[tslug]

I find a great substitute is olive oil where I'd use butter for non-cooking (eg. instead of butter on pasta or instead of butter on bread). It's not quite as tasty but still a huge improvement over dry, and it's healthier.

For cooking, I understand olive oil is unhealthy (I think you create carcinogens as a side-effect), as are many other oils, but that coconut oil doesn't do this because of its different melting temperature.

[projektir]

> For cooking, I understand olive oil is unhealthy (I think you create carcinogens as a side-effect), as are many other oils, but that coconut oil doesn't do this because of its different melting temperature.

I believe the situation with oil is a bit more complicated than that, and you're generally fine with olive oil unless you make it smoke, which is fairly non-trivial to do, despite its low smoking point. There seems to be some debate on the topic: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/03/cooking-with-olive-oil-fa...

Coconut oil in particular actually has a low smoking point. If you want to be safe, you want Avocado oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

[huehehue]

I encourage you to try some top-shelf olive oil, if you haven't already -- I find that it blows butter out of the water in most cases.

I initially felt the same way as you wrt tastiness, but had a friend bring me back a tin of oil from Italy recently and whoooo boy it's just the most phenomenal thing. Add a bit of salt & pepper to a shallow bowl of oil for dipping bread.

[Fnoord]

Coconut oil is a (mostly) saturated fat; olive oil and sunflower seed oil are (mostly) unsaturated fat.

Olive oil with herbs is amazing. Give it a whirl.

[osrec]

Ah, but coconut oil has other potential issues. I would not put it in the healthy category, despite its current popularity.