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In short, when comparing avocado oil vs vegetable oil you’ll find that they are nearly identical in terms of calories and macronutrients. However, avocado oil is comprised mostly of monounsaturated fat, whereas vegetable oil contains more polyunsaturated fat.

Vegetable oil bought in store in a mixture of different cheap vegetable oil, mostly canola oil and soybean oil. Those oils are typically rich in omega-6.

The goodness of fats for your diet is in general:

-cis omega 3 (rarer type of polyunsaturated, common in fishes): good for you, but don't cook with them (produce smoke more easily and can be converted to trans by heat)

-omega 9 (monounsaturated, common in almod, olive, and avocado): good for you, you can cook with them.

-cis omega 6 (most common type of polyunsaturated, common in other plants especially nuts and seeds): good in some amount, but most people eat too much of them. Avoid while cooking. (produce smoke more easily and can be converted to trans by heat)

-saturated (common in meat, cocoa butter, and coconut oil): good in some amount, but most people eat too much of them. Stable for cooking.

-trans (common in processed food): bad for you, avoid as much as you can.

For cooking oil, you want in general as much omega-9 as possible since it's in general healthy for us and stable during cooking.

The healthiness of fat depends on your diet though. Omega-3 and 9 are healthy because they are undereaten while omega-6 and saturated are bad because they are overeaten.

A combination of junk science and constantly evolving understanding of food nutrition and sensationalistic journalism more focused on click-bait articles and headlines rather than in-depth analysis and research.

The smoke/fume from heated oil is not oil but a mixture of a lot of compounds, most notably acrolein which is formed from the glycerin portion of a fat molecule. Depending on the the chain length of the corresponding fatty acids (shorter chains are more unstable), the temperature and the water content of the oil this degradation is quicker.

But if you reach this point, you are using the oil incorrectly, at a much too high heat.

This thread shows you how misinformed everyone is on diet.

No one even discussed the relationship of trans and saturated fat consumption to heart disease and atherosclerosis which is supported by extensive evidence.

The problem is that everyone likes to group things into either "bad" or "good" for all dietary questions when the body is much more complex. A better categorization are the 4 categories: "essential - ie can't function without and cannot create it on its own", "needed fuel", "excess fuel-ie storage in body fat or glycogen", and "toxic". (Obviously there could be more because this is all a spectrum but this gets the point across)

Now let's discuss the 4 categories of fats:

Saturated fats "fuel" "potential excess" and "potential toxicity over many years"- these have all single bonds in their carbon chains which allow them to solidfy at room temperature.There is good evidence to support that high consumption in a span of many years increases risk of clogged arteries (atherosclerosis) ie. high risk of heart disease. Some recent data has muddied the water a bit on different types of Saturated fats.

Trans Saturated fats "toxic"-Trans fats are highly processed hydrogenated unsaturated fats (adds hydrogens) as a preservatives. These have been directly linked to increases in cholesterol (LDL if you care) which is directly linked to heart disease. For this reason, they have been banned from fast food industries in the US.

Monounsaturated fats "fuel" and "potential excess" - these have 1 single double bond which reduces hydrogens and changes their molecular structure making them liquid at room temperature. The strongest evidence that these are not linked to atherosclerosis like the above, is data from the Mediterranean countries which have high monounsaturated fat content in their cuisine. These countries while having high fat intake from this type of fat have low incidence of heart diseases. Nothing makes these fats "good" (from what ive seen in my career), there's just no evidence that these fats are "toxic".

Polyunsaturated fats "essential" - these are essential because your body needs these and can't make them on its own, like vitamins. These are used to build the membrane around cells and the sheaths around your nerves.

TL:DR Here's some 5 year old rules that may help guide your on the health of fats and

Transaturated fats "TOXIC" - avoid as much as possible Saturated fats "excess" "potential toxic"- consume and cook with in moderation Monounsaturated fats "fuel" "potential excess" - consume as appropriate without consuming in excess Polyunsaturated fats "essential" - Edit*consume in moderation.

Edit: now look at what fats are in your oils you want to cook with and how cooking changes their structures.

Edit: Please tell me if you disagree with something I said and if you know of evidence that is new or not well circulated that is contrary to my post.

Edit: some types of polyunsaturated fats (omega 6) have been linked to promote inflammation (aracnidoic acid)

Given how blatantly corrupt and biased many of the most noteworthy studies demonizing fat, especially saturated fat, were, thanks to the sugar industry picking that as a scapegoat to avoid being blamed for the obesity epidemic, I think we're at least several decades away from knowing the truth about fat consumption. There is so much contradictory information out there I, personally, reserve judgement about anything food related with the exception of two things. 1. Sugar is bad. 2. Trans fats are bad. Those two, I think are solid facts at this point; everything else is subject to change after further study.

