by Sara Williams

Created on: August 08, 2009

Since olive oil contains monounsaturated fat, it is a good choice for adding healthy fats to your diet that can also replace the unhealthy fat that may already be in your diet. As a part of cooking, making the switch to olive oil from, say, vegetable oil, is a very painless way to become more healthy. It is a critical part of the popular Mediterranean Diet, having been a staple of Greek cooking for most of its history.

Just saying that olive oil is better to cook with due to its healthier fat may win a few converts, but it also raises many questions. For example, why is monounsaturated fat healthy, anyway? Its benefit is a reduced risk of heart disease due to by reducing LDLs (low-density lipoproteins) that are the "bad" form of cholesterol. Another benefit? Olive oil also raises the other kind of cholesterol, the "good" HDLs. Basically, olive oil can help fight high levels of bad cholesterol. In contrast, saturated and trans fats do the opposite by raising cholesterol. These fats are contained within the usual "bad for you" food suspects: butter, partially hydrogenated oils (read: trans fats, often in oils used in fast foods, although that is slowly changing), animal fats, etc.

Less-known benefits of olive oil include its beneficial effects on stomach ulcers and gastritis. It is easily digested. Got gallstones? Yes, olive oil is actually known to help reduce the incidence and formation of gallstones. Antioxidants are another pro of this great diet addition, and it may even help fight colon cancer.

Olive oil is, for all of the above reasons, a natural "superfood" that contains more monounsaturated fats than any other source. Like other so-called superfoods, there are no guarantees that using olive oil will make all of your cholesterol problems go away, but compared to the clear links between heart disease and olive oil's less healthy alternatives, you could do much worse than to make this simple, easy switch.

The healthiest way to add olive oil to your diet for chloresterol-lowering purposes is to first, buy the extra-virgin olive oil, and second, use about two tablespoons of it per day. Extra-virgin olive oil comes from the first pressing of the olives and is the least-processed form. There is also virgin, pure, and extra light varieties, in order of least processed to most processed. Keep the oil in an air-tight container in a cool, dark place. Work it into your diet by replacing saturated fats you use in cooking at home. This can be acheived by using it in the frying pan rather than sprays, butter, margerine, or vegetable oil.

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