Oil, anyone?

At the beginning of July, I made a post in a Facebook group for vegan travel, asking if people had come across restaurants that focus on or serve only whole foods (i.e., foods that are close to their natural state, without any artificial substances added). My post generated over 70 comments, most of which mentioned restaurants in the U.S. This could be due to the location bias of the group, both in terms of where people are based and where they typically travel. It could also be because most well-known doctors and nutrition experts who promote a whole-food, plant-based, and oil-free (WFPBOF) diet are Americans (e.g., Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Michael Greger, and Dr. Neal Barnard). They likely have a greater influence on business practices in the U.S. than in other places, though it still seems quite niche even in the U.S.

Why was I interested in this? Since a few years ago, I’ve been cooking without oil at home. My rationale was simple. In the words of Dr. Neal Barnard, “An olive tree doesn’t have a faucet on it…. Olive oil isn’t really a natural product…. To get olive oil, what do you do? You take 10,000 olives and throw away all the pulp and fiber.” I would rather eat the whole olive than the olive oil. (Olive is just an example. In reality, I rarely eat olives, if you care to know 😄)

While I can tolerate consuming oil—to a certain extent—when I eat out, I had become unused to the mouthfeel of oil and find it uncomfortable to eat greasy food, which, based on my experiences, is more often than not what you get at restaurants, whether plant-based or otherwise. So, after a few months of rarely eating food prepared by myself, I really wanted to have more WFPBOF food. I never expected any restaurants to offer oil-free food, but I was still curious if any existed.

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to answer my own question: Vita Rama in Sofia, Bulgaria, offers amazing WFPBOF food.

One question I’d been asking myself every time I try a new dish or restaurant is whether I could happily eat this food every day. After eating at Vita Rama a couple of times, I could say yes to this question without hesitation. It’s just like the kind of food I would make myself! Wanting to learn more about their practices, I reached out to their management with an interview request.

I felt very fortunate to meet with Chef Nikky Petreliyski, who has had a very successful career as a chef and has been the chef consultant at Vita Rama since the restaurant opened two years ago. I learned that the restaurant's cooking principles are deeply influenced by the teachings of Bulgarian naturopath Lydia Kovacheva, who advocated for a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and other plant-based items. She emphasized local, seasonal, organically grown fresh fruits and vegetables and food combinations that were as simple as possible. She believed that eating in this way would allow one to conserve energy that would otherwise be spent on breaking down complex and heavy foods, giving the body an opportunity to self-regulate through proper healthy nutrition.

In Vita Rama’s kitchen, therefore, the following cooking principles are observed: proper combinations of food groups to aid digestion; soaking and sprouting grains, legumes, and seeds to increase the bioavailability of nutrients; and gentle cooking methods such as steaming, boiling, and baking at low temperatures to help retain the nutrients in food.

Besides menu creation and cooking methods, Petreliyski and I covered many topics in our hour-and-a-half conversation: the sourcing of produce from small farmers and businesses; the training of kitchen staff; the creation of a system, including structures and standards, that will allow Vita Rama to expand; the general F&B industry in Sofia and the challenges of consulting with restaurants that thrive on profiting from expensive non-vegan dishes and are therefore reluctant to add WFPB dishes; the lack of a vegan community here in Bulgaria; the challenges of maintaining a niche business; and his advice for aspiring chefs who are interested in specializing in plant-based and health-focused cuisine like that served at Vita Rama.

Though Petreliyski himself is not strictly vegan, he believes that a holistic approach to plant-based cooking is the future of the food industry. (I think many would agree.) “If you know how to play with the textures of vegetables, you are a good chef…. And if you want to create a restaurant like Vita Rama, first get into such a place, work for a while just to see how such businesses work. You have to stay for at least a year because in this one year you’ll see a lot of changes, the struggles, and you’ll have more data points to make a decision afterward. If you want to go into it straight away, then just hire the right people. Hire the right consultant who will work for you and for whom your dream will become theirs.”

Amazed by Vita Rama’s lack of compromise when it comes to cooking oil and their persistence in operating a restaurant unlike any other of the 1,400 restaurants in Sofia, I started wondering again about the rationale for not consuming oil and what evidence there is proving the benefits.

Some advocates for an oil-free diet claim that too much oil can promote inflammation. More specifically, the concern is that excessive intake of linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid in seed oils, may contribute to inflammation in the body. In Simon Hill’s recent podcast episode on dietary fats (which I recommend if you’re interested in this topic), he referenced a 2012 meta-analysis of fifteen randomized controlled trials that concluded “virtually no evidence is available from randomized controlled intervention studies among healthy non-infant human beings to show that the addition of linoleic acid to the diet increases the concentration of inflammatory markers.” A 2017 meta-analysis of thirty randomized controlled studies involving 1,377 subjects came to the same conclusion, though it did mention that “in subjects with a more profound increase in dietary LA intake, LA might increase the blood CRP [C-Reactive Protein] level,” high levels of which may indicate serious health conditions that cause inflammation.

But that’s just about inflammation. There are also concerns with cardiovascular diseases and other health conditions. Saturated fat consumption is directly related to cholesterol levels in the blood and increased insulin resistance. There seems to be a consensus that certain saturated fats should be avoided or reduced and replaced by unsaturated fats.

However, research and discussions on nutrition are always complex. One could ask which unsaturated fats are better than others for different health outcomes, or how replacing one type of fat with another compares to replacing fat with a different food category, such as carbohydrates. While I find the links between food and health fascinating, perfection should not be the goal in practice. It is unattainable anyway.

So, my takeaway from the research on oil so far? While I may still prefer oil-free food and want to cook more for myself when possible while traveling, I will not stress about consuming oil when I eat out or using it to cook onions and garlic for the aromatics. After all, for better health, there are many more important things to focus on.