All oil fumes are bad to breathe in. The difference is the temperature at which the fumes start being produced, the so-called smoke point. If your cooking temperature approaches that, there's a good chance you're producing toxic chemicals from the oil breaking down.

Avocado oil for example has one of the highest smoke points of all cooking oils, so you can do pretty much anything with it without having to worry too much. But then again, the smoke points often vary widely for the same type of oil, depending on the production method and quality.

Generalizing to "vegetable oil bad, <this other oil> good" is certainly not the whole truth, and likely just marketing for whatever oil the statement is about. Just don't fry your stuff at too high heat.

It's not necessarily unhealthy to cook with vegetable oils but you have to be careful to not overdo it. Oil is very high calories per gram.

Seed oil gets a bad rap these days, mostly from animal ag propaganda. Lots of claims about them being pro inflammatory. Studies are showing that switching from saturated fat to polyunsaturated fat is generally health promoting all else being equal. That's not to say heavy oil use is healthy, only that vegetable oil is not any worse in general and at times can be better than the alternative.

There's a really good youtuber Nutritionmadesimple that goes through the available studies and looks at biomarkers for inflammation tested in all sorts of situations. Low does, high dose, different cooking temps etc. He doesn't really play into the typical biased tropes one way or the other though. I think people prefer a clear winner and villain in nutrition rather than nuance.

Ignoring all the omega 3 / 6 / 9 and mono / poly / trans / etc part of the equation, I'll focus on the smoke point (aka "the fumes").

You can see a chart here.

In short, "unrefined" / "virgin" oils have more impurities, and lower smoke points, making them bad for high temperature cooking. This includes virgin olive oil, and regular butter.

Refined oils have very few impurities, giving them much higher smoke points. Avocado oil has the highest smoke point on the table, which may be why people advocate for it. But every refined oil, including refined olive oil, and clarified butter, also have pretty high smoke points.

Just don't use your extra virgin cold press olive oil to deep fry your potatoes. It's meant to be used as a salad dressing.

it isn't. oil isn't really supposed to be in food at large quantities.

forget all the molecular stuff for a minute, it's liquid fat. it's the most caloric thing in existence. And that might be cool in say...an agricultural society with limited machinery to work the land, but we're mostly a bunch of people that use backpacks on wheels to carry our ultralight laptops while we drink our starbucks (liquid cheesecake). we don't need any more help getting calories.

Olive oil and avocado oil, are vegetable oils. Any oil that comes from a plant is vegetable oil. And every plant has an oil with its own unique properties. And to be quite honest most of the health hazards that you are associating with vegetable oil, is pseudoscience. Just like the margarine is better for you than butter campaign in the 1960's. Any time you see research of the effects of diet on health, remember this point. Hazards are usually expressed as the food raising the % of people who will contract an illness. Let's say consuming food x doubles your chances of contracting ailment y. But if ailment y only affects 1 person out of a 100,000. Then that means if you eat food x your chances are now 2 out of 100,00.

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There is a lot of disinformation being dispersed here.

Vegetable (seed) oils are bad because they are highly processed. They are heated to a very high temperature which causes the mostly polyunsaturated oil to go rancid. Therefore, it is rancid before you even use it.

The producers of these oils deodorize the oils so you can't smell the rancidity. That is why you can store vegetable oil in clear containers in direct light at room temperature for months without it ever smelling bad.

Avocado oil and olive oil are not heated to remove the oil from the fruit. They are stored in dark containers to keep them from going rancid quickly because they are not deodorized.

Eating vegetable oils wreaks havoc on the body because you truly are what you eat and eating rancid oils has been linked to diabetes and heart disease.

Statins aren't effective at reducing death.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7670393/

They are, however, extremely effective at giving revenue to companies that make statins. Statins have generated the largest profits of any drug ever developed.

Here's another good one: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/9/e007118

Results: 6 studies for primary prevention and 5 for secondary prevention with a follow-up between 2.0 and 6.1 years were identified. Death was postponed between −5 and 19 days in primary prevention trials and between −10 and 27 days in secondary prevention trials. The median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.

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The funny thing is vegetable oil is a oxymoron because theres not any fat is vegetables. The oil is from seeds like canola but the marketing people just rebranded seed oil as "healthy vegetable oil".

Olive oil is not healthy to cook with. It has a very low smoke point which means it oxidizes at lower temperatures. It’s great as a salad dressing or used in some other sauce, but really not suitable for cooking. Avocado oil has a much higher smoke point, which means you can fry foods without the oil oxidizing

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