Is Frylight healthy? We take an honest look at the popular cooking spray
Changing what you eat is often the number 1 thing you can do to improve your health, and often it is small changes to your diet which can have the biggest impact. One of the smallest and easiest changes you can make to your diet is to cook your food differently. We've written about air fryers previously, which can "fry" your food without oil. But if you still want to use an old-fashioned pan, using a product like Frylight can seem like a great way to cook your food in a healthier way.
But is it actually healthy to use Frylight? We wanted to take a close look at this product to find out. Let's get into it:
What type of Frylight did we look at?
This guide will mostly focus on the popular rapeseed, sunflower, and olive oil varieties of Frylight, but we do also have another section about how healthy the other varieties are.
What is Frylight made from?
We were actually quite surprised to see how straightforward the ingredients were in a bottle of Frylight, and this is true of all the main varieties. For example, the Sunflower, Rapeseed, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil varieties all contain 51% oil, and absolutely nothing artificial. The oil in the bottles is mixed with water, alcohol, and Sunflower Lecithin, which acts as an emulsifier. The only ingredient which struck us as a bit odd was the thickener used, xanthan gum. But actually, this ingredient is very safe to consume and is found in a number of different food products.
It's also worth mentioning that Frylight is totally gluten free, making it suitable for coeliacs.
What are the nutritional statistics of Frylight?
The reason people buy Frylight is because it is low in calories, and the product really doesn't disappoint in that regard.
Every variety of Frylight contains just 1 calorie per spray, and to get the equivalent of 1 teaspoon of oil, you need to use 5 sprays. Compare this to using normal cooking oil, and the difference in calories is stark - a teaspoon of sunflower oil contains 40 calories, so Frylight contains roughly 8 times fewer calories than normal cooking oil.
Aside from the calorie content, there really isn't much else to highlight in terms of nutrition. Frylight contains no sugar, salt, or protein, but does contain 0.1g of fat per 0.2ml spray.
It's worth mentioning that because Frylight is only 51% oil, it doesn't contain as many of the healthy nutrients you'll find in normal cooking oil.
What about the varieties of Frylight?
Aside from the 3 popular varieties of Frylight made with rapeseed, sunflower, and olive oil, you'll also find 2 other varieties - one made with coconut oil, and one made with garlic oil. Let's look at how healthy they are:
Frylight with coconut oil
The Frylight with coconut oil also contains just 1 calorie per spray and is also made without any artificial ingredients. We were interested to see that the spray contains only 12% coconut oil, which is enough to give your dishes a coconut flavour but won't provide you with a huge amount of the benefits from the coconut oil such as the healthy fats.
Frylight with garlic oil
Lots of garlic flavoured cooking products use artificial garlic flavouring, so it's really impressive to see that Frylight is made with natural garlic extract. What's really interesting about this Frylight spray is that it contains just 8% natural garlic extract, and the rest of the oil used is rapeseed oil. Compare this to the coconut Frylight, which is made using sunflower oil alongside the coconut oil, and you could actually describe the garlic Frylight as healthier, because rapeseed oil contains a lower percentage of saturated fatty acids compared to sunflower oil.
So, can we describe Frylight as healthy?
Hopefully, this guide has helped you to decide how healthy Frylight is. Let us know what you think of this product and if you have anything else you'd like us to review!
Finn H
Finn is the editor of You Well and has been writing about travel, health, and more for over 10 years.