo­hy­drates.

While ratios vary depend­ing on the indi­vid­ual and their goals, the caloric intake of keto diet adher­ents is typ­i­cally com­posed of only five to 10 per­cent car­bo­hy­drates and 15 to 30 per­cent pro­tein, with the remain­der of the diet made up of fat.

See Also:Diet News

The idea behind the diet is to achieve keto­sis, a state in which the body and brain switch from break­ing down car­bo­hy­drates to pro­cess­ing fats as the pri­mary source of energy.

During keto­sis the body con­verts fat into ketones, which are then con­verted into energy. At the begin­ning of the diet, the body solely burns newly-con­sumed fat, but as the body adjusts, it begins to break down stored fat too.

Since the body is revert­ing to this alter­na­tive source of fuel, it is impor­tant to not con­sume a high vol­ume of car­bo­hy­drates, as it will quickly con­vert back to using this macronu­tri­ent as fuel.

Health ben­e­fits of the keto­genic diet

When prop­erly man­aged, the keto­genic diet can bring a vari­ety of health ben­e­fits to the adher­ents.

The pri­mary use of the keto­genic diet is to lose weight. After the body has burned through all of the car­bo­hy­drates, it solely con­verts fat into energy, which burns far more calo­ries. There is also some evi­dence sug­gest­ing diets high in fats and pro­teins are more sati­at­ing and result in par­tic­i­pants con­sum­ing fewer calo­ries over­all.

See Also:Health News

Research sug­gests that the keto­genic diet may also lower the risk of heart dis­ease and mit­i­gate the risk of meta­bolic syn­drome (i.e. high blood pres­sure, high cho­les­terol and high blood sugar) by rais­ing the body’s level of ​“good” cho­les­terols and low­er­ing the level of ​“bad” cho­les­terol.

Adherence to the keto­genic diet may also mit­i­gate the impacts of insulin resis­tance and Type 2 dia­betes. There is also some evi­dence (though it is far from con­clu­sive) to sug­gest that the keto­genic diet may also be ben­e­fi­cial for acne, can­cer pre­ven­tion, poly­cys­tic ovary syn­drome and some neural dis­eases, includ­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

Regarding dia­betes, can­cer pre­ven­tion and acne, the keto­genic diet may be ben­e­fi­cial because it uses up the body’s insulin and pre­vents it from build­ing up in the blood­stream. Insulin helps to fuel the growth of can­cer cells and too much of it in the blood can lead to insulin resis­tance and dia­betes.

Researchers are still unsure of why the keto­genic diet may be ben­e­fi­cial in mit­i­gat­ing the impacts of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, but the­o­rize that when fat is con­verted into ketones and sent to the brain, it may act as a pro­tec­tive lay­er­ing on the brain cells.

Olive oil and the keto­genic diet

Since roughly 70 per­cent of caloric intake on the keto­genic diet comes from fat, it is impor­tant to be eat­ing the cor­rect kinds.

Consuming sig­nif­i­cant amounts of monoun­sat­u­rated fats is impor­tant for improv­ing the effi­cacy of the keto­genic diet. For this rea­son, extra vir­gin olive oil – which is com­posed of about 73 per­cent monoun­sat­u­rated fat – fits per­fectly within the keto­genic diet.

Not only does the con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil as part of the diet com­ple­ment many of the afore­men­tioned health ben­e­fits, but some evi­dence sug­gests that it is among the pre­ferred fats to digest by a body that is in keto­sis.

See Also:Cooking with Olive Oil

Extra vir­gin olive oil is also rich in antiox­i­dants, which can help absorb much-needed nutri­ents in food. Since a lim­ited num­ber of car­bo­hy­drates is crit­i­cal to suc­cess for the keto­genic diets, con­sum­ing sal­ads dressed with extra vir­gin olive oil or veg­eta­bles grilled with the stuff helps the body get the most out of these foods.

Additionally, extra vir­gin olive oil is rich in polyphe­nols, Omega‑3 and Omega‑6 fatty acids, all of which are health­ful com­pounds that help the body func­tion prop­erly.

Away from the health ben­e­fits of adding extra vir­gin olive oil to the keto­genic diet, there is also the fla­vor fac­tor.

From adding it to sal­ads to fry­ing eggs in it, extra vir­gin olive oil is a ver­sa­tile cook­ing ingre­di­ent that can help add some vari­ety and com­plex­ity to a keto meal plan.

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Health Benefits of Olive Oil on the Keto Diet

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The type of vegetable oil used in cooking makes a big difference, especially when transitioning to a keto diet. What makes olive oil such a popular choice for low-carb diets?

A few reasons why olive oil is so popular:

• Olive oil is a healthy, all-natural cooking oil rich in heart-healthy fatty acids.
• It contains no carbohydrates.
• Olive oil is an excellent source of disease-fighting antioxidants and other beneficial bioactive compounds.

Is olive oil good for a keto diet?

This is a high calorie option that is an incredibly rich source of monounsaturated fatty acids. This type of healthy dietary fat has been found to help protect against cardiovascular disease.

Olive oil does not contain any carbohydrates and is therefore suitable for the keto diet. In addition, it is nutritious and rich in antioxidants that help maintain health. The benefits of olive oil for our body are simply invaluable, this is exactly the product that everyone should use.

Nutritional value of olive oil

Here is the approximate composition of 100 grams of extra virgin olive oil:

• 884 calories;
• 100 g dietary fat;
• 2 mg sodium;
• 1 mg potassium.

Olive oil contains no proteins, carbohydrates, dietary fiber, sugar or cholesterol at all.

Health benefits of olive oil

Here are three proven health benefits you can get by including olive oil in your keto diet plan:

1. Protection against heart disease. Olive oil is the healthiest of all vegetable oils. Numerous studies have confirmed a direct link between regular olive oil consumption and reduced rates of cardiovascular disease.
2. Contains disease-fighting antioxidants. In addition to protecting against heart disease, olive oil also offers a certain level of protection against other diseases in several ways. Olive oil is a powerful source of antioxidants, and an important source of antioxidants and beneficial polyphenols.
3. Relieve inflammation in the body. Another way to protect you from disease with olive oil is to reduce chronic inflammation in the body. The polyphenols in olive oil have shown anti-inflammatory activity, which may help prevent the development of chronic inflammatory diseases.

Alternatives to olive oil on a keto diet

If you prefer a different type of edible oil and are looking for a keto diet, here are a few alternatives to olive oil:

• Almond oil;
• Avocado oil;
• Coconut oil.

Olive oil

Olive oil (Extra Virgin) – very useful.

Everyone knows that it has a good distribution of fatty acids (more on that below) and contains antioxidants, but the debate continues about whether it can be heated and cooked on it.

Let’s see.

Why people think cooking with olive oil is bad.

When fats and oils are heated to high temperatures, some molecules are destroyed and harmful substances are formed. This is especially true for polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Overheating of these fats can produce carcinogens (1) (2).

Moreover, even just being in the room during overheating of such oil is harmful (3), (4).

If you want to protect yourself from this risk, cook only with heat-stable fats.

Oils have two parameters that are important to us – smoke point and resistance to oxidation, olive oil is all right with this. Next, we will look at this in a little more detail.

High content of heat stable monounsaturated fatty acids.

Saturated fats (eg coconut oil) are very heat stable, as are monounsaturated fats.

But most vegetable oils contain polyunsaturated fats, which do not tolerate heat very well. The peculiarity of olive oil is that it consists of 73% monounsaturated fats, 11% polyunsaturated fats and 14% saturated fats.

In other words, olive oil is made up of 87% fat, which is very heat resistant (5).

Rich in antioxidants and vitamin E

Extra Virgin Olive Oil is obtained after the first pressing of olives and contains a large amount of biologically active substances, including antioxidants and vitamin E (6), (7).

Vitamin E itself is an antioxidant and helps the body fight free radicals that damage cells (8).

Oxidation resistance

Hazardous substances are formed when oil oxidizes. This happens when oil comes into contact with oxygen even at room temperature, heating this process greatly accelerates.

But due to the nature of its composition, as discussed earlier, olive oil is very resistant to oxidation even when heated (because of the high content of polyunsaturated fats and antioxidants).

One study tested several types of olive oil when frying at a high temperature (180-190 degrees) showed high stability (9).

Another study showed that compared to other vegetable oils, e.g. sunflower oil, olive oil is much more resistant to oxidation (10).

But it’s worth noting that there was also one study that showed an increase in markers of oxidation in the blood of subjects who consumed food cooked in olive oil. True, this oil was refined and cooking lasted 8 hours at a temperature of 210 degrees, which, of course, is far from real conditions (11).

There is also a myth that trans fats form when olive oil is heated. There was a study in which olive oil was cooked eight times in a row and the trans fat content was 0.045% at the beginning and 0.082% at the end of the experiment, which is still quite acceptable.

In this way we have made sure that olive oil is very resistant to oxidation in general, even under conditions of high heat.

Sufficiently high smoke point

The smoke point is the temperature at which visible smoke begins to flow from the oil. At this time, the fat molecules break down into their constituent parts and harmful substances are released.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil has a smoke point of 190-207 degrees. The formation of a crust during frying occurs at about 160 degrees.

So olive oil is suitable for almost any kind of heat treatment (12).

Can heat destroy antioxidants and nutrients?

Normal cooking does not cause much damage to the oil, does not oxidize it, but some of the antioxidants and vitamin E can be destroyed, because. they are sensitive to heat.

In one study, heating olive oil to 180 degrees for 36 hours caused some reduction in antioxidants and vitamin E (13)

One of the most important components of olive oil, oleocanthal, is responsible for the anti-inflammatory properties of the oil (14).

In one experiment, heating to 240 degrees for 90 minutes reduced the content of this substance by 19% (15).

In addition, there are many other studies that have found similar properties of oil – during normal cooking heating, useful properties are not lost, when extreme temperatures are reached, only a slight decrease in the concentration of useful substances occurs.