Peanut oil is a good choice for deep frying, but any fried food, regardless of oil type, still translates into calories and thus into fatness.

I agree with you on the canola oil. Olive oil, though “healthy”, is not a frying oil and has a low smoke point, while peanut oil just isn’t as good for a body as canola, though peanut oil has a high smoke point and good flavor perfect for frying.

@tj han, I agree that American food has the potential to be super unhealthy, especially fast food- that’s a given. But with a few smart substitutions, fatty, nasty foods can be made into healthy, light foods. Like making sour cream from tofu, oven-frying instead of deep-frying or using beans instead of meat.

One of the reasons I love Japanese food is because it’s so healthy. Tempura is excluded since it isn’t really Japanese. It originated in Portugal, so I can honestly say traditional Japanese foods are much healthier than American foods.

One> Don’t use a box mix. Who knows what’s in that (though a good guess would be loads of preservatives). Tempura batter is more or less just flour and water. A Google search will turn up plenty of recipes–just avoid the ones that use eggs. I make mine with little more than rice flour, a pinch of sea salt and water.

Two> Use canola oil for frying. Nothing else. Seriously.

Three> Ensure your oil is VERY HOT before you start adding items. Cooking your items in very hot oil will cook them quickly and ensure that the least amount of oil possible is actually absorbed into the batter. Your food should not be in the batter very long at all and should be placed on thick absorbent toweling afterwards.

Most people get impatient waiting for the oil to heat and start tossing stuff in WAY too soon. Remember, each time an item is added it cools the oil. You want that oil HOT so it cooks fast and doesn’t soak into the food items!

As with anything, moderation is the key. You can’t eat this sort of thing breakfast, lunch and dinner but you can certainly have it once or twice a week along with ‘healthier’ items.

I have no idea if Japanese restaraunts use trans fats in their fried foods. One good way to find out is to ask.

Trans fats are the hidden danger in many fried foods, and prepackaged foods are also a major source of these nasty oils.

Americans are slowly waking up to the perils of trans fats. In fact, New York City has outlawed the use of trans fats in restaurants and will enforce that ban in July of 2008.

For a long time I’ve thought that Japanese snacks were immune to this plague. But every now and again I’ll see a snack that uses “partially hydrogenated soybean oil”; buh-bye snack. I hope this trend doesn’t spread to any more J-snacks or my one true snack hook-up will disappear T_T///.