Food Frying

10Fried Foods in Health and Disease

10.1 Introduction

Food frying can help maintain and improve human health. Meat and fish muscle foods are rich in high‐quality proteins, vitamins, and minerals (Sobral et al. 2018). Anthropologists believe that regular meat consumption was crucial to human evolution (Smil 2002). Hominids began using fire to cook foods approximately 1.8 million years ago, which played an important role in the improvement of several human‐specific characteristics; the energy gained from cooked food contributed to the development of larger brains, as well as to several adaptations in the mouth and intestinal tract (Ferraro et al. 2013).

Today, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the supply of muscle foods represents a strong market. In contrast to bovine meat, which has experienced a slight decrease in consumption in recent years, the consumption of fish, pig, and chicken meat has increased. Red meat has begun to be viewed negatively for its possible carcinogenic effect. In October 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a report that classified processed meat as carcinogenic (group 1) and red meat as probably carcinogenic (group 2A) to humans. Despite this, meat is an important source of essential micronutrients, such as B vitamins and trace elements, as well as fatty acids. Howe et al. (2006) found that 43% of total dietary intake of n‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) could be achieved ...