Dr. Weil's cooking dos and don'ts; create healthier and more delicious meals with these easy tips from Andrew Weil, M.D

Natural Health, May-June, 2002 by Donna Coco

* DON'T buy peanut oil. It contains less monounsaturated fat and more unhealthy artery-clogging saturated fat than olive oil, Weil says.

* DO saute and bake with organic grapeseed oil if you find the flavor of olive oil too strong. "I really like grapeseed oil, and there is actually some good data on its health benefits," notes Weil. And now and then, Weil will use organic, expeller-pressed canola oil.

* DON'T reuse oil. "That's really common in the older generation," says Weil, "but I don't think that's a good thing to do. When you heat oil, you're also exposing it to air and light, and the [free radicals] build up more quickly." So fight the temptation to keep and reuse oil. Throw it out.

* DO enhance cold salads or already-cooked dishes with nut and seed oils like hazelnut, walnut, and sesame. They're low in saturated fats and high in flavor. Don't saut6 with them, however, because they will oxidize. "I use dark sesame oil for flavoring, usually in soups or at the end of cooking," says Weil. "I also use some hazelnut oil and walnut oil. They're very delicious in cold dishes." Store these oils in your refrigerator.

* DON'T buy oils in large containers. Buy bottles that you can finish in a month. Smell oils to detect rancidity (indicated by an oil-paint smell) before using them.

* DO choose butter over margarine, which contains partially hydrogenated oils and trans fats. Eating trans fats raises your risk for heart disease. If your diet is otherwise low in saturated fat, Weil says it's okay to eat butter. "I don't keep butter in the house," Weil says. "I used to love it, but I don't so much like the taste of it anymore. If I have really good sweet corn, I like it without butter. Whereas when I was growing up, I used to just pour butter on it."

* DON'T use solid shortenings like Crisco, which also contain partially hydrogenated oils, when you're making a pie crust. "Lard is better," says Weil, who thinks indulging in a piece of pie on the occasional holiday is fine. "You could also use Spectrum Spread," he adds.

Eggs & Dairy

* DO eat eggs if you like them. They contain cholesterol, but dietary cholesterol is not as big a factor in heart disease as once thought, Weil notes, and eggs are rich in nutrients. But know that eggs do have some saturated fat, so don't eat more than one or two a day. (They're also used in a lot of dishes, so it's easy to eat too many.) And prepare them in healthy ways that use less fat, like boiled or poached.

* DON'T eat eggs that come from factory chickens. Their diets are poor, and as a result these chickens lay less nutritious eggs, says Weil. Choose organic eggs from free-range chickens.

* DO select good-quality, natural cheeses (without dyes and additives). You can include them in your diet as long as you consider your overall intake of saturated fats. "You can have a certain amount of saturated fat in your diet," Weil says, "especially if you are eating primarily monounsaturated fats [for example, in olive oil or avocados] elsewhere, and it's in the context of a diet that is high in antioxidants from fresh fruits and vegetables. So you decide what you want to eat [that saturated fat] as. Do you want ice cream? Do you want to eat it as beef? My preference is to eat it as cheese."