Many people have come to blame fried food for health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
Is it the Frying, the food that is being fried, or is it the types of oil being used to fry in?
According to metabolic science, burning carbohydrates as fuel for our bodies, requires 28% more antioxidants to clean up left over free radicals, than does burning fat. For the same amount of calories produced, less cell damaging free radicals are produced from eating fat.
Our bodies make and absorb anti-oxidants from the food we eat, anti-oxidants neutralise the free radicals. Vitamin A, (derived from Beta Carotene) is a powerful antioxidant found in the milk and fat of grass fed animals. It gives butter and ghee that yellow colour.
Carbohydrate consumption, while totally unnecessary when other foods are available, is actually not that big of a problem for a healthy person who is not metabolically damaged and does not have allergies or intolerances to the bioactive compounds found in plants.
Concentrate - the dose maketh the poison
Processing plants may break down many of the otherwise harmful compounds that plants use to defend themselves and their seeds. When we do this, we tend to further concentrate the oils and the sugars, both of which increase oxidative stress.
Vegetable oils are Seed Oils
Easily damaged fats such as polyunsaturated fats from seeds, (I think they become tran fats when exposed to heat and or oxygen?) become an enormous drain on our anti-oxidant supply. This is because they damage the cells lining our arteries. Cholesterol and vitamin C loaded macrophages are sent to patch and repair this damage.
The immune system also requires anti-oxidants
Macrophages that carry Vitamin C, (another powerful antioxidant found in both meat and plants) do not function correctly in an environment of high blood sugar*. Another result of a diet high in carbohydrates.
Into the Frying Pan
Eating both, sugar and seed oils (PUFA) together and you have a perfect oxidative storm that damages the arteries, heart, liver and nervous system, (including the brain).
That delicious crunchy fried food is mostly rolled in bread crumbs and corn flour, (concentrated carbohydrates) before being fried in so called, "healthy" vegetable oils, (polyunsaturated fats). I have no idea why the WHO, (World Health Organisation) warns us that meat is dangerous but fails to mention Sugar and PUFA.
We humans, are so incredibly resilient, like the frog brought slowly to the boil that fails to hop out of the pot. This process of oxidative damage, (from free radicals) happens too gradually for us to notice against the background noise of our lives.
End note
The positive here is that, by avoiding refined carbohydrates and all vegetable or seed oils, (except for rare celebrations ), people may also avoid most of our modern day diseases. Personally I just eat meat, but that is quite radical even if it is largely devoid of free radicals.
*this is called GAA or Glucose Ascorbate Antagonism