I know it is not healthy to deep-fry stuff, obviously
Depends on what you deep-fry it in, and how balanced your diet is.
but as far as cooking a dish with olive oil in it, I'm not sure why should the oil be any less healthy if it is put directly onto food after it's cooked, vs. cooking a little in the food you're making.
I think that if you re-use liquid vegetable oils a lot, you can start converting the oil molecules to trans-fat molecules, but I don't do that.
Also, I have read that the most unhealthy of all oils to cook with is Canola oil.
I can't believe that, Crisco or any other hydrogenated oil has to be the worst.
It is really rapeseed oil, which originated in Canada, but which for obvious reasons could not be successfully marketed as such.
Rapeseed is mustard oil, never heard that anything is unhealthy about mustard.
So it was called "canola" . This oil for reasons I can't remember now, becomes something very unhealthy when it is cooked, unlike most other oils
Acrylamides? (I thought those come from burning starch.)
(which is why your comment about olive oil surprised me. I understood that other oils are ok to cook with). I noticed that canola oil is extremely popular in use in Israel, all over the shelves, and one of the cheapest cooking oils available. I was very disappointed by this.
It's not the worst. It is a "ghetto" kind of oil but any liquid oil that is not constantly reused isn't too bad. I don't see why Israelis can't use more olive oil though. The Mediterranean climate is perfect for olives, so I can't believe why it would be so expensive there.