Olive oil, avocado, a handful of nuts, a fillet of oily fish. For a generation we were told to strip fat out of dinner. This blog puts the good kind back — and explains, in plain English, why it belongs there.
For thirty years, "low-fat" was shorthand for healthy. Shelves filled with fat-free yoghurts and biscuits, and the sugar that replaced the fat did quiet damage of its own.
Good Fat Kitchen is a plain-English blog about eating fat well. It isn't a diet, and there's nothing to buy here. We look at where fats actually come from — the olive grove, the avocado, the almond, the cold sea — and at the difference between a fat your body thrives on and one that's been pressed, bleached and deodorised into a cheap frying medium.
Every article sticks to what's genuinely known, in language you can use at the stove tonight. No miracle claims, no fear, just a clearer sense of what to pour and what to skip.
Butter, olive oil, salmon, sunflower oil — they're all "fat", yet they behave very differently in a pan and in your body. Here's the honest, non-alarmist version of what separates them.
Read the article →Each guide takes one everyday fat — an oil, a fruit, a fish, a cheap cooking staple — and lays out what it is, what it does, and how to use it well.
What the two words really mean at the molecular level, and why it changes how a fat behaves in your kitchen and your blood.
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Extra virgin, virgin, "light", pomace — the labels hide real differences. What each one is, and which to reach for when.
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Beyond the brunch cliché: what's actually inside an avocado, from monounsaturated fat to potassium and fibre.
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Modern diets swim in omega-6 and run short on omega-3. What that ratio is, why it drifted, and how to nudge it back.
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A capsule is convenient, but a sardine brings more to the table. Where the two diverge, and when each makes sense.
Read →Nuts and seeds by type, cold-pressing explained, and how heat changes an oil are next on the bench.
The word "olive oil" covers everything from cold-pressed juice to an industrially refined by-product. Here's the short version — the long one lives in the full article.
Cold-pressed from fresh olives with no heat or chemicals, and low in free acidity. It keeps the aroma, the peppery kick and most of the antioxidants.
Finishing & dressingsSmoke point ~190–207°C
Virgin is a step down in acidity limits; plain "olive oil" is usually refined oil blended with a little virgin for flavour. Milder, cheaper, more neutral.
Everyday cookingSmoke point ~210–220°C
Pomace oil is extracted from the leftover paste with solvents, then refined. "Light" refers to flavour and colour, not calories — it's simply heavily processed.
Skip when you canSmoke point ~230°C
Not entirely — the aim of cutting heart risk was reasonable, and cutting some fats does help. What went wrong was treating all fat as one enemy. Stripping fat from foods often meant adding sugar and refined starch to keep them palatable, and that swap didn't do most people any favours.
Yes, for the great majority of home cooking. Extra virgin olive oil is more heat-stable than its reputation suggests, and its antioxidants add protection. For very high, prolonged frying a more neutral oil is easier — but for sautéing, roasting and dressing, olive oil is a fine everyday choice.
They are energy-dense, so portion still matters. But the fat is mostly monounsaturated, and an avocado brings fibre, potassium and a range of vitamins along with it. As part of a balanced plate it earns its place rather than crowding it.
The honest answer is nuanced. Seed oils aren't poison, and they're not a health food either. The clearer issue is balance: diets heavy in fried and packaged foods deliver a flood of omega-6 and very little omega-3. Cooking more at home and eating oily fish shifts that ratio more than banning any single oil.
No. It's general nutrition information for a healthy adult audience. If you have a specific condition — heart disease, a lipid disorder, gallbladder issues — talk to a clinician or dietitian before making big changes, because individual needs vary